Well, yesterday’s entry wasn’t particularly great, and this one really isn’t much better. I’ve had one of those weeks where everything I’ve taken just hasn’t worked. And this shot is the colourful, marginally interesting, less than wonderful result. And as it isn’t in the least bit obvious what this is, it’s the central column of a pogo-stick.

On which sorry note, I’m off to take some pictures – and, hopefully, I’ll come across something a bit more interesting that a pogo-stick and a shoe (i.e. yesterday’s entry) ;-)

I have to confess that as Photo Friday entries go this is a rather poor effort; i.e. it isn’t all that well matched to this week’s theme – Junk. But, i) I ran out of time, ii) as a photograph (rather than a photograph depicting this theme) it’s ok, and iii) I can justify it, honest … well, almost ;-)

One of my oft-used expressions, directed at any or all of our four kids, is “don’t leave your junk all over the house”. And while this might sound a bit harsh – I’m normally referring to someone’s prize possession when I say it – it’s a comment born of frustration rather than an accurate deployment of the term.

The oldest two aren’t too bad, especially our ten year old, and our eight year old, despite littering the house with Barbies, Sylvanian families, Polly Pockets, and other assorted small plastic bits, will at least clear up after herself if asked.

Our youngest isn’t too bad either. She’s barely mobile, and just tends to pick things up and put them down somewhere else. Our two and two-thirds year old, on the other hand – who’s probably responsible for this shoe being in the middle of the kitchen (even though it belongs to her younger sister) – is a nightmare. Left to her own devices I reckon she could reduce a perfectly ordinary house to chaos, if not rubble, in a matter of hours. She leaves a trail of chalk, toys, crumbs, tissues, shoes, nibbled apples, oranges and bananas, juice, water, all of her clothes, and just about anything that can cause a mess or some other form of disruption, over the entire surface area of our house, ceilings excluded ;-)

So junk, in this instance, is that peculiar form of chaos that children bring to a house; the things that you trip over, slip in, impale yourself on, can never find when you need them – basically anything that’s someplace it shouldn’t be ;-)

On a side note: if you haven’t come across it yet, check out joe’s nyc, a new commentable (if that’s a word) version of Joseph Holmes’ wonderful blog.

If I’d finished it in time I might have used this for my entry for the Photo Friday self-portrait challenge, but I don’t imagine it would have faired all that well. Not that I think it’s a bad image (I really like this one) but I imagine that it might not have the same broad appeal.

As for this shot: my wife found ‘the groin’ when we were camping last summer, and at some point we thought we might polish and mount it – but we haven’t got around to it yet. As for what this shot is about: I’m not entirely sure. I guess, on some levels, that it’s a critique of the simple message portrayed by my last two images, but beyond that I’m not sure that I’d care to fix its meaning. I would be interested to hear how others see it though.

I should say that my aim with this shot was to produce a tacky image (e.g. the harsh glare was intentional), because I think the message is tacky. I don’t know if this is the same in the States as the UK, but there are numerous shops in this country that sell ‘novelty’ lighters such as these. And invariably, they seem to be decorated with one of three motifs: naked (probably silicon enhanced) women, gothic/mystical imagery, or cannabis leaves/plants. And, personally, I think their appeal is rather limited – but I guess they must sell.

My other reason for including this shot is that it bridges yesterday’s and tomorrow’s images, both of which are (in one way or another) to do with masculinity. Yesterday’s said something about (stereo)typical visions of being male, today’s, sadly, neatly summarises certain aspects of (typical) male desire, and I’m not really sure what tomorrow’s says (it’s another self-portrait that marks a bit of a departure from my usual style), though I’ll attempt to summarise it tomorrow.

On a side note: my slightly irreverant self-portrait for last week’s Photo Friday challenge was awarded a noteworthy – many thanks to everyone who voted. The other noteworthies were from photojunkie, K8te, Tilnox, Szilvia and eyematter – all of which are worth a visit.

I’ve often found masculinity, as a set of social prescriptions and expectations, a somewhat bewildering concept, despite being a heterosexual male. I don’t like football (soccer, for those of you in the US), in fact I’m not really a sports fan at all, I find sexist jokes about women quite offensive, and I’ve never really felt like ‘one of the lads’. This is probably something to do with being brought up by my mother in the company of my three sisters, but whatever the reason, masculinity is something that puzzles me.

