Sporting a Space Invaders t-shirt, a freshly-shaved beard, and a cashmere deerstalker by my wonderful, more-than-slightly-neurotic but highly-talented hat-making friend Minnie.

(I guess this is my very first product endorsement… chrikee…)

Enjoying my new 50mm lens an awful lot. It’s good to be taking portraits again and messing around with only available light (this one’s shot at f/2.2, for the photographers out there — pretty sharp, eh!) There are some other shots that you’ll see from this afternoon — some dorky ones — just I don’t have time to go through them now — I have to go out.

Until tomorrow… and Dushku Day…!

Balloon comedian & It’s all about the cake, or how Sebastian found Abi

Seb: I should probably preface this by saying he is a member of my family. I don’t actually go around taking photos of little boys, asking them to tie balloons to their ears — that was all his idea. I just pointed the camera in the right direction (which just so happens to be the most important thing with photography, by the way).

I got a new lens this week — a Sigma 50mm — so expect to see a lot more photos like this. I’m building up to doing some journalistic work/people photography. The idea is to hit up somewhere like India or South Africa and head to the slums or the wild undergrowth. I’ll also be doing some portraiture and live music work.

I’ve always been good at catching just the right moment, but the key to photography (other than pointing in the right direction!) is understanding your tools. The only way to do that is to take lots of photos!

If you like this kid, I have a few more photos of him to share…

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Abi: Ah Cake!. It can unite or divide nations, it can be used to celebrate or commiserate and it is power is not to be underestimated. Make no mistake, cake is VERY important to some people. Who knew that somewhere, deep in the bowels of some forum, there are a whole bunch of self employed artists who, quite simply love cake. And this photo is partly dedicated to them.

I won’t go into the details of who did (or didn’t) speak first. I won’t elaborate on the fact that when Seb did eventually address me, it was to tell me off about something. I think you will agree that it was not the best start. I would even go so far as to say it is a wonder we are friends at all.

So this week’s image is a comment on the bonding powers of cake and one persistent, hairy photographer. Enjoy.

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To visit either Flickr stream, click a photo!

More photos from the weekend! Sorry it’s a bit late in the day now, but hopefully a few of you will get a chance to see these!

These are a little cuter than the last, mainly because there’s an adorable girl in pink involved.

I love the light in the two darker at-dusk photos too — and this is my favourite ‘kid with balloons’ photo.

Tomorrow… a photographic TMI… (it’s an experiment!)

(Click for larger — you’re going to want larger…)

The second of my multimedia TMIs. Actually, it’s my third if you include the frozen-peas-down-boxer-shorts (though that might be pushing towards ‘dude… enough now, really.’)

As with last week, take it with a pinch of salt. But not too much salt… er, um… cough.

I believe there are other pictorial TMIs over on Lilu’s blog this week too, so be sure to check them out!

[As always, these photogasms contain a lot of photos. If you can't be bothered with the pesky 'reading thing', just scroll down.]

Continuing in the same vein as last week, here’s another photogasm! This week was helped along by a powercut on Sunday. For three hours. It’s amazing how little you can do when you have no electricity — but it’s also humbling to realise just how much you can do too! (How deep was that…?)

Of course I sat on my laptop for an hour, until the battery ran down. Used my mobile phone to connect to the Internet even! But when the screen finally blinked out to black, I had to do something. It is at times like these that I really love being a photographer: I just grab my camera and go outside. And below… you can find the results of the powercut photo session!

But first, yesterday’s 10 of 52, in which I balance a pumpkin on my face:

Normally I would just link you to the project’s blog but this time… well… you can probably imagine why I want to share it here on the front page of this site.

And with that out of the way — and yes, it really did hurt as much as you think it did — on with the rest of the Photogasm.

Upcoming projects: Still not much. I have some more money coming in from some clients that are finally paying (when is six months ever an OK period to settle invoices…?) — and the tech blogger writing job thingee is going to be more lucrative than I thought (I seem to be quite good at it — who woulda thunk it?) — soooo… I will have money to frame some prints! And hang them in places! And sell some more photos before Christmas! Or failing that, give everyone photos for Christmas!! My actual photographical skill (is that the right term?) is coming along at an alarming rate. It’s almost as if each photo I take is better than the last. Scary. How good will I end up…?!

Ah, yes, and one of the girls I was meant to photograph is proving elusive. More on that later.

And now… the gasm itself:

As always, each photo has some kind of note attached — hover your mouse over each one to find out more! Again, some ‘blog exclusives’. Some will turn up on Flickr, some won’t.

(I love the moss in the foreground in both of those shots)

(Which one do you prefer…?)

And to finish… because, let’s face it, I’m a big, fat narcissist… another self-portrait from my dark dining room — long exposure, but super-steady hands!

Don’t you just love the phone on the wall?

