From out of the darkness . . .

. . . stepped forward a lone figure.

It took ages for me to settle down to sleep last night so I decided to get creative with my camera using a very dark room, an action man (borrowed from a friend's son) and a LED light.

Randoms

This web site doesn't have to be all about high quality carefully-planned shots. The two photos you can see above were taken on the spur of the moment, and both were taken during the course of today.

The first one is my black cat, Chad, flat on his back. He does that at times but here he yawned at the precise moment the shutter went off.

The second one is a lady friend's twin boys making themselves uncomfortable in a moses basket. Amazing how much you can fit in one of those.

Whoops . .

Thought I'd get some still life practice on, and came up with this one.

Surfing Towards The Evening Sun

Yesterday evening, I went for a bike ride along the sea front so that I could take pictures of Tom being in action with his kite. I actually "planned" this photoshoot as I wanted to make the most of the strong evening sunshine as I knew it would have the effect of bringing out that backlit "glow" effect on those splashes. Location was at Sandgate, near Folkestone.

Kearnsey Abbey

Today I went to a park area just off Dover. Emma (a ladyfriend of mine's) came up with the idea of having a picnic there so I went along with her. It provided me with a good excuse to road test my recently acquired Sigma 300 mm zoom lens. I took quite a few pictures and it was hard to choose a "favourite" out of them, so I've decided to show a whole selection.

My Dear Little Nan

So, why is this photo, taken in 1988 of my dear Little Nan who passed away in 1999, is being added to this web site? After all I stated that only photos taken in the past 24 hours will get shown in here. This photo was in fact extracted from a negative film only yesterday. I found a negative film scanner for £10 at a boot fair yesterday morning and gave it a test run a few hours later by running an old and long-since forgotten piece of negative film through it. And as you can see it worked very well.

Ancient Technology.

In these days of iPhones, digital cameras, the internet, flatscreen TVs and mpeg players, sometimes it's nice to take a fond look back to the 70's and see what kind of techology we had to make do with at that time. The first picture is an "instamatic" pocket camera that took 110-type film. The photo quality they were capable of was god-awful even in it's time, but it hadn't stopped it from being very popular as it was a cheap no-frills thing that anyone could use. Oh, it was my parent's camera - at a time when I was far too young to even think about getting into photography. This photo was taken today using my D40, and when I looked inside the Instamatic, amazingly it has an unused roll of film still nestling in it! (and it is a Safeway's own brand). The second picture was a NHS hearing aid that was the standrad in the late 60s and early 70's before a metallic version took over. I put an AA battery inside it to see if it worked . . . sadly, it didn't.

Lorraine's Girls

Went to visit Emma (a long-time ladyfriend of mine's) and she was babysitting her friend's three daughters. That gave me an excuse to whip out the ol' camera and do one of those family group pictures, something I very rarely do. It worked that the girls themselves are very photogenic, it was a nice sunny afternoon and I had a suitable background to work with.

Heaven Is A Half Pipe

Earlier on today, I went down to the local skate park with my sis and two nephews with plans of taking pictures of my nephew doing some "air" and "360"s on their BMXs and skateboards. However, when we got there, the place was already packed out with kids which made me feel apprehensive about taking my camera out. But after the first couple of clicks, suddenly everyone wanted their picture taken. Certainly had a good time and didn't get run over by anyone!

Mystical Harbour

Went for a stroll along the beach earlier on this evening as it was so warm and settled. Naturally I took my camera along with me, along with a tripod. Took a few shots, but ended up with a lovely misty rock-type effect such as the one as shown above.

Charlie

Meet my friend's new pet, a Highland White called Charlie. However, I had a lot of trouble trying to get him to sit still for long enough to get a nice photo of him as he is quite an active little thing . . . but then suddenly the opportunity presented itself and got that shot as shown above . . . success!

A Match Made In Heaven

I thought this was a great little shot of my friend's twins I took earlier on today. I just love their matching nighties. And rare that I got them both together in the same frame at the same time as usually one is darting off one way and the other is darting off the other way!

A Matter Of Life And Death

Not my usual kind of stuff, but an idea came to me only an hour ago and decided to carry it out there and then. I took a picture of myself and "borrowed" a random skull picture from the interweb and merged the two together. It actually didn't take me at all long to pull it off (all of 15 minutes) and I used my humble Paint Shop Pro 8 to put it together. Slightly processed the final image to give it that dark moody look. It's funny that when I did my 365 photos web site, there were several days when I tried to think of something original for it and yet nothing came to mind. Now that the 365 photo web site had long since ended, all these ideas just kept popping into my head out of nowhere and I think to myself "Now, why didn't I think of that?!".Still, this picture'll go into my new and more relaxed photoblog anyway.

The Old And The New

Seem to have been a very good day for photography today! It's funny as it only occurs when I'm not planning to be a shutterbug and yet these photography opportunities kept cropping up and I couldn't resist them. So, I've decided to make a little theme of it for today's entry and show how camera technology had really advanced over the years.

The first picture is a classic Box Brownie camera, manufacturered by Kodak in their masses at around the 1940's. It made photography affordable to the general public, a bit like the Ford Model T to the photography world. I spotted this particular model at a boot fair earlier on today and bought it for 50p! I don't know how much they are worth but at the very least it does make for a space filler/conversation piece as it gets added to my small collection of "classic" cameras.

The second picture is a friend's one-year old son, Thomas (he's one half of twin boys) and believe it or not it was taken using a mobile phone. The phone in question is a Sony Ericsson C902 and I will admit to have given that picture a cheeky bit of processing using clever image adjusting software. But even so, it does show how photography had come in leaps and bounds over the years.

Spider's Webs

When I'm not spending my spare time being on the web, I'm taking photos of them! I was on my way home from work early this morning when I noticed this cluster of spider webs dangling off a corse bush. I only had my little Fuji A900 on me at the time and conditions were generally dull and misty but I gave it a go and I think it turned out well. Would be even better if the sun was shining and I had my D40 on me!

Refreshing!

Today, I got this ice cold bottle of Cola out of the fridge and left it on a table while I did some other bits. When I got back to that bottle, I liked the looks of the condensation on the bottle and used it as an excuse to keep the ol' photography veins flowing.

The world's most coolest kettle!

Bought this kettle after the old one had packed in after a few year's faithful service. When I looked around for a replacement one, I wanted one that lights up from the inside . . . then came across this one. It's cool that it stays blue when not in use, but goes red when water is being boiled up inside it. I love the colour glow it gives off.

Line 'em up!

Came across this row of golf buggies as I made my way to a boot fair. It was taken at 9 am and the location was just off Etchinghill (near Folkestone). Just thought the line-up and the general interest that came with it was worth getting the camera out for.