Over recent weeks I’ve realised that I tend to categorise the images I put up in terms of three levels of quality: ok (fit to be put up if I haven’t managed to take anything that I think is better), good (stuff that I know could be better but I’m generally pleased with how it turned out), and excellent (shots that I’m really proud of). About 40% of the images I put up are ok, 58% are good, and a very few of them I think are excellent.

This shot is ok.

And I might not have posted it at all, but it partners tomorrow shot (which is much better), and I think the two of them together are more interesting than either on their own. And I know that I could post them both as part of the same entry, but I’m trying to stick to a one-image-a-day format so thought I’d put it up.

This shot was taken on Monday afternoon. I was in a part of town that I don’t normally visit and just wandered up and down taking a variety of shots, a good proportion of which were scenes such as this; i.e. reflections in shop windows (and other surfaces). And what’s odd is that out of the eight shots that I think I can use from this trip, six of them are in pairs – i.e. two shots of roughly the same scene. All of which is probably just a coincidence, but I often wonder quite what thought processes are involved in taking good photographs and figured that maybe shooting paired images was just a part of that process. Put another way: it seems that good shots are as much a product of intuition as they are a result of effort or preplanning, and as such it’s often very difficult to verbalise the hows and whys of a good shot. All of which is probably enough rambling for one day ;-)

I wasn’t sure about using this image, not because I think there’s anything wrong with it – I really like it – but because it isn’t entirely dissimilar to last week’s Photo Friday entry for the Neglect challenge. But I figured that if I didn’t put it up reasonably soon it would end up in the oh-well-I-didn’t-use-that-one pile, and I’d rather that didn’t happen to this one.

So, my apologies for being slightly repetitious.

That said, I took some shots today, that I’ll be posting over the next few days, that are rather different from the stuff I’ve been putting up lately, so I don’t feel too bad about using this one ;-)

I took this a week ago, and would have posted it sooner, but as I was working on it my news reader informed me that Jon (groundglass) had posted a new entry, and the colour scheme – particularly the shade of red – was so similar to this one that I thought I’d leave it for a few days.

As for this image: Holt Hosiery is just around the corner from where I work, but I don’t know anything about it so looked it up on Google. I didn’t find much, but did come across a part of Alice Urmston’s life history which indicates that the factory was well established by the 1930s. I doubt the sign in this picture is 70+ years old, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the door was – it was in rather a sorry state.

A little while ago I had a discussion regarding the value of running a commenting system, and it was pointed out to me that one of the major problems with them is that they can give you an impression of your work that may well be at odds with the value of that work. Or, less obscurely, that you can post something you like, that subsequently gets little or no feedback, and you are led to conclude that its value is less than you thought.

And while such a view is congruent with the idea of artistic integrity – post what you know is good and hang the critics – I don’t think I’ve reached such a lofty artistic position quite yet ;-)

All of which is a rather long-winded way of saying that perhaps yesterday’s entry wasn’t up to much. And I’m not convinced that today’s effort is massively better. This one is the result of experimenting with i) an embossed aluminium door, ii) the reflection of my hand, and iii) around five copies of the image set to overlay blend mode. And, as with yesterday’s entry, I don’t think this is a particularly wonderful image, but I did think it was sufficiently interesting to put up.

I don’t have much to say about this shot other than that it’s one that I took on one of my lunchtime rambles in around where I work. Part of where I work is a converted mill, that backs onto a semi-industrial area of town, and there are many small alleys, cobbled streets, and generally interesting buildings and things that are worth taking a photograph of. This is a vent for the central heating system of what was once a small shop. As best I can tell it’s no longer used, and I think this is probably why the vent is so corroded. I’m not sure that it has too much artistic merit, but I quite like the abstract quality and colours, so thought I’d put it up.