So, advertisments such as this one fascinate me – ones that directly reference cultural expectations or stereotypes – because they provide a window onto one aspect of the social construction of what it means to be male. In this instance it was the medals that caught my attention – the allusion to a military way of life; honour, success … and so on.

After posting this shot I promised that I’d take a ‘nice’ shot of our daughter to make up for the fact that the majority of her sisters now had decent portraits on this site. But, what with one thing and another, I hadn’t got around to it.

This shot was taken this afternoon while she was watching television. One problem with taking a decent portrait of this one is that she rarely sits still long enough to get her in the frame, let alone compose a decent shot, but she’s been a bit unwell the last few days so she’s a little more sedentary than usual ;-)

As with most of my portraits this one was acheived by adding a blurred layer set to overlay mode. The side effect of this is a bump in contrast, which has blown out the highlights a little, but in this case I think that works quite well to isolate her face.

Update: I swapped this image as I decided that I preferred this one. The original can be seen here.

Photographically, other than the shot of my bum, I’ve been rather uninspired the last few days, and have ended up scrabbling around for shots when at other times they seem to come quite easily. This one, which is more a bit of fun than anything else, was taken earlier this afternoon from inside our children’s play tent and is the most interesting of a few I took of the kids as they wandered around.

It’s hardly an amazing shot, but I do quite like it, not least because the mest has added some interesting blur to the shot despite the wide aperture.

I suspect that this entry might not attract quite so much interest as yesterday’s shot which, I have to say, was an entry born of desperation rather than anything else. I’d spent all week trying to take a decent self-portrait – and had totally failed to come up with anything. That said, I do like it, but it attracted way more interest than I thought it would. And I have to say that I do recommend it – there’s something quite pleasant about a string of ‘nice arse’ comments ;-)

As for today’s shot: I really don’t have anything to say about it – it caught my eye, I photographed it, and erm … cheated a bit in Photoshop. But, as happens every once in a while, I’ve got nothing else to put up so it will have to do :-/

As Mike Golding notes, photographers hate to be photographed, and I’m no exception. I must have taken several hundred self-portraits this week – and I’ve hated all of them. So, on the basis that today is the last day I can submit something to this week’s Photo Friday challenge, I gave up trying to come up with something ‘arty’ and took a picture of my bum instead ;-)

This week’s challenge was suggested by playapixie, and I was quite saddened to read the commentary on her own entry. In short, she had intended to post a naked shot of herself but, for very obvious reasons, decided against it. So I guess that I’m saddened, not by her decision, but because we live in the sort of world where such decisions need to be made.

On a side note: I’m the guest photoblogger at No Traces today. Bob Smith has taken a trip to Europe and has asked various people to post to his site in his absence – Milo, Emily, Jon, Ian, me, Jim, mprints, Tracey, and Heather. If you’re interested, you can see my entry here.

I took this yesterday during what turned out to be another failed attempt to produce a self-portrait for this week’s Photo Friday challenge. I don’t know quite what the problem is but I really hate trying to produce pictures of myself, and rarely like any of them. Actually, that’s an understatement, I never like any of them ;-)

So this shot was one of several ok ones I took, but none of them include my reflection. Oh well, it’s only Wednesday, so I have today and tomorrow to sort something out.

This is the first real entry of our youngest (there was one of her foot and another of her eye) and was taken after a walk a few days ago. She sometimes falls asleep in her buggy after we’ve been out, and she looked so angelic that I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures.

This shot uses the technique I’ve used quite often before: duplicate the background layer, gaussian blur it by around 12px (on the full size image), then set the blend mode to overlay – it does a good job of simulating a soft-focus filter and really suits this sort of portraiture. The only other change I made was to add a slight blur to her coat. The G5 has a ridiculously large DOF and, other than blurring in PS, there isn’t any alternative if you want to partially isolate a subject.

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been trying to move house or, more accurately, trying to find a house to move to – and this has taken up most of our free time. But – all being well – we’ve now bought a house in Blackpool. For those of you in the UK who aren’t familiar with it – it’s like Southend, only bigger and (maybe) a bit tackier. For those of you from further afield: if you haven’t ever visited the UK it’s really difficult to explain what Blackpool is like. It’s a typical British seaside resort – glitzy, brash, full of holiday-makers eating fish and chips and ice-creams – but it also has many reminders of its Victorian past – the old trams, the ballroom in the tower, and some wonderfully old architecture.

