<Insert all sorts of poetic stuff about how life is cyclic, and how the seasons perfectly represent human life, etc., etc.>

Once Spring hits England, all hell breaks loose and everything goes a truly fantastic, citrusy shade of green for a few months. The winter months (basically, October through April…) on the other hand are rather dull. As you’ve seen from my photos of Sussex, the most excitement we see is the occasional frost or, if we’re very lucky, some snow. The sunsets are OK too I guess, but really all we have (down South at least) are a few hills, some fields, some trees… and that’s about it really.

So, not to be defeated by the grey drizzle of England, I reached for my uber lens of telephoto doom (as featured in this photo) and wandered around underneath some of our lovely oak trees taking photos. Macro photos. Everyone loves macro photos, right?

Well I hope you enjoy these two; I like them! (Truth be told, I don’t do a lot of macro stuff but I’ve been told I should do more…)

(They’re large, but you should make space in your browser window to look at them in full-size, they’re quite pretty!)

Gah, that was way too poetic… Well, perhaps if I just leave poetry in the titles, and not in the actual entries…

Anyway, another photo, of some daffodils in the wrought iron window boxes that we have here on our estate (the blue blur is some kind of thermometer on the wall, I think… but I’m not sure! That’s the magic of macro shots and forced depth of field:  ‘Guess that blur?!’)

It also might be the last time I get to photograph our lovely garden as we’ve received a couple of good, cash offers this week; it seems like we might actually be moving!

Where we will move to however remains a big question!

I think I like this one. It’s not an AMAZING photo, but it’s interesting. I’m not quite sure why the depth of field is quite so shallow… might be because there was a lot of reflected light into the camera.

Anyway, if you know your foliage, you’ll be able to identify this is a honeysuckle plant! It’s a long way off budding though, as they don’t usually flower for another few months. The leaves are usually a rather dull red, but you can see here that when you let a low sun shine through their leaves you get some startling oranges and pinks and yellows!

Oh, and the spider web was an added bonus — note the sun glinting off it in the far bottom left!

I really hope the sun continues into the weekend. It actually feels like Spring is finally here!

It’s a slow, sunny Saturday and my house is empty.

Before I go and watch Dollhouse — the fabled ‘good episode’, according to Whedon and Dushku, that we’ve all been waiting for — I thought I’d share a photo of a rather large bumble bee that flew into my room earlier.

I don’t know if it’s a queen bee, but I think you only usually find queen bees at this time of year, right? As they are searching for somewhere to make their hive? I couldn’t resist the compositional freebie offered by the wooden cross.

(There are photos further down, so if you don’t like reading and stuff, just scroll down.)

In the spring, in May, England is blanketed in beautiful blooms and that gorgeous, bitter lime green of plants coming back to life.

In the summer, for those glorious two weeks, England is lovely, lazy and hazy, but a little humid.

In the autumn we have acre upon acre of auburn, golden, crinkly-leaved forests to walk through. Crunch, crunch. The sun, an hour before sunset, low in the sky and lighting up just the tops of the trees.

In the winter we have angry clouds and mist that hugs our barren fields.

But in April… in April, we got nothin’. Rain and clouds and wind. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, Mother Nature precipitates some sleet or snow (one of my favourite photos, incidentally). But, basically, it’s wet and cold.

I love rain as much as the next Brit (which isn’t odd, by the way! I’m sure there are weird people out there that enjoy hot weather too… freaks), but as a photographer, rain really puts a damper on things. It’s OK up close and at high-speed (like this photo), and it’s OK if you’re in some kind of extreme setting — rain dripping off the long, wet fronds of a palm tree, or something — but here in England, in April… it’s just grey. We don’t even get funky cloud formations or really heavy, thick, viscous rain. Grey, dismal-damp wetness.

Which brings me neatly onto Brighton, a city on the south coast of England. I was there today, enjoying some fine company and researching a project that I’m working on. It was rainy and windy, but we had fun! Trudging around, plunging in and out of shops to warm and dry ourselves it was a very English experience. The trip wasn’t complete without a trip to the beach and pier, which is where I took these two photos.

They’re not exciting, but it’s England in April. I’ll impress you some more in May, hopefully.

It’s not obvious, but the guy you can see is performing Tai Chi! I thought it was yoga, but I was corrected quickly… Quite a nice location, though!

I don’t even have any words for this one… it’s so… normal. The colour in the water is quite interesting, I guess. And the clouds are almost interesting!

Well, I promised you photos, to make up for the awful rehash post I made yesterday. They’re not amazing, but hey… it’s a view of England you might not have seen before…?