And in case you’re interested, I’ve added another archive page to this site that you can access by clicking the thumbnails link in the navigation bar. Each entry on this site uses three images, the main image (normally 750 x 525px), a smaller 200 x 150px image for the comment description and the main archive page, and some smaller 75 x 75px (cropped) images that appear at the bottom of that page (to link through to older images). The new page simply puts all these smaller images (for all the entries) on one page – which might be useful if you want a quick overview or are looking for an image that you previously viewed.

Oh, and I’ve also added a button to the comments/notes pop-up that links to my comments feed. If you’d like to keep track of who comments on which images you can subscribe to this feed in addition to the main site feed. The comments feed keeps track of the last fifteen commented images, whereas the main news feed is simply updated each time I add an entry to the site.

And finally, if you haven’t come across it yet, check out the little stories section of two-muses.com. While my descriptions/notes tend to focus on either the where, why or how I took/processed a shot, the ‘little stories’ section at two-muses accompanies each photograph with a story – all of which are well written, and all of which add an interesting dimension to the photograph in question.

It’s Photo Friday time again, and this week’s theme is ‘Neglect’ …

Earlier this week I took a different route home from work. Normally I drive along the M62, and it takes me about 35 or 40 minutes to get home, but I had a bit more time so thought I’d take a more leisurely route. And I’m glad that I did or I might not have found this wonderfully decrepit caravan. It was partially hidden from the road in a yard adjacenct to a pub, and I nearly missed it.

For me, caravans bring back many happy memories. When I was younger my parents used to take me and my three younger sisters touring around the UK and Scotland, and when the caravan got less roadworthy it was permanently sited at Lytham St. Annes – which was not the most exciting place in the world, but it was ok to visit as a kid. And I suppose, at some point, that the caravan was either sold or scrapped, but I don’t think it ever ended up looking quite as sad and neglected as this one.

As for this shot: I think this has to be one of my favourites of the stuff I’ve put up in recent weeks, and there isn’t really anything I don’t like about it (which is unusual). The only thing I couldn’t really decide on was the overall contrast/tonal range of the image. Time and time again I’ve been tempted to lighten the image, but I wasn’t sure that it worked that way. And I think that my desire to change it in that way is probably a consequence of posting a lot of high contrast, relatively bright shots recently. Anyway, whatever the reason, I decided that this version worked so have forced myself to leave it alone.

And thanks again to everyone who voted for my entry for the ‘Clean’ challenge. I normally have between 500 and 600 hits a day to this site, but last Tuesday, when the results were posted, I had 901 visitors … which is nice :-)

This is probably the last shot I’ll manage in my work’s coffee-bar series, as unless I can find something else to photograph – other than the walls, espresso machine, and the serving tongs they use for their marvelous (but overpriced) pastries – I’ve just about run out of ideas for this particular location.

As for this image: when I first worked on it a few days ago, I was really happy with it. But I’ve been messing around with it over the last couple of days and am now not sure what to make of it. Technically, while this looks like a straight shot, it was actually quite complicated to produce and relies of five separate (Curves) adjustment layers – one for the walls, one for the newspaper rack, one for the centre of the photograph, another for the mount, and a final one for the picture frame – and I think it looks ok, but I’ve had enough of it now so will post it before I’m tempted to do anything else to it.

And I suppose that this is the downside of getting a few shots ahead of myself. Normally I only have a couple of shots in reserve, sometimes none (which is a bit fraught), but at the moment I have six (including this one) ‘finished’ images to choose from. Which should be a good thing, but actually means that I’ve spent loads of time messing around and getting dissatisfied with all of them. Oh well, I guess there are worse things than having to worry about which photograph to put up next ;-)

I took this shot a week ago today, and when I finished working on it I was really pleased with it … but I haven’t put it up, and now I’m not sure what I think of it, though I don’t know why. I suppose that a part of the problem is that recently I’ve been trying to settle into something approaching a recognisable style (or series of styles) and I’m not at all certain how this one ‘fits’ with what I’m trying to achieve.

Part of the problem is that I have something of a magpie approach to some topics – “ooh, a shiny thing! Take a picture” – and I often end up with shots that are interesting (I like the vaguely abstract quality of this one, and the interplay of the various reflections) but I’m not always convinced that they have much artistic merit.