This is a shot of the tower which was completed in 1894. It was taken over the weekend and as it was a rather dull day it needed quite a bit of PS’ing to get it looking anywhere near reasonable, but I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. I would suspect, if the move goes ahead without too many problems, that there’ll be quite a few more shots of this structure as the year progresses :-)

As with my recent Photo Friday entry, I’m not really sure what to make of this shot. On the one hand, I really like the simplicity, warmth, and general composition, while on the other I think it’s ended up looking perhaps a shade too artificial; i.e. it looks a bit like a collage rather than a photograph. This is partially to do with the post-processing but I also think it’s a consequence of the contrast between the (overly?) smooth skin tones and the detail/texture of my wife’s top. I do quite like it though, not least because I do think there’s something quite beautiful about the curve of her shoulder ;-)

And the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that I’ve dropped a line of data from the shooting information – there didn’t seem to be too much point in constantly mentioning the UV filter I use for most of my shots, not least because it’s only there to protect the lens ;-)

I must have walked past this former shop hundreds of times, and never really looked at it before. It’s close by to where we live and for the twelve years I’ve been there this shop has always been closed.

What I like about this shot is the contrast between the angularity of the railings and the softness of the scrollwork decoration on the door. I have no idea what the shop sold, and I guess there’s no way of finding out now, but I did think it was an interesting shot.

And nothing much was done to this shot other than an increase in contrast and some fairly rigourous sharpening to bring out the detail in the railings.

This shot was taken at roughly the same time as the one I posted on Monday, but takes a rather different approach. My previous shot focused on the piano itself, and with that shot I was aiming for detailed elegance – for want of a better way of putting it. This one, on the other hand, focuses on the reflected sky and has a much less detailed feel. On the whole I think I definitely prefer the other shot, but I do quite like this one too.

I should also add, perhaps, that this is a relatively straight shot. I upped the contrast and saturation a little, but other than that I didn’t do too much else to it. Oh, and unusually, this is a crop – it’s the bottom left 75% of the original. I normally try to avoid posting cropped images, but the original version really didn’t work at all well so I thought I’d put this one up.

On the basis that my previous entry (for the Photo Friday challenge – Discovery) isn’t all that exciting I thought I’d post this one today as well – which I much prefer. It was taken through the lounge window of a friend’s house. It’s an old leaded window with various pieces of shaped, coloured, and frosted glass surrounding a number of larger clear panes, and the various different pieces of glass provided a variety of interesting distortions.

And just for once there wasn’t too much done to this shot other than an increase in contrast and saturation. So, despite it looking as though it may have been post-processed quite thoroughly, it’s actually a reasonably straight shot.

I was originally going to call this ‘Paul Klee’s Kitchen’ but it’s the only thing I’ve shot recently that’s even vaguely related to this week’s Photo Friday challenge – Discovery – so I thought I better put it up before I ran out of time entirely. I took this part way through decorating our kitchen and it was an attempt to capture the various ways in which the walls reflect the history of the various layers of paint, paper and fittings long gone.

I don’t think it works all that well but I decided that given a choice between putting this up or missing a Photo Friday challenge, I’d rather the former. And while it might not be all that great, it does at least match the theme ;-)

This used to be a cinema, the Empire, and for as long as I can remember it’s been used for other things. I have a dim recollection of once seeing a film there, but I think I’m probably confusing it with another of the many cinemas that closed down during the last twenty years or so. Our town isn’t large – about 125K inhabitants – but twenty or thirty years ago there were at least ten cinemas. Now we have one big mulitplex and a couple of much smaller cinemas in surrounding villages. And while a ten screen UCI might be considered progress I don’t think it has any of the character of the many Victorian movie houses that have all but vanished from our towns and cities.

As for this shot: I’m not entirely happy with it. It’s quite striking, but I couldn’t get far enough away from the front of the building to get the angle I wanted. I was aiming for a more square-on shot; i.e. less of a size difference between 'Empire' and 'Cybernet'. That said, I guess the enforced perspective echoes the enforced replacement of the old by the new so it may well be more effective this way.

