Spring in Macro

Incey-Wincey Spider climbed up a...actually does anyone know what this flower is called?

I know I do this every year, but each Spring I become slightly shocked that things like flowers exist, (I think I'm finding the winters here increasingly difficult to bear). The shock turns to excitement and I immediately set about repeatedly photographing everything I see, and this year, inspiration from a forum I've been hanging around in made me decide that I was going to go out with my 12-50mm lens and shoot in the macro mode (it's not quite full macro, but still quite impressively versatile) to try and capture as many of the little things that were going on around me in the beautiful countryside I'm so fortunate to live in. All these shots (and many more!) were actually captured during a one-hour lunch-walk whilst I was taking a break from the endless writing, so are actually of the flowers and things by the side of the road. The locals must think I'm nuts, if I'm not running down lanes looking like I'm about to expire I'm sitting in the road pointing a camera at weeds...ahhhh Spring....

Note to Self - Don't Hit Delete Until You've Really Thought About it.

I like this shot...but maybe I would have liked what it over-wrote more?

Everyone does it sooner or later - hits delete or format and immediately thinks 'oops'. At the end of March I managed to get out for a day's walking on the Wrekin, there was loads of snow on the ground and it was a beautifully clear day, the first we'd had for what seemed like months. I went out and shot landscapes liked I meant it, came home with 50 or so frames (some of which were pretty good on the back of the camera) and put the camera away.

The Search for a Stable Editing Platform...or, Damn it, There Goes Another Laptop

Gone?

Those who have been following my Flickr Stream will know that I've been having a difficult time with editing technology lately. For the second time in less than 12 months I have had a laptop fail on me, this time with a wheezy shreek as a hard-drive just seven months old expired, leaving me with that ominent "Missing OS" message blinking at the top of my screen and some late-night wobbles that I might not have backed up my Lightroom Catalogue in the right place (i.e. externally) thus resulting in the loss of several years work...

Don't Spare the Horses!

Racing Driver

Grand National Day (6th April this year) saw me photographing an entirely different sort of horsepower. A friend was fulfilling a life-long ambition to compete in some motor racing so he'd bought himself an old ford for a few hundred quid, applied for his racing licence and entered a local short-circuit series. A big group of friends and family went along to give him some moral support and we all had a great evening cheering him on. Obviously he needed some official photos from his motor-racing début so I took my cameras and in the waning light shot several hundred frames...

Swynnerton Across Time

Frozen pool, March 2013

Finding somewhere to take interesting pictures is always a challenge, especially if you don't live in the Grand Canyon, beside some dramatically interesting cliffs or on top of a mountain. For a couple of years now I've been visiting a village just a couple of miles from home (usually on my bike) where I've been shooting various sights, including a ridge viewpoint and at a small pond renovated by a youth project. Whilst clearly not as dramatic as some sweeping mountain range, I seem to have made shooting the area a little project all of my own, and during a recent visit I thought it might be interesting to put together a set of images reflecting the sights of the different seasons...

What One Thing Would Improve Your Photography?

Maybe you just need a new perspective?

Photography is such a gear-driven activity, whether that gear is a pin-hole camera made from a 35mm film cannister or the latest, state-of-the-art 600 Gigapixel monster. So many photographers seem to be under the constant impression that they just need one more thing to 'complete' their camera kit and ensure that they are able to function in any given set of circumstances. I'm as guilty as anyone else about this, throughout the course of a week I might variously convince myself that I really need such-and-such a lens, or one of these backdrops, or maybe just a new blower to really get the dust-bunnies off of my sensor...

The Sandstone Trail Part II

Workers in the sky

Day 2 on the Sandstone trail, between Delamere and Beeston, saw the terrain become rather less stony and somewhat more agricultural. Another very grey day, so I've had to go heavy on the toning here...