Anyway, rather than keep worrying about whether to include this one – and repeatedly posting other shots instead – I thought I’d put it up anyway. And if you can’t work it out, it’s the main light cluster on a Citroen MPV (though I can’t remember which model).

This is the 100th entry in this blog, the last 47 of which have been posted on sequential days, so I thought that I’d post a picture of myself as there haven’t been all that many of them (just two in fact: the second entry in this blog, and my entry for the Photo Friday Man challenge).

And like yesterday’s image, this is mostly a straight shot. The only Photoshopping that was done to this one was to blur my torso. The Canon G5, like all compact digitals, has a ridiculously large DOF, even at maximum aperture, and it just didn’t look right without this being done.

And given that this is something of a landmark, I’d like to take this opportunity to say thanks to all the people who have supported my efforts, both by commenting here (the next comment posted will be the 600th!!!) and by voting for this site at photoblogs.org. I really don’t think that I would be able to motivate myself to keep up with my image-a-day aim if it wasn’t for all the positive feedback :-)

This shot was one that I was tempted to use for this week’s Photo Friday challenge, Morning, but as it was taken at 11 o’clock at night I decided that it wasn’t all that appropriate. It’s a shot of our youngest daughter (who’s currently almost 14 months old) and is part of an ongoing series of shots (some of which will make there way onto this site) that are my attempt to get the hang of single source lighting. In this instance I used a flash, bounced off the ceiling, and I’m quite pleased with the overall effect (and do realise that it would have been better if the inner corner of her eye had been in focus too ;-)

It’s also the start of what I hope will be a move towards some more ‘straight’ photography). I had a discussion with Mike Golding recently, and he made the point that much of my recent work is more akin to illustration than straight photography, and I suppose he’s right. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it is about time I did some other stuff too. So, with the onset of better weather and some decent light (many of my recent images are a direct consequence of not being able to produce interesting work in the miserable grey drabness of a Northern winter), I’ll hopefully be producing more ‘natural’ work over the coming months.

Incidentally, if you haven’t seen Mike’s site, it’s definitely worth a visit. Take a look at this shot and this one for a couple of beautiful examples of naturally lit work.

I took this shot on Friday morning, a couple of hours after seeing this week’s theme, but didn’t really expect that it would work out. I’d just got to work, was still half asleep (despite having driven 32 miles), I rushed the shot, and, worst of all, the exposure was 1/10sec handheld (I didn’t have time to reset the ISO and take some more). So until today I didn’t even bother looking at it as I really thought that there was no way it would work.

But I think it’s ok, and it just about sums up mornings for me, so I thought I’d use it. Mornings, for the most part, are not my favourite time of day, and until I’ve had at least two or three cups of coffee I don’t even feel human.

When I asked for suggestions for this theme Myla suggested that I should take a shot of our daughters, asleep in the morning, but given that they invariably wake at horrible times of the day – the youngest at around six, the next youngest at seven, and the other two not long after – the only way I can get shots of them asleep is if I take them before I go to bed. So, last night I did take a shot of our youngest (13 month) daughter, and did think about using it for this theme, but a sleeping child at one in the morning didn’t strike me as all that relevant ;-)

This was taken on the same trip as my previous entry, and the sign is about six feet to the left of the doors in yesterday’s entry. And, as with yesterday’s entry, I don’t have a great deal to say about this shot, other than that I like it – for two reasons.