Generally, as a long time fan of Ansel Adams, I tend to steer clear of landscape photography, as I often find that the detail I would like to maintain in a given shot just isn’t possible with the equipment I own. As compact digital cameras go I do think the Canon G5 is great, but it simply doesn’t have the resolution for the type of landscape work I would like to do.

All that said though, I do think this shot works – it was shot into the sun and the gentle diffusion masks any flaws in the cameras ability to resolve this sort of subject matter. It isn’t as sharp as I would like, but it does capture something of the gentle evening light at this time of year.

After days of taking stuff that was, for want of a better term, mostly crap, I finally managed to take some decent shots yesterday. We went over to my father’s house for Easter and I took a few things that I’ll probably put over the next few days including this shot of his piano. What made me smile about this shot when I was working on it was that it didn’t require any spot editing. Whenever I take a shot of a reflective surface in our house I often need to spend a few minutes polishing it first. With four kids in the house (sometimes five) just about anything with an altitude of four feet or less nearly always has a fingerprint or two, or biscuit crumbs, or some other foreign body stuck to it, so it was really quite fascinating to wander around a house that gleams from top to bottom ;-)

I did intend to take some photographs that didn’t include reflections, as I seem to be rather stuck on this theme at the moment, but I really like how this one turned out – it seems pleasantly simple and, for some reason that I can’t really figure out, it seems like a really peaceful image (if that makes sense).

Over the last couple of days I’ve taken quite a few shots, some of them related to Easter, but for one reason or another I’m not really happy with any of them. I don’t know about anyone else but I’m often not really sure quite what makes for a successful photographic trip. On both occasions over the last few days I’ve been relatively certain that at least a few of the shots I’ve taken have been worthwhile. But when I’ve looked through them they just haven’t been worth putting up. Yet on other days I might go out and take a whole string of shots that I’m happy with. Oh well.

Anyway, the photoblog world seems to be relatively quite over the Easter Break so I don’t feel too bad about putting this one up. Actually, I quite like this one, but I was hoping to be able to put something a bit different up today.

Having spent the last week decorating I’m now at the point where I only have a couple of shots left to put up, both of which are of windows; and this one is mostly concentrated on what’s behind the glass, while the other emphasises the reflection. I’m hoping to go out for a while tomorrow – though I’m not sure where yet – to take some new stuff as I really don’t want to end up with no shots at all.

Anyway, I don’t think this image is all that stunning (or challenging), but I do think it’s relatively interesting. And what makes it for me is the green neon that almost frames the name of the shop – it provides a good contrast to the almost uniform colour of the rest of the shot.

When I started this blog I had a FujiFilm FinePix 40i, and I mostly used it for snapshots rather than any serious photography, and while I have several thousand shots taken with this camera very few are likely to make it onto this site, mainly because the quality of most of them really isn’t all that good.

After working on yesterday’s shot, and realising that it captured something of our daughter’s personality, I looked through some of my archives for a shot that captured the spirit of our next oldest daughter. She’s currently eight, but was a few days short of turning six when this was taken. And while her elder sister is often contemplative, almost to the point of being withdrawn, she’s much more effervescent – the archetypal mischevous imp ;-)

So, technically this shot isn’t too great, but I like the composition and I do think it gets across something of our daughter’s almost manic personality :-)

A few weeks ago our 10 year old daughter took part in the annual show put on by her dancing class, and as photographs weren’t allowed at the time we took some the week after at home. My wife did her stage makeup, and we took various shots of her wearing the four costumes she wore during the show. I haven’t really had time to do much with them, and didn’t intend putting any of them up here, but I was looking through them today and came across this one.

From what I can remember she was getting a bit bored with the whole thing by this point, and I took this shot as she was changing her shoes. As for the title: this shot captures something of her contemplative nature – hence typical – and providing our eight year old agrees I’ll post typical (2) tomorrow, which is an altogether different shot.

Just for once I really don’t mind if everyone turns round and tells me they hate this as I’m really pleased with the way it turned out. Normally there are at least one or two things that I don’t like about the majority of the stuff I put up, but this one I’m quite happy with. It would definitely benefit from being posted at a higher resolution – as it’s quite a complex image – but I think it turned out reasonably ok.