Oh, I just remembered, that wave you see in the first photo — the wave that is blurry from movement — that wave soaked my left foot, leaving me to squishily my way around town for the next couple of hours. I’ll do anything to get that killer photo, man.

She swings back and forth with a gleeful grin on her face, challenging herself with each swoop to reach a little higher, a little further, her pink-painted pointed toes cramping from the strain. She loves the bright, fresh days of spring; the crocuses, followed by the daffodils and the unfurling of lime-green leaves on trees.

Leaning back, curling legs underneath, tightening her grip on the hemp rope and opening her eyes wide she looks up into the boughs of the tree where the cherry blossom buds are bursting their seams, threatening to bloom at any moment.

Faster and higher, her small body stretched taut and almost vertical with calloused hands clinging on tightly. She prays she can hold on as every muscle in her body strains until it tingles. Her face is scrunched up in effort and her lips pursed in concentration as she wills herself higher. Flying backwards again, on the downwards arc, the loose ends of her black hair skim across the dry earth kicking up dust and sand.

She reaches the zenith, adjusts her weight and looks out across the clearing for a split second, the inescapable grasp of gravity momentarily forgotten. Nodding to herself, gravity and the tree that holds her weight, she begins the final descent, hurtling towards the ground with her body flat and pointed like a blade of grass, her toes curling as she realises just how close her head is to the ground.

The last, fast ascent; the key is in the timing, the angle, the perfect transition of momentum. From upwards to outwards in the split of a second she flings herself from the swing. With the alacrity and gracefulness of a snake, with the flick of her wrist and the uncoiling of her spine like a broken spring she begins her flight across the clearing. For a moment she shuts her eyes, feeling the resistance of the air and the warmth of the sun. For a blissful moment all she can hear is the rush of wind and the tweeting of sparrows.

With her eyes closed she couldn’t have noticed the out of place shadow or the sibilant sussuration of quick movement at the edge of the clearing.

Opening her eyes again she gathers her bearings, now aware that she will have to roll as she lands. Legs brace and then bend as she hits the ground with a graceful thud, damp grass tickling her arms as they cover her head. She rolls two times before stopping, blinking and reorienting herself. Looking down she smiles at a beautiful, dual-tone daffodil that she narrowly avoided crushing.

A scream explodes like a shot, startling birds from trees, rabbits into holes and transfixing the small girl sitting on the grass. She turns her head towards the kitchen window to see  her mother fall to the ground. Her whole body tenses like an animal, ready to fight. But everything goes black. “Hello, Emily.” A rasped voice very close to her ear, rough hands encircle her waist and smother her mouth. She hadn’t heard the heavy footfalls sneak up behind her but she hears the smooth, sickening swish of metal against metal. She feels a knife piercing the soft skin of her back.

“Oh, don’t cry.”

After yesterday’s deep-and-meaningful entry I feel it my duty, as your charismatic host, to break the pensive and thoughtful atmosphere. That’s another thing you might’ve noticed: I like to mix things up; I love keeping people on their toes. I revel in blowing the dust off and sparking far-flung reaches of your brain into frantic activity. It’s also about my own personal enjoyment though: variety is the spice of life, right?

And you have to admit, you have no idea what I might do next.

Without further ado, the results of a photo session from a sunny Spring (Summer?!) afternoon!

A pretty good start. Especially the slightly-quirked eyebrow and pursed lips.

I should explain the next strip of photos: I have a friend called Abi and she recently initiated me into the Way Of The X. Where you make an… X… with your fists/hands. It’s cooler than it sounds. Really, try it. Anyway, this is seven quick photos taken in succession, of me doing THE X. If you don’t get it, that’s fine — just marvel at the facial expressions.

That’s a little weird, I admit…

The thing is, I’d be lying if I said if that was my first attempt at capturing THE X. In fact, it took me about half an hour to ‘nail it’. That means there’s a lot of out-takes. Like… 200 of them. Here’s a small sample, just to prove that I am capable of some truly awesome facial expressions (and you ain’t seen nothing yet!)

Julia Roberts has got nothing on my mouth.

Constipation.

Channel the rage, Sebastian. CHANNEL IT.

… Um… some kind of… Jewish Shylock? Or… something? I don’t know.

A rare example of me actually smiling! Well, about to smile. I cracked up at my father, who insisted on crashing my little photo session…

That’s it for now. The next time you see my expressive face, I should be in a doctor’s jacket for Ask Me Anything on Friday — and if you have anything on your mind this week, ask me!

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…)