I actually have more self-portraiture to come but two is quite enough for one blog post. Keep an eye out on Flickr for the rest.

South Downs Sunset & Celebration

Seb: Ah, back to my comfort zone of landscapes. I thought I was doing rather well, having not done one since week 1! But here I am… chasing the perfect landscape yet again.

This one’s of the South Downs (I think). At least, it’s south of where I am now, and north of Brighton, which I think is the South Downs. Basically there’s a bunch of roads that run across the tops of these lovely valleys, looking down and across some sweeping, rolling hillocks.

I had intended to go out and photograph Ashdown Forest, which kind of leads into the South Downs, but instead decided to go and chase the sunset from the top of the hill.

And… I think I got the killer shot: heather, ferns, birch, sunset, clouds… what more is there? I even have my signature bit of blue…

Sadly a lot of the detail is only really visible at full size… but you’ll have to trust me: this one’s really beautiful.

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Abi: My life is in a period of upheval at the moment. When everything seems uncertain to us it is quite easy to forget that what could be described the worst day to some can be the happiest to others. My friend Laura got married this weekend, I’d be a bad friend if I couldn’t forget my worries for just one day.

In other news, I think I had my first proper falling out with the other 50% of this project this week. It sucked. Sorry Seb.

This photo was something of an accident. But I liked it so I’m ok admitting it.

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Click on either photo to visit our Flickr streams.

Roses & Satsuma; The Crystal Meth of Christmas

Seb: And so we’re into the festive season! But I seem to have missed the holly berries… or they’re still to come — I don’t know. Either way, this lone soldier of a rose hip was all I could find that reminded me of holly berries and cranberries and red currants — all that kind of… reddy festive stuff.

The background… well… let’s just say I’ve been working on my bokeh technique. It was very tempting to closely crop it somewhere on the left, because the right side is a little distracting, but I’ve left it as-is, straight out of the camera.

I’ve finally worked up the courage to do some people photography (or photography-of-people, I have no idea). I guess you could call it portraiture, but that’s not really my thing. Sounds too formal. Hopefully I’ll have some results to show you next week… unless I bottle it at the last moment, which is possible…

Abi: Argh, I LOVE Satsumas. If I had my way I would spend the whole month of December buried under an avalanche of orange peel. I don’t know what it is about these little guys, what it is about them that makes me want to eat ten in one sitting then look forlornly at the fruit bowl as if to say “why did I not buy another net?”.

I know they won’t be available for very long, and so I must eat my annual quota in one go, lest I risk vitamin C deficiency for the remaining months of the year. Scurvy is no laughing matter Kids!

Don’t Walk & Timberland

Abi: I have been listening to PJ Harveys album Stories from the City, Stories from the sea a lot lately. She is one of my favourite artists of all time and the reason I mention her here is because this image puts me in mind of the cover image of this album.

I have been thinking for a while that I would like to try to recreate this photo and part of the reason I was out and about at 10pm was to find a suitable spot to shoot it. I am not very good at night-time photography.

It is more due to the fact that I have had little experience and rarely seem to find the time to actually go out at night to take pictures. Knowing I would be returning home after dark this evening, I deliberately took my camera along with me.

I would like to say that this is NOT the image I had in mind. I wanted something involving Bristol Cathedral, or College Green. I even wandered along to the Planetarium and messed about with some light reflection on the water. Nothing worked.

There are loads and loads of great photo opportunities that the night time affords us but for some reason they were all proving elusive. Then PJ came on my ipod and I knew what i was after. The whole waterfront area in Bristol is a riot of coloured lights and reflections at night time and I like how it is a place of beauty in the middle of a city.

Seb and I don’t discuss our ideas for individual photos, unless we are collaborating on a portrait idea so I like the tenuous shoe/walk/don’t walk reference here.

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Seb: My trusty boots!

When I was at school, back when all the cool kids were wearing Quiksilver and Billabong apparel, I longed for something equally cool and fashionable (and expensive). You see, I flirted with Quiksilver but despite my best efforts, I just couldn’t fit in with a bunch of 5-foot-nothing skater friends. I was 6′5″ (196cm). They were stocky and thuggish. I was tall and… well, not very cool-looking.

So I decided I would have Timberland boots. Because they were mega cool! And expensive! Too expensive, as it happened — my mother refused to buy them for me.

I had to wait YEARS until I finally got a pair — and I had to buy them with my own money (seriously, £180 is too much for a pair of boots — but they don’t make many pairs that fit my feet) — BUT… (Jesus, this is a ramble), I’m still wearing them! I don’t know how old they are, but they at least 5 years old… I think nearer 8…

Proof that they were worth the investment, or that I just don’t leave the house enough… I’m not sure.
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Click either photo to peruse the (often hilarious, occasionally a bit weird) comments on Flickr.