Both reasons are to do with the colour, and I’ll tell you the first, but I’m interested in whether anyone else will spot the second (or respond in the same way as I did). The first is a fairly obvious response to the vibrancy of the colours used – the sign is very eye-catching, and the contrasting colours make for a lively image. The second is related to that point, but is a little more obscure ;-)

And finally; if anyone has any suggestions for this week’s Photo Friday challenge – Morning – I’d like to hear them … I’m really not a morning type of person ;-)

I initially posted a different shot today, but I’ve taken it down again, as the more I looked at it, the less I liked it (I’ll try to rework it, but suspect that it’s destined for obscurity). I suppose that’s the downside of having a few shots in reserve – it’s tempting to think “no, I don’t like that, let’s go with something else instead”. That said, I’m not sure that this one is much better :-/

Actually, this is a routine thing for me. Whenever I’ve put something up that I really like (i.e. yesterday’s shot) the day after is always a bit of an anti-climax. No matter what I put up I’m inevitably dissapointed with it, and wish that I could have come up with something better.

No matter.

Anyway, this shot is one of several that I took a couple of days ago at a printers near to where I work. This building is actually an old pub (and all the signs are still in place) but, certainly as far as the exterior goes, its days of glory are over. I spoke to the owner while I was there, and he told me that he really thought the outside of the building would benefit from being cleaned – but I don’t suppose it would be anywhere near as (photographically) interesting if that ever happened.

Just for once I don’t really have a lot to say about today’s image other than that I like it, and it was one of those shots that as soon as you look in the viewfinder (or LCD display in this case) you know i) that it’s going to work (by which I mean it works for me), and ii) exactly how you want it to look when it’s finished – and that doesn’t happen all that often, at least not for me. That said, I don’t think this is a “challenging” image (see yesterday’s comments) – by any stretch of the imagination – but I am pleased with the way it turned out ;-)

So, given that I don’t have anything else to say about this shot, I thought I’d point you at a few of photoblogs I’ve been looking at recently that you might not have come across.

The first is peppered, a UK based photoblog. What I like about this blog, other than the pictures, is the rather unique navigational system – if you follow the link you’ll see what I mean. The second is joe’s nyc. What I love about this site is the way in which it seems to capture something that I, as someone from England, immediately recognise as being North American. I’ve only visited the States a couple of times, so am not all that familiar with it, but Joe’s site really does seem to capture it’s flavour (or what I imagine that flavour to be). And the third site, and most unusual of these three, is Glipto29 photo. I wont describe it, as I think it’s worth seeing prior to any explanation (if that makes sense).

Yesterday, Neil asked me if my image of the two photographs and the electrical sockets was one of my “engaged images”, by which I’m fairly sure he’s referencing my tendency to complain about some of my images on the grounds that I often go off the ones that require more than a minimal amount of work in Photoshop.

And this got me thinking about whether there was some sort of pattern to how I respond to the images I take. And I suppose there is (though it doesn’t always apply). For the most part, when I take a shot, I either i) definitely know it will work (though this doesn’t happen all that often – tomorrow’s shot is one of these), ii) I think it will work (subject to some work in Photoshop) – today’s shot falls into this category (more of which below), or iii) I hope it will work, but suspect that it probably wont … I take lots of these ;-)

Today’s shot is one of the ones I thought would work, though I knew that the original would probably be too flat – it was a dull and grey day. So, I used a Curves adjustment to darken and increase the contrast in the sky, another to increase the contrast in the sign, desaturated the sky (to remove some colour noise), and slightly changed the colour of the sign – the original was a slightly more faded shade of blue. And all in all I’m happy with how it turned out … definitely one of my “engaged images” ;-)

Well, the sun didn’t shine yesterday, but I did manage to get two outdoor shots (that I’ll post over the next couple of days) to accompany this one (and I prefer both of them to this one, but thought I’d put them up in reverse-favourite order). And yesterday was a rather odd day all round – I only took 16 shots, but am going to use three of them, whereas I normally end up taking at least 20-30 shots for each one I put up (and yesterday I took a couple of hundred, of which three of maybe four would have been ok to use).

As for this shot: it’s taken in one of our coffee bars at work. Along two of the walls are a series of photographs (of various scenes from around the world) that, for the most part, are quite artistically arranged. These two are at the end of one of these walls, neatly bissected by the mess of electrical sockets and what looks like a (probably illegal) water tap.

And finally, if you haven’t already come across it, I suggest you check out one of my favourite sites (that has influenced both the design and content of this one) – pixpopuli – especially since Neil has now introduced a commenting system.

