(Or possibly a goose. But I think it’s a swan.)

Yesterday’s entry (the one that features my first ever poem) had a lovely photo in. But of course I took more than just one good photo, duh!

So… for about 10 minutes I tried to get a swan to sit still. It’s a lot harder than you might think. I tried soothing noises (perhaps I should’ve podcasted this entry, so you could judge just how soothing my ’swanish’ is), I tried arm-waving and then sitting dead still, playing dead. I even tried shining the light from my phone, hoping it would transfix him with mortal fear.

No dice. He just wouldn’t sit.

I almost got him! But, as you can see, it’s a bit of a shit photo. Alas.

But, my friends, do not despair for I have some pretty ones to make up for it!

First, the sunset that I was actually chasing (you’ll need a properly-calibrated monitor to make out the detail of the field):

(Beautiful, eh?)

This is about 20 minutes later but from the bottom of the valley so there’s a lot less available light. You can see how the sky could lead into the photo I showed you yesterday! I like the water lilies!

Finally, just as another example of what you can do with a little digital trickery, check this out:

This photo isn’t real (you’ve already seen the original, further up the page). But it’s still beautiful right? I wonder which one would sell better…

It’s hot and sticky in the UK again. I’m tired through lack of sleep and I refuse to pump myself full of caffeine just so I’m capable of coherent thought and thus bubble forth the beautiful, flowing prose that you expect from me. Instead, I went through photos from the G! Festival, a music festival that takes place on a beach in the Faroe Islands. You’ve seen a few but I have a lot (hundreds). There’ll probably be some more tomorrow. I’ve tried to prepare a nice selection of photos so there should be something for everyone!

[Image removed, as it became Dancing Light]

Hogni, a Faroese musician. Look at his smile. Maybe my favourite photo ever! (You need to see it BIG, it’s awesome) Definitely a case of right-place-right-time. And my 100mm prime lens which seems to have truly beautiful optic characteristics.

Teitur, perhaps the most famous Faroese musician, with an adoring audience. And a rather pretty sunset in the background!

If only you could see the kid on the right’s facial expression. I think we can guess though. G! Festival is for all the family!

Medieval Portal & Humbug Head
(Click for larger)

Seb: Ightham Mote, a house in Kent, England, dates back to the 1300s. It’s been levelled a few times, cut up and resculpted and had its innards gutted and sold off numerous times — but there has been SOMETHING here since the 1300s.

About 20 years ago the National Trust bought it and have been managing it since — and it’s lovely!

The blue windows were a bit of luck — it had been raining all day, but when we finally got there the skies opened up and… BLAM! Blue skies, reflected in the windows.

If you squint closely (or view it larger) you can see someone waiting at the end of the tunnel.

Ah! And the derivation of Mote — it’s NOT a typo. It has nothing to do with the moat that runs around the house. Mote is old-English apparently, for ‘meet’ — and druids and the like would meet at Ightham Mote, back in the medieval days. So there you go.

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Abi: Regular visitors to my Flickr stream will know all about my cat Sixx. I have to confess, I never really thought of myself as a cat person, until I got her (I have always wanted a dog). I don’t think Sixx is actually like any other cat I have ever met.

This shot was originally going to be a photo of some cozy blankets and a hot water bottle, as a nod towards the darker evening and colder weather. Obviously Sixx thought she could improve upon it in some way, by sticking her small, soft head into shot at the last moment, what a rebel. I can’t really argue with that…

One of my favourite things about her is the top of her head. I love these markings, almost like a humbug. Many of you won’t know why she is called Sixx but I named her after Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue. Yes, she is that cool.

[This photo contains a lot of pretty photos. Just scroll down if you don't want to read stuff.]

Before your very eyes the format of this blog is shifting. Tuesday will now be, ’til the day I die, the day I forget to charge my camera battery, or the apocalypse, ‘Photogasm Day’ (I reserve the right to change the name at a later date if it no longer suits the image I am trying to project…)

Let me tell you about the new format for Tuesday!

First, I’ll link to the new installment of whatever photography project I’m working on — which is 52 Weeks at the moment.

Then I tell you how my current photographic projects are doing. 52 Weeks is going well! I think Abi and I are both surprised that we are a) actually keeping to the Monday schedule and b) still friends. There have been a few touch-and-go moments when she’s got all diva, but mostly things have been plain-sailing! For next week, I have a great homage to Halloween planned. All I can tell you now is that it’ll involve a large pumpkin and my face. It could go monumentally wrong. Those self-portraits you see at the bottom of the page may turn out to be the last known examples of what my face looked like before the Pumpkin Incident.

Next, to excite and tantalise, I’ll tell you about any upcoming photographic stuff. Which currently… is not much. I’m pushing my boundaries though. Pointing my camera at things I wouldn’t even have glanced at previously. I have promised a few local girls (I know that makes them sound like prostitutes, but they’re not — at least as far as I know) some portrait work. Or at least photos of them. Not necessarily portraiture. And I actually want to get out on the STREETS and take some photos there, the cut and thrust, the back-alleys. I suppose I should go into London to do that, or Brighton. There’s this whoooole area of photography (photojournalism, candid portraiture) just waiting to be… shot…  and I’ve not done much of it at all — and I really should do more of it! You saw some stuff in the summer (the Ray Ban Kid), and a few last week, but other than that… not much. So you might see some pretty-local-girl photos in the coming days and weeks.

