Week 1 Self portrait

"Kick starting the new year" I'm never really comfortable in front of a camera, perhaps even more so when it is me taking the picture, so I didn't take many different shots, I did try some "normal" looking images, but didn't like any of those, so decided to add at least a bit of humour to the portrait. Image developed in Alien Skin Exposure X3 and a bit of puppet warp in Photoshop.

Week 2 Blue

I found myself sitting at a bar this week, and right there in front of me was this blue drink, a Gin, not something I would ever drink, but it seemed to fit into this weeks challenge, there are many reasons people drink, one is because they are feeling blue, but too much of this and they could start feeling green instead. They don't call it mothers ruin for nothing! http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Mothers-Ruin/

Week 3 Leading lines

"Fountain in the darkness" When the challenge of leading lines came up, this was the first place I thought of. I have taken images from here before, but not in this style, it is an avenue of large trees with a water feature half way down, and a sculpture at the far end. I have always found this location attractive in it's own way, so this challenge was something I was looking forward to. I went to take an image with my Nikon 80-200 lens, but when I got home, the starbursts from the new LED street lights were far too overpowering, so I had to go and borrow someone else's lens to try again., I would have liked a shorter focal length, but due to too many distractions close to where I was standing, this one worked best. I edited the image in Lightroom and NIK software.

Week 4 Something new

Although winter is a long way from being over, we are already starting to see the first signs of new life in our garden, it is something that always makes me feel happy, knowing that a garden full of colour is not far off.

Week 5 Neglected

"Pot holes!!!" I thought about showing something caused by neglect that effects nearly everyone here in the UK, I was hoping to get an image to show how deep some are, but we have had rain for a few days now. Potholes are estimated to cause as many as 1 in 10 mechanical failures on UK roads and cost motorists an estimated £730 million every year, they are a major safety issue for cyclists as well.

Week 6 Architecture

This is a quite well known building in Canterbury, known as the crooked house by most residents. This house was built around 1612-1617 and is the most photographed place in Canterbury, after the Cathedral. The reason it is leaning over so much is because of structural work that was carried out in it's distant past. Above the door is inscribed a line written by Charles Dickens in 1849 about this building and says "... a very old house bulging out over the road ... leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on the narrow pavement below..."

Week 7 Levitation

I had some fun making this image up, I have never really done much of this sort of photography, but enjoyed the challenge. I decided to add more than one element to the scene to give it more depth.

Week 8 Common objects

I had so many different subjects I could have chosen for this challenge, but in the end, I decided to pick something to fit with the extra credit. I particularly liked that this image had a limited colour pallet which is something I have wanted to try in the past, but had never quite got around to doing. The lighting was very simple for this image, I had an LED behind the bottle to give the liquid a glow, and bounced another LED off the white ceiling above to limit the shadows, I had tried using a flash, but never quite got the look I wanted. I used a narrow aperture to achieve sharpness through as much of the scene as possible f/18 and that resulted in a very slow 6 second shutter speed.

Week 9 Depth of Field

I had planned to take a macro image of the ice crystals for this weeks challenge, but while searching for a good example, I noticed the iron gates would make a better composition to show the use of Depth of Field to bring the eye to where I want the viewer to look. The actual image is the tops of a pair of iron gates and with the snow covering them, the light was quite strong from a clear sky, although the sun was still low in the sky.

Week 10 Sky

I was really worried about being able to see any stars this week, we had come from a week of flat grey sky's, and are back to more of the same, but for a short time in just one night, I got a glimpse of the stars, so I dashed out to find somewhere I could capture the lights of the sky in all their glory, already, there were clouds getting blown over the area, so I was limited to how much chance I had, so took advantage of the first point I could create an image with a degree of interest. I have always used a torch for light painting in the past when taking images at night, to give the foreground a bit of a lift, but for the first time, I tried using a flash, and am happy with the results. The shutter speed was 30 seconds, but not enough to expose the ground enough without extra light.

Week 11 Candid setup

I had planned on getting some people to play the parts in this image, but time restraints made it nearly impossible to be able to do so, so I thought, why not use the people I have at home, so that is what I did. I chose to use a very shallow DOF as it was the photographer I wanted to capture rather than his model, The set up was simple, a white board and a wooden guitar player for the background, and my bendy friend for the subject along with my Sony camera and a gorilla pod type tripod. I did accidentally shoot this at ISO 6400 ( I forgot to change it after last weeks sky photo) fortunately it wasn't too hard to clean up the noise as the image was quite light anyway.

Week 12 Black and White

This gate is a medieval gate from around the 11th Century, and protects the Canterbury Cathedral from attackers. I don't think we get any these days, but if they tried, I'm sure this is still up to it's task. It is unusual to see the wooden doors closed, and I had to capture this in the early hours of the morning. The image was developed entirely using Exposure X3 and this is developed as a wet plate would have been in the past, but showing signs of damage.