I was going to post this image along with this one, one in colour, and the other in black and white. But the colour versions didn’t work out and they turned out to be much too similar to put up as separate entries.

I think that what I most like about this shot is the complexity generated by shooting through two reflective surfaces. This shop was on a corner, so in addition to the reflections on the front window, and the ways in which these interact with the internal details, there’s also the rear window light source and a further set of reflections.

Given that I’ve posted two similar images consecutively I thought that it was about time for a (radical) change – hence this image. It’s one of only a couple of shots I managed to take over the weekend and is of our youngest daughters’ tractor/car … well, it’s a plastic thing with wheels ;-)

What I like about this shot, and I’ve realised that this is one of the shots that’s probably a trademark of some of my recent work, is the hyper-saturated feel, … the almost too vivid to be real look. And as with a lot of my shots this is as much to do with Photoshop as it is the original image. I suppose what I was after here was a shot that captured the ‘brightness’ of this toy, and the vivid/stark differentiation between the colours. And I imagine, though have no idea as to whether this is true, that perhaps very young children see things this way too.

When I posted the two consecutive mannequin shots last week I did wonder whether there was any merit in posting similar images back to back – after all, one of the defining features of a lot of photoblogs is variety. But I do think that it’s worth doing, when possible, because it’s otherwise you rarely get your images compared with each other; i.e. comments are focussed on a single image rather than, for example, the specific technique employed and how successfully it was executed. Anyway, that’s my excuse ;-)

As for this shot: it was taken in the same metal surface as yesterday’s image and on the whole I think I prefer this one – mostly because I think the mood is a little darker and there’s a bit more human interest.

I seem to have spent quite a lot of time taking shots of reflections lately, though most of them have involved windows and the interplay between what’s behind the window and what’s reflected in it. This shot, and a similar one tomorrow, are more concerned with the distortion of reflections than the reflection itself.

Part of my interest in this subject stems from being a big fan of Neil Bayliss’s site – Pixpopuli. Neil has taken many wonderful shots that incorporate reflections as a part of the image and I’ve spent quite some time recently trying to find a way of taking these sort of shots without simply copying Neil’s style. I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I come across a style of photography that I really like, or a way of taking photographs that instantly appeals, I often find it hard to work out how I would take a shot of the same subject matter without simply reproducing something I’ve already seen. That said, I think that I’ve finally found a way of taknig these shots that I could call my own, and I’ll be posting an example the day after tomorrow (probably). In the meanwhile, this shot, and tomorrow’s, are more steps along the way rather that images that I’m delighted with … I do think they’re both moderately interesting though :-)

While I’m not convinced that this is all that great a shot I’ve put it up because, for me, it marks a transition – from someone who takes photographs, to someone who sees them. Not too many weeks ago I would have been able to tell you what was behind this window, because I would have looked at it first and photographed it second. But, with this shot, I didn’t do that – all I saw was the photograph. And I’ve noticed this happening more and more frequently; that I look at the world in a different way, and notice different things. And I think this is a good thing, and at the very least it makes the world a much more interesting place.

And on an unrelated note: we’re currently spending a few days decorating (new flooring in the kitchen, wallpapering, painting, and so on), and while I’ll still be putting stuff up I doubt that I’ll have time to visit elsewhere – I’ll catch up with everyone later in the week.

While I prefer this to yesterday's shot – I think it’s a more complex image, and the various ‘layers’ of detail are more thoroughly intertwined – I suspect that some of you may find it a bit too ‘illustrative’, or graphic-art-like, to be instantly appealing ;-)

This shot was taken in the same window as yesterday's entry, and I would guess that the mannequins were probably manufactured by the same company – they both have the same dreamy, far-away expression, and both have the same quizzical tilt of the head. And I thought that it was interesting that a few of you found yesterday’s shot creepy – I didn’t really see it that way – but I do think that this one is decidedly creepy, mostly (I think) because the mannequin's face seems a little more diffuse and ghost-like in this one.

And finally, I spent a bit of time today working on one of the other window-reflection images that I took the other day, and think it’s better than both of these, but it will have to wait till next week, unless tomorrow’s Photo Friday theme is windows, reflections, or some other related topic. I would post it at the weekend, but I do have slightly less traffic on Saturday and Sunday so will probably put it up on Monday.