It’s fast getting to the stage where if I don’t get out of the house, with a camera, in something approaching daylight, then my image-a-day plan may well founder. We were going to go out yesterday, but the weather was atrocious (and we had too many other things to do anyway), so yet again I ended up having to find something to take.

Following my bubbles in water shot from the other day I thought I’d have another go – but this time I attempted to capture dripping rather than running water. And having attempted this shot my admiration for studio photographers has increased dramatically. I must have taken around 200 shots in an hour, of which I saved around 50, of which about two or three are semi-reasonable. The major problem I had with this shot was of my own engineering; I lined a bowl with silver foil (and a few bits of red foil), but I really should have used something much less reflective – not least because I’ve had great difficultly in getting the overall level of the background sorted out. My attempts have either led to an overly grey/flat background, or one that’s ridiculously blown out.

The major problem with this sort of shot, as I see it, is that they stand or fall on their technical merit; i.e. if you don't get it spot on then it really doesn&rsquot amount to much. By way of comparison, one of Jon’s latest shots (over at ground glass) is truly wonderful. Technically it has some problems – aspects of the foreground are over-exposed, there’s quite a lot of colour noise in the background – but it’s a great shot nonetheless, because its subject is engaging, the shot is beautifully composed, and it immediately grabs your attention.

Dripping water, on the other hand, isn’t quite so inherently interesting ... I really must get out more ;-)

When I started working on this shot I was aiming for a reasonably straight shot of this lily. It was in a vase with a bunch of other flowers, and while it’s clearly dead, I did think it was rather beautiful. But, for one reason or another, I couldn’t get it right. Every shot I took left the subtle colours of the dead petals looking washed out and devoid of any interest.

So, as with my shot of the blackboard from a couple of days ago, I decided to exaggerate what it was that I thought made this an interesting subject. And on the whole I’m not sure that it’s all that successful, but I really don’t have anything else to put up today.

So, it was either not post anything today (and spoil my run of 39 straight days), or put this one up. And on the basis that I don’t think this is a total disaster, I chose the latter ;-)

I wasn’t too sure what to do for this week’s Photo Friday theme – Clean – so have gone with an image that captures some of the things that first came to mind – bright, vibrant colours, and water. And the reason I’ve gone for an indoor shot, or at least a major part of the reason, is that UK winters are normally quite a miserable time of year for photography, and the chances of finding anything outside that doesn’t look grey and washed out (and not overly clean) are rather small.

As for this shot: it’s water running into a glass fruit bowl, and is lit by a single diffused flash. One of the features on my flashgun (a Speedlite 420EX), that I overlooked when I got it, is a high speed sync mode; i.e. it will sync at any shutter speed. And while this image doesn’t really demonstrate that feature to great effect, it did help when taking this shot; i.e. I didn’t need to worry about freezing the movement of the water.

And finally: very little has been done to this image other than a slight increase in saturation, a Curves adjustment, and some sharpening.

I had hoped that this week’s Photo Friday theme would be something I could use this image for, but the theme is Clean so I don’t think this one is overly suitable. That said I do know what I want to use for this theme, I just haven’t managed to take a version of it yet that I’m happy with.

As for this shot: the initial inspiration for this shot was a photograph of an inverted white-board at chromogenic.net – an interesting study in colour and detail. That shot got me thinking about the various ways in which written text is used for display purposes, and it struck me that a blackboard was a potentially interesting topic.

All my attempts at a straight shot though really didn’t manage to convey what I think is most interesting about this subject; i.e. it’s tendency to record some sort of history of the way in which it’s used – the hint of previous text, and the gentle swirls of partially erased chalk. So, this shot was the net result, a change of (colour) balance to highlight this aspect of the subject.

And if anyone’s interested; the calculation on the board (and I did have to ask about this) is part of a calculation of an inverse sine where the answer is a complex number, i.e. it’s an example of complex analysis.