Talking of local, I also want to get some more of my photos hanging  in nearby cafes and cinemas, or galleries.

And finally, in each and every Tuesday Photogasm, there will be lots of juicy photos: ones I’ve taken in the past week, or shots I’ve dug up from the archives. Enjoy!

Note: Some of these haven’t made it to Flickr yet. Consider them an ‘exclusive’. Also, in the bird photos, are those crows, or something else?

(This one came out really red for some reason… not sure why. It’s over-exposed I think, and not perfectly-sharp. Not that I’m complaining… it’s cool! The leaves in the top right are almost the right colour, incidentally.)

This last one is the first of my ‘50mm landscapes’ — an entirely new concept for me. Landscapes… but with a telephoto lens. Makes things feel more… compressed? Compact? More detail, less negative space. Incredibly hard to take too… but I think this photo proves that the concept works, so I’ll be taking some more!

And that’s this week’s Photogasm.

Out with the Old & Puddle of ink

Abi: I have to admit, the days immediately following New Year always make me laugh to myself. It never ceases to amuse me how suddenly, we are all expected to snap back into shape, like whippets after the festive season and then spend the rest of January feeling bad about it.

The New Year is also an opportunity to clear out, replace and take stock of the things that perhaps no longer feel right to us. Like Children, we outgrow our toys as our lives become busier and our worlds expand.

I saw this heap of bin bags outside the charity shop on my way into the city. By the looks of things, someone had had a damn good rummage through as they were all open like this when I found them. It made me a little sad to see that someone had so obviously outgrown the things that perhaps a year before had given them such joy only to be replaced by something better, newer, more expensive.

And if that is not a metaphor for life, I don’t know what is.

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Seb: You have to try and guess what it is!

So, a few days ago, on New Year’s Eve, it was a full moon. It was actually a blue moon — the second moon in a calendar month — AND… get this… there was also a partial lunar eclipse. If you’re a landscape photographer and itching to do more night-time photography, such conditions are more than enough to a photographer like me, er, aroused

… (if I didn’t think my sister could see this, I’d insert a whole paragraph about the physical excitement photography elicits in me) ..

But get this, the moon was TOO HIGH IN THE SKY. So it was basically impossible to do anything with. Bah.

This photo was taken about 3 minutes before Big Ben tolled in the new year. It’s more of a proof of concept than anything else. I took photos like this back at college, when I was 16. I want to do some more!

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It’s like shooting really expensive koi in a barrel & Lie in

Seb: I shot my first ever naked torso yesterday.

Unfortunately it was a male torso — greased and creased with perfectly-defined pecs and abs — but surely it’s only a matter of time until a girl asks me for the same… service. Either that, or I have a future of all-male calendar photography ahead of me…

For some reason, right next to where we were doing the shoot, there was a huge tank of koi (Japanese carp). Some small and some ooh-you’d-be-worth-a-lot large (seriously, large koi can cost thousands — check it out).

Anyway, very hard to focus through water — that guy at the front IS in focus, but the netting makes it quite an interesting/tough photo to digest.

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Abi: I spent the entire day in bed today, my sleep patterns are dodgy at best so sometimes you just need a duvet day to stop you dying of exhaustion.

I guess I could have been out enjoying the weather. Today it was gloriously sunny and the light streamed in through the window for the first time in ages. I could have moved, should have got up. But I didn’t, I’m lazy like that.
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Oh come on, it’s almost as if they were named for the sole purpose of creating mirth and uncontrollable bouts of the giggles. Why oh why are they called TITS? The derivation would suggest it comes from some old meaning of ‘tit’ that means small, or perhaps similar to ‘tip for tap’ (tit for tat). Anyway, here in Sussex, we have lots of tits. Every year we seem to have more, probably because they tell tales of our house during their long and boring migrations: ‘Yeah, there’s this place… lots of tall trees… a pond… a fat woman that puts lots of seed out… it’s great! Come visit next season!

With it now being spring — despite occasional flurries of sub-zero temperature – we also have all of the baby birds. Just a few days ago, my mum saw some little fluff ball jump from its nest and land head first in a big bush with a small thud. I can only assume that the birds that star in today’s video are also young, or simply a little retarded. These long-tailed tits just kept flying into the window! Maybe they could see their reflection, or maybe they just didn’t know better; thud, scratch, scratch… thud. For more than an hour!

You probably saw my dramatic video of two robins fighting for seed the other day, but in my opinion a couple of birds buzzing about like window-licking bumble bees is far more exciting. Did I mention this video has my cat Monaco in it, trying to catch birds through double glazing? Yeah, now you want to watch it! Go on, click!

I know the aspect is all wrong. I only realised afterwards that it would be the wrong way around. I’m a photographer through and through! It’s OK if you watch it full screen though. I was going to upload a ’sideways’ version, but you’d just end up tilting your head and looking stupid for four minutes.

Anyway, for those of you resolutely not watching the video, here’s a couple of photos, of the tit and of the cat; of Tweety and Sylvester.

(I’m not sure what she’s perching on… a tiny strip of wood? She didn’t hang about though, as you can see in the video.)

(Sorry… cat picture… I know… lowest common denominator and all that…)