Don't Panic!

Don't Panic! My laptop may have stopped working. Slightly. Just a bit. Well, totally.

So no new photos until at least next week when I can get a good look at it...maybe one that I find lying about on my hard drive if you're (un)lucky. Sorry!

J

East Bergholt

More countryside shots of East Bergholt today - got to love that rural feeling. Here's the Donkey Track again:

Gorgeous evening sunlight could make a cracking shot out of pretty much anything, and Constable Country is pretty picturesque anyway to be honest. I like the way the trees look red, almost autumnal. Definitely summer today though - my flip flops prove it. Anyway, here's some primroses:

Now you know it's the countryside - look, trees in the background! Wild flowers! The singing of the birds in the trees! Small woodland creatures singing songs and holding hands in the undergrowth!

OK, one of them may have been made up. Not telling which.

I had a few goes with different apertures to experiment with how focused I wanted the trees in the background to be - at first they were too blurry and there was no context whatsoever. I like to think I found the pleasant middle ground.

I'll take some more exciting photos soon, I promise - I'll take loads of photos when I go on holiday somewhere exotic...which may be a while. It may have to be East Bergholt again - maybe some portraits, or a photo of an escaped puma...

J

Bright Colours! Must be Suffolk

What's that you say?! A picture which isn't a dismal train under overcast skies?! Well, it can only mean I'm back in Sunny Suffolk, surely!

That's right. For those of you haven't guessed from all the bits about Suffolk in the previous paragraph/title, I'm back in East Bergholt - and where there's East Bergholt, there's sun! Sometimes. OK, quite rarely. Anyway, here's some flowers:

These are the flowers my Nana got for Mothers' day - I took this photo on Monday. Unfortunately, that afternoon she was admitted to hospital with a suspected minor heart attack - don't worry, she seems better than ever now, although they are keeping her in for observation until after the weekend. So the photo of these flowers doubles up as a tribute - get well soon Nan!

I also wanted to show you this shot of THE donkey track, iconic East Bergholt icon since ever. I am still yet to see a donkey on it though. It took me sodding ages to get the starburst effect coming off the sun, so I hope you appreciate it!

That one was taken yesterday afternoon, and I've got a few more from the same shoot that I'll upload in the next few days. Until then, I need to go and write about why Husserl is wrong. Which I should be doing now. Can I count this as part of my essay?

No? OK then. In that case bye for now,

J

Trains

I went to the New Forest on Friday, partly in the hope of getting some stunning pictures and partly in the hope of getting a stunning pub lunch. At least one of these things happened...

If anybody wants to know a brilliant food pub in Brockenhurst, do let me know.

Unfortunately this isn't a blog dedicated to the amazing Ringwood beer-batter, so you get to see some patchy shots of a train instead. Sorry! 

More Suffolk Publicity Shots

OK, these are actually Essex, but taken in the general direction of Suffolk. It's the thought that counts.

These are the last photos I'm going to put up from my first weekend with my camera last October, at least for a while. New stuff coming soon, honest! At any rate, these shots are of the Stour Estuary at Manningtree in the early morning. Well, it was about 7.30, which is early for me! They're more about me testing the settings on my camera than about anything clever compositionally, but I think they've both got a certain charm to them.

One day I'll go to this river and there will actually be a decent level of water in it...I've been assured that it does fill up, it just never seems to do so when I'm there!

See you soon,

J

A Close Knit Group

OK, I know. No bad puns as blog titles. I'll try and remember in future, although I'm definitely not making any guarantees...

Being as we're a mere nine months away from Christmas, here's something to get you in the mood. I don't really think of this a Christmas picture anyway, which is my excuse for putting it up here. I just like all the contrasts - soft and solid, old and new, austere and playful. Where there's a contrast, there's a photo.

At any rate, it always makes me smile. And if that's not a good reason to take a photo then I don't know what is.

J

A Brief Stroll in the Country, part 2

This is another photo from that same shoot when I first road tested my camera. I like the subtle flash of colour in the clouds, and the reflection in the lake. Minutes after I took this the sky lit up with a gorgeous sunset, but this shot's nicer - no whopping great tree branches in the way, for a start.

Basically, Suffolk is awesome. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

J

P.S - This post is in no way sponsored by the Suffolk tourist board. Although if they're out there, I'm more than open to offers...