Of all the shots I’ve taken recently, this is one of the ones I’m most pleased with; not because I think it has a considerable amount of artistic merit, but because – for once – I actually managed to sharpen it in a way that I’m reasonably happy with. I don’t know about anyone else, but one of the exasperating problems I have with many of my shots is sharpening them after reducing them in size – what looks great at 2592x1944px often doesn’t translate all that well to 700x525.

Clearly it’s possible to produce extremely sharp images (see this absolutely stunning example from Emese Gaal’s site), but I’m not normally all that pleased with my efforts. This one though, I quite like; and while it isn’t perfect I do think it comes close to being pretty reasonable. And for anyone who’s interested: this one was sharpened in four stages – an unsharp mask (of 300%, 0.3px, 0 threshold) for the whole image, some selective blurring of the borders between the dark background and the top of some of the drops (the sharpening made these look unnatural), then some selective sharpening on the detail in the drops (using the sharpening tool (set to a strength of 50%), and then a final overall unsharp mask of 300%, 0.2px, 0 threshold. All of which is probably overkill – but it seemed to work ok for this image.

So, if anyone has any killer sharpening tips, I’d be really interested to hear them.

Oh, and the other thing I like about this shot is the detail in the raindrops, particularly the large one near the middle/bottom of the image. And if you can’t work it out; it’s shot through my car windscreen, the two dark, blurred vertical areas are chimney stacks, and the roofline of the houses (including the chimneys) is reflected upside down in many of the raindrops ;-)

update: I got up this morning, read Richard’s comment below, looked at this image again, and realised that i) it’s about time that I took some more photographs and stopped playing around with Photoshop, and ii) the shot I originally posted wasn’t really worth bothering with ;-) So, the version you can now see is just a straight duplication of yesterday’s image, with a b/w version tacked on one side. So just ignore most of what follows … ;-)

After the comments on yesterday’s entry I had decided I would post the black and white version of this image, but I ended up constructing this hybrid version instead. Normally, when I work on a black and white image I usually just use an adjustment layer to desaturate the image, and make any Curves (or other) adjustments ‘below’ this layer. But while I was working on this version I noticed that the resulting colour image was (in my opinion) better than yesterday’s entry.

So that left me with a bit of a dilemma as I didn’t think that I could post versions of the same image three days in a row, so I decided to combine the two. Compared to yesterday’s entry this one is i) less diffuse (e.g. there’s more detail in my wife’s face), ii) slightly lower key (I wanted to retain a bit more detail in this one), and iii) the colour version is less saturated. What it loses of course is the negative space, which I think was one of the things that definitely helped yesterday’s shot, but I like this one nonetheless.

As always, I’d be grateful for your thoughts. And on a related note, while I really do appreciate all the wonderful comments I’ve been getting lately I wouldn’t mind a bit more constructive criticism too. All of my images could be better – as could anyone’s – so if you do have a suggestion, or comment as to how I could do things better in the future, then I’d definitely like to hear it.

This shot started out as an attempt to reproduce something in the style of my shot from the day before yesterday, but in the end it turned out rather differently – mostly because I think this shot suits a much softer approach. And as such it makes a bit of a change from the last two, both of which had a much more ‘commercial’ feel (and I’m still waiting for the email from either HP or Coca Cola offering me vast amounts of money for my previous two shots … but I’m not holding my breath ;-)

If we’d had more time, i.e. my wife and I, I might have attempted to make this shot a bit more ‘polished’ – tidied up the loose strands of hair, set up the tripod to make getting the right composition a little less hit and miss – but at the moment our time to play around taking photographs is rather limited. By the time we’ve got all the kids to sleep the fine details of fashion and glamour photography are just a bit too much to be bothered with.

All that said, I like this shot, but my wife commented that she thought she looked miserable. In my opinion I think she has quite an enigmatic smile :-)

And finally, I did two versions of this shot – this one, and a horizontally reversed black and white version – and I don’t really know which one I like best. If anyone’s interested I could post the other version tomorrow.

