31st March

This is the first of a (hopefully) occasional series that I'm calling Views from the Window. In actual fact, it'll have to be occasional because it turns out that there isn't a great deal to see from the windows, or at least there's not much that is good to photograph.

Still, it's a lazy Easter Sunday, I've not been out all day and this isn't too bad after all!

30th March

A very pleasant day out near the sea yesterday consisted of eating way too much delcious food and enjoying company of family. One of the traditions is that we go for a walk along the seafront in Bosham (locally famed as "the place where people's cars get flooded when the tide comes in").

The tide was definintely not in and generally speaking, the sun was not out. However, it did allow me to take this rather moody looking photo across the bay.

 

Unusally for Bosham, which is a pretty, photogenic place, the sky's really the star here.

29th March

Quite a cloudy and dull day today so not the ideal day for landscape photos but I thought I'd try my luck. I got a hazy view of the city of London, with The Shard certainly visible amongst the other buildings. I like the fact that I managed to find a foreground that kind of leads the eye towards the cityscape too.

Hopefully I'll be back to try again when the conditions are better!

28th March

I wandered into town today to see what I could find and ended up down by the river, taking photos of an unusual looking bird.

As I sat taking my photos a chap with a dog wandered by and told me he'd never seen one like it. Another chap came by and the three of us chatted for about ten minutes about the bird, what it was, why it seemed to be so tame and whether it had a partner around somewhere.

I moved to take the photos from another spot and then another man came by and asked me what it was. He assumed that I was knoweldgeable about birds because I was stood there photographing it. I had to admit that I didn't know but that I was going to look it up.

On getting back, I'm fairly certain that it's a Little Egret. They're certainly not unheard of in the UK but they aren't the most common bird either. Not bad, considering I was only planning to get shots of the landscapes and bridges down on the river. I'll save that idea for another day.

27th March

I had a day in London yesterday and visited the Saatchi Gallery, one of London's best-known galleries for modern art. In my experience, a piece of modern art is a bit like Marmite - you either love it or hate it. To be honest, I didn't really get a number of the pieces. However, a series of photographs of people sitting on the windowsills of their appartments was interesting (and at times hair-raising, these were not ground floor appartments...) and there were a few sculptures that I liked. There was also a couple of fascinating paintings of large Russian buildings on opened out cardboard boxes which were very clear from a distance but, close up, looked like a mess. It must have been very challenging to paint and they were huge and very effective.

Amongst these exhibits, my favourite was this one. The colours are very vivid, the canvasses are hung in seemingly random positions but all are aligned in the same direction. It was difficult to do it justice on camera, but I quite like this side-on view.

26th March

It's still cold. In fact, it's still very cold.

At a spot near me, the cars have been splashing puddles up into the bushes, where they've frozen and created some cool icicles.

 

I like the ordered effect that the fence seems to have created here. They are just starting to melt so I think I may have got to this on the last day that it was clear for the shot too. Makes all the shivering worthwhile!

25th March

It's very cold at the moment. Very, very cold. So I went out and watched a game of netball, as you do.

The cup semi-final game between Hampton and Wandsworth was very close and tense throughout and led to atmospheric photos.

24th March

I have a camera. A nice camera, an expensive camera, a DSLR camera. It's a Canon EOS 450D. It's a camera that I really like and have used to take some photos that I'm really proud of.

I also have a job and a part of my job is taking photos with a really similar, but not identical, Canon EOS 400D. As it turns out, doing something in your job makes it less interesting to do the same thing in your leisure time (there's a shocking revelation).

Also, in unconnected news, I turned 29 yesterday. Now this, in itself is not a fact that concerns me a great deal. I'm not significantly different today to how I was yesterday and I wasn't significantly different yesterday to how I was the day before. However, it seemed like a convenient coincidence enough to convince me that starting a new project today would be fun.





One of the strangest, but also funniest Birthday cards I've ever received
 

It's not a particularly original project, but it sounds like fun all the same. I'm going to take my camera and take a new photo every day for a year. Well, that's the plan anyway.

What do I hope to achieve here? Hopefully I'll get back into the habit of using my camera for fun. Hopefully I'll also learn how to use my camera better. Perhaps I'll get better at spotting good opportunities to take shots. Maybe I'll just become really good at arranging my stuff to make unusual still lifes. Whatever happens, I really hope that I finish my project and that I create an unusual and interesting account of the last year of my twenties.

Wish me luck!