A Brief Stroll in the Country, part 1

I figured that we needed some colour after those dull, misty, things last weekend, so here's Sunny Suffolk! These were taken last autumn on the first weekend that I got my DSLR - they mainly work because I was in the right place at the right time for the light! Beautiful countryside though.

More to come later - thought I'd heighten the suspense with the old shots while I go and take some more photos...

J

Misty

I've never really taken photographs in heavy mist before, so when I went over to Southampton common this weekend it was with somewhat mixed results. The three pictures below are fairly representative though - very drained colours, detail lost in the background, but with the opportunity for some interesting effects.

Photographing this path from the middle of nowhere allowed me to get a lovely, strong line. I don't do an awful lot of black and white shooting, but the colours in this scene were so muted that I felt they only served to distract from the other elements. I especially like the way that the perspective draws the eye towards the couple on the path - you move from the distant, blurred background down the path to reach them in perfect clarity. This picture, for me, is all about the way that mist wraps around you, and leaves you in your own little world.

Southampton Common, 1992

Old things are interesting. That's a fact, especially in photography. And, even though 1992 isn't that long ago, there's something quite fascinating about this old marker slowly eroding in the corner of Southampton common. It marks the capping of an attempted well, which eventually reached some colossal depth (which I can't remember) over the course of about 80 years, without ever finding the water they were looking for. And after all that effort,  the well was capped over and sits forgotten under a lot of long grass and a very heavy slab of rock.

...and Evening!

Hello again! Hopefully, it's now dark outside and I'm busy elsewhere doing something constructive with a saxophone. So, for your calm, relaxing Saturday evening enjoyment, here's a rainy night drive along the M25. Don't say I never get you anything nice!

I don't know why I like this shot - but it's got a nice atmosphere that brings to mind sitting in the passenger seat with the heating turned up full, something nice on the radio and someone else dealing with driving through the rain. There's just long enough a shutter speed to get the lights reflected in the spray from the car in front, and the blurriness just brings home that sleepy feeling of dozing off in the front seat for me. Bliss.

J

Morning...

I've found the time delay posting for releasing these blog posts...so here's an experiment. If you can read this, and it's not 1am on Friday night, then it's probably worked. With any luck we'll have a more nocturnal shot later.

This one's from the back garden of my house in Southampton, winter sunlight coming through tree branches.

More, with any luck, this evening.

J

James before America

So, my friend James has just left to America for a semester abroad. Here he is last week in the pub round the corner, before he started spelling "colour" without a u. Staring soulfully at an empty glass...I'm saying nothing.

Have a great semester James, don't work too hard...

J

Colourful Graffiti and Monochrome Dogs

What's that? You can't have a photo blog with only 2 photos? Fine. Here's some more. They come from a category I call "Colourful Graffiti and Monochrome Dogs". It's a niche...

Colourful Graffiti

Monochrome Dog

The first proper post

Hello. Welcome to my blog. I'm a bit new to this (read: have never had a blog in my life) but I wanted somewhere to showcase some of my pictures. I know I'm no photographic Picasso at the moment, but with any luck over time you'll start to see an improvement in my photos.

If you don't like cheesy speeches, skip the next paragraph.

Dear friends, I hope you'll travel with me on this journey of discovery as I try to work out more than the basics of "AV", "TV", "M", "ISO" and so on and so forth. Together, we can truly learn something about what makes a photo great (or at least OK), and perhaps all learn something about ourselves on the way too.

OK, exaggerated cheese over. Picture time! Apologies if this one doesn't come out formatted too well - like I said, I'm learning the layout. This is a sample of the pictures I've taken over the past few months - too many to put them all here, but from now on it'll be updated frequently.
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So, photo number one. Of 10,000. This is going to be a long blog...this is one of the first photos I took with my new 600D, it's a footpath near Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk.
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I know, I know - a fairly random leap to photo number two. This time it's the tree in my back garden in Southampton - again, last autumn. We'll get to modern day soon enough.
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My final photo for the moment, and also probably my favourite so far. A leaf in the early morning sun at Manningtree, Essex.


That's all for now. Although having said that, there'll probably be another post in a few minutes when I remember that I've got a blog.

Bye!
J

A Work in Progress...

Bear with me. I'm tweaking things.

Let's see what happens...