After yesterday’s effort I thought I might go with something a little different today, and was thinking about putting up a lomo-effect shot of a lily (I’ll explain wht I mean when I put it up), but I thought instead that I’d carry on with the marketing/advertising theme. A couple of people commented on yesterday’s entry that they thought it would be a good advertising image for the computer (which is a Compaq Pressario by the way). Well, thus far I haven’t had an email from Hewlett Packard (Compaq’s parent company) offering to buy it for an exorbitant sum of money, so maybe I’ll have more luck with this one ;-)

This was taken a few days ago, on the same trip where I took the arm in arm shot. What drew me to this is the probably all the things that led this machine to be designed this way in the first place; i.e. I think the images used on the twin halves of this machine are quite striking/appealing. I don’t think I would have been tempted to reproduce them had they just been posters (or similar) but I like the addition of the rest of the machine – the controls in the centre, and the vending slots at the bottom, both of which at least partially disrupt the ‘glossiness’ of the remainder of the image.

This image is the consequence of an ‘arty’ shot gone wrong. What I set out to take was a fairly low-key, possibly diffuse shot of my wife using her laptop (a not uncommon occurrence ;-) but none of those shots really worked out – they were either too dark, or lacked detail, or just weren’t worth putting up. I also took this one, and several similar ones, and, other than the image being a bit ‘cold’, I really like it – more for the clarity and detail than any artistic merit, but I do like the way it turned out.

It was taken by bouncing the flash directly off our lounge ceiling and there hasn’t been too much done by way of post-processing. The sofa was lightened and desaturated (more because it needs a wash than anything else), and I spent quite some time getting the sharpening right, but other than that it’s a relatively straight shot.

Incidentally, if, like me, you have a digital compact with a hotshoe for a flash, I heartily recommend getting hold of a separate flash-gun. The built in flash on most cameras is rather poor and you don’t have much control over how it behaves. I recently got hold of a 420EX and have found it excellent, particularly the ability to bounce the light around an otherwise poorly lit room; which is really useful at this rather dull and dark time of year.

It took me a while to think of something for this week’s Photo Friday theme, Perspective, mostly because it isn’t all that long since I posted a series of shots that would have been ideal (stairwell 1 and stairwell 2). So I didn’t want to post any more ‘perspective’ shots of that type.

A comment on my entry of two days ago, can we go home now?, pointed me in a different direction. Doglord made the point that he normally hates it “when photographers resort to images of their own kids” – and I know what he means. What can seem like a great shot to the parents is often not all that interesting to anyone else.

But it is possible to take great shots of kids (see jinkyart.com for some examples). What I think you need is either to capture them when they’re most themselves (which they often aren’t if they know they’re being photographed), or capture something of the way they see the world. It was the second of these ideas that led to this attempt (which, on reflection, I don't think is all that great).

When these shoes were new our daughter was fascinated with them, and would spend minutes at a time just looking at them. They’re a bit scuffed now, but she still really likes them. So I thought I’d try to show her perspective on these shoes. All that said, this isn’t quite what I was after – I meant to bounce the flash off the ceiling but left a Lumiquest Ultrabounce attached to the flash (which is why there are some rather harsh splashes of light), I wanted her in a slightly different pose (but she got bored after four shots and wouldn’t cooperate; which is fair enough at two and a half), and the background is a bit more distracting than I would have liked.

But, all that said, I think it captures something of what I imagine her perspective to be – the shoes are bright and shiny and they’re often a focal point of her attention. So, not a great photograph, but it’s already Saturday, and I really can’t think of anything else for this theme ;-)

Well, it’s Photo Friday again, and this week’s theme is Perspective. I was hoping that I’d be able to use one of the three shots I have ready for putting up, but none of them are really relevant, so I’ll have to take something over the next few days. In the meanwhile, a big thanks to everyone who voted for my entry for the Status challenge – it’s great to get recognised in this way.