Week 13 Smell

I was really struggling to come up with an image for this weeks theme, but today, I went for a family visit, and as soon as I walked into the house, this absolutely gorgeous smell greeted us. There were a mix of different scents in the air, but it was the seasoning on the Salmon that really stood out. I usually have my camera with me on family visits, but for what ever reason, I didn't today, so this is a phone photo, it came out quite well though, and has captured the mouth watering scene spread before us when the food was served. I enjoyed the eating as well :-) Developed in Alien Skin Exposure X3

Week 14 Blur the action

My original intention was to capture some movement in the clouds and sea, but without any real movement in the sky, I decided to pick another subject. Although fishing isn't really an action sport, there is always something happening, and using a 10 stop ND filter, I managed to capture quite a lot of blurred movement both of the fishermen and the sea.

Week 15 In the kitchen

I had a lot of different ideas this week, but in the end, I chose to concentrate on the heavy duty side of a kitchen, these are for mixing food in a large scale, they live at a school kitchen where my wife works, as the school was on shut down for the Easter holidays, I was unable to capture the staff at work, so looked for something with a bit of interest to show what is used in food preparation. The school children actually love the food served here, it is all healthy and fresh.

Week 16 Abstract

This is three pictures taken in my garden using a slow shutter speed and moving the camera for the effects, I decided to do a tryptique image as I think the images work better together than any one on it's own, the layout was created in Lightroom, and this is the first time I have tried this technique. Because there are 3 images, the settings were slightly different for each one. From left to right the settings were 4 seconds @ F/2.0 ISO 100 1.3 seconds @ f/2.0 ISO 100 1.5 seconds @ f/2.0 ISO 100 I used an old Helios 44-2 58mm lens

Week 17 Circle

This weeks challenge proved to be harder for me than I thought. I could see plenty of circles, in fact, I never quite realised just how many are out there all around us, but none really inspired me. This is a last minute option for me this week.

Week 18 Body parts

I was lucky enough to attend the greatest Rugby match of the year in the UK on Saturday at Twickenham, and knew it would be where I got my body parts picture from, I had planned on using a long lens to get in close, but restrictions in the grounds meant I could only use a small camera. I am still happy with this picture of a scrummage, I liked that there are all those arms on top of the mass of bodies and it just seemed the best image for this weeks theme. The Army won 22-14 if anyone is interested, and I was there supporting the Army, so a great weekend :-)

Week 19 Negative space

The weather wasn't playing fair this week, so I was unable to go out to get an image, so created some negative space at home, we have quite a small house, so are limited for any space, so I decided to go down the creative route and use the space I have in front of me a lot of the time. I did a bit of editing in both Lightroom and Photoshop to create this image, relying on Photoshop to make the selection for the space bar, and Lightroom for the radial filter to highlight my point of interest giving the space key a bit of a glow. I was going to use a plain background but decided as there is already quite a lot in the image, so trying to have more negative was pointless, so this image has less instead of more negative space.

Week 2- Something I dislike

If there is one thing everyone who knows me knows I dislike, it is cheese, I dislike the look of it, the smell of it, even touching it, but the biggest thing is the taste, even the mildest cheese makes me feel ill. To capture this image, I had to use gloves and even then I was too close to the cheese for my liking. That said, I like the wine, grapes and peanuts, so not all was lost. Also, my wife enjoyed the selection of cheeses after I had finished with it.

Week 21 True Black and White

This started off with just a calculator sitting on my desk, but I thought it would look better if I could actually use it to do something, so I made up some figures for my tax returns, for the extra credit, there is always that bit in red where I owe the tax man some of my hard earned money, so I added the red pen, and used my glasses to magnify the red total fee. Apart from the tax demand itself, all the figures are just made up for effect.

Week 22 Tools

This is pyrography, the art of writing with fire, and the man holding the tool is James, a neighbour of mine who works in his small shed mainly with bits of wood he has recycled from the local area, he is currently making Christmas tags and spends a couple of hours each day producing various different designs. Everything he does is free hand, and some of his larger pieces are very interesting indeed.

Week 23 Partner

I tried to think outside the box this week for the challenge, but in the end, I decided that in reality Tina is the most important part of my whole being and as well as a partner, she is my soul mate and my whole meaning in life revolves around her. Tina hates having her picture taken, but I asked if I could take one with her working in the garden, as she does like pictures of the garden :-) I consider the garden as fitting the extra credit this week, as it is Tina's favourite environment, and I have to admit, I find it an oasis of tranquillity as well.

Week 24. 100 steps from home

This is the Canterbury Cross sitting on top of the Martyrs Memorial. This is in memory of the forty one Kentish Martyrs who were burned at the stake on this spot in the reign of Queen Mary between 1555 and 1558. These Martyrs earned the Martyrs crown. By their heroic fidelity they secured for succeeding generations the priceless blessing of religious freedom. http://www.machadoink.com/Martyrs%20Memorial.htm