As for this shot: I took it a couple of days ago at our local B&Q. There was a whole shelf full of these sculptures (the originals are about a foot tall) and I thought they made for an interesting shot. The only real change made to the image was a Curves adjustment to block out the background and generally increase the image’s contrast – other than that it’s a relatively straight shot.

A month ago I made the decision to try and post and image a day, and this is the 31st since then, so I don’t suppose I’m doing all that badly. When I made the decision I expected that the difficult part would be finding the time to i) take the shots, ii) process them, and iii) write the accompanying blurb. But that hasn’t been too hard. What has been difficult is maintaining some sort of integrity in terms of the quality of the images I post.

And I don’t mean that I think that some of the stuff I’ve put up is rubbish, rather that some of them lack something … and it’s taken me a while to work out what. Some of the shots I’ve put up – yesterday’s for example – lack what I can only think of as engagement; i.e. I don’t feel much of a sense of being instrumentally involved in creating something that says something about either me, or the world as I see it … if that makes sense.

Today’s effort, on the other hand, I really like. I took it earlier today as we were waiting at the checkout of one of our local supermarkets – and our daughter had had enough. She’d drifted off into a world of her own and was just waiting until it was all over. And when I look at this image it seems meaningful in a way that yesterday’s shot doesn’t; that is, it says something about how I see things, and what they mean to me. Anyway, it’s late … so I’ll stop rambling ;-)

As you can see from the EXIF data, this isn’t quite a straight shot, but I wanted to catch something of the sinister element of these devices. And while I have no principled objection to public safety, I am a little uncomfortable at the increasing tendency to monitor our every move.

This particular camera watches over a small flight of steps that descends from pavement level to a basement entrance to a town hall. Hence the protective enclosure; i.e. it’s within reach of anyone who might wish to subvert the local council’s Big Brother policy. Actually, having said all that, I suspect that if I worked in the basement office that this camera protects I might see things differently.

And I suppose that’s one of the key points: when we’re being watched, it feels invasive, when we’re doing the watching, it makes us feel safe, or safer perhaps. I guess what’s needed is a culture that is safe, rather than one that provides means whereby we can monitor the threats to our safety … but then I always did have a tendency to pursue utopian ideals ;-)

My wife informs me that my effort for yesterday – the abandoned chair – was horrible. And while I don’t think it was quite that bad, I do agree it probably wasn’t one of my best efforts. So, with that in mind, I’ll post today’s entry a little earlier than usual ;-)

Across the road from where I work is what used to be a supermarket. It shut down about a year ago, and the building and the surrounding area have declined markedly during that time – posters have been stuck over the steel shutters, the decorative lights near the entrance to the store have been smashed, and the more secluded areas are strewn with litter, beer cans and broken glass.

Normally I don’t pay to much attention but today, as I walked past, I noticed that there were various small piles of torn up photographs. One pile seemed to be mostly shots of small children, all torn neatly down the middle, there was another smaller pile of various different subjects, and a little way from the rest were these ones.

Oddly, I don’t know what’s on the middle shot of these three as I didn’t want to move them. There was something quite strange, almost disturbing, about viewing the torn up remnants of someone else’s life, and I just decided to document them, then walked away. So, I don’t know who’s hand this is, nor why it was posed in this way. Neither do I have any idea as to who the person is in the lower picture …

One of the things I’ve been doing recently is exploring the place where I work – looking at things I might not normally notice, and seeking out things and scenes that I wouldn’t come across by accident. And at the back of our building are two staircases that are very rarely used (my recent stairwell shots were taken there). At the top of one of these staircases, that gives access to an unused floor, I found this chair. It had obviously been dumped there and I suspect, as soon as it’s noticed, it will be thrown away. I particularly liked the contrast between the green of the chair and the rest of the scene, and the ways in which the various shadows overlap and merge with one another behind the chair.

As an aside; I recently decided to add the image description to the comments window (rather than linking to an alternative archive page). I assume, as nobody has mentioned this, that it works ok and isn’t a bad thing, but if you do have any thoughts on the change, please let me know.