Stephen's Images

Tree 2011

2011-12-17T21:36:00.001Z

Tree 2011
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

During 2011, I photographed a tree each month. The tree stands in a field just off Barkby Thorpe Road on the border between Leicester and Leicestershire. This photo mosaic is a collation of the results. The individual photographs can be viewed on Flickr.

I did not make any attempt to take every photograph from exactly the same spot and with the same focal length but I tried to match the images at least approximately. Most of the photographs had to be taken at the weekend - especially the winter ones. I did sometimes leave it a bit late and some of the photographs were only just taken in the month intended. Still, I found it an interesting exercise and intend to repeat it in 2012. I am considering using this scene:

It is in the Watermead Country Park and about ten minutes walk from my home which would make getting to it easy. The tree and the vegetation will change a lot through the year and I like the fact that the scene includes water. This photograph was taken on a cloudy and overcast day but different weather conditions will change the scene considerably. I put the photograph on Flickr earlier today with the comment that I might use it as the subject of a photograph a month project. I have been surprised and pleased by the encouragement that I have received to go ahead - and so I probably will!

2011-09-18T16:59:00.000+01:00

Project 365 - Part One

Photo Mosaic of my June 2008 Project 365 Photographs

Project 365 is a challenge - not a competition. The basic idea is that you commit yourself to taking one photograph a day for a year. You may choose to post it online but you can keep it to yourself if you want to. I completed Project 365 between 29th December 2007 and 28th December 2008. I started a second series on 1st April 2011.

Apart from being fun most of the time, Project 365 has several benefits:

It makes you get your camera out.

It sharpens your powers of observation and composition.

It makes you think more about making photographs.

It makes you find photographs in the most unpromising of situations - whatever you are doing and wherever you are, you have to take a photograph today. After you have done this a few times, you will never again say or think that there is nothing to photograph - there is always something to photograph. Your photography will improve. It just has too or you will not finish the project.

You do have to rid yourself of the notion that you are going to try to take 365 masterpieces. Some days just getting a photograph taken - any kind of photograph is an achievement. It is fairly easy at first. There are probably lots of subjects easily available that will get you through the first month or so. Then it starts to get more difficult. Here are some of my coping strategies:

Take a photograph early in the day. It does not much matter what it is like - at least you have got something that you can use. It takes the pressure off. You can try and find something better during the rest of the day. When I have not been able to follow this advice, I have sometimes found myself desperately looking for something to photograph late at night. One time, I was reduced to photographing a lamp in my hotel room. Taking a photograph early is especially important during the winter when the hours of daylight are short and you might be travelling to and from work in the dark.

Have a few themes. In my first Project 365 set I tried to take a self portrait each month and to photograph our front and back gardens from the same viewpoint each month. I also took photographs of doors and windows; churches; flowers and trees. In my present set, I have featured photographs of benches, buildings, sculptures and tombstones. These themes all make it easier to find a photograph especially when original ideas are hard to come by. If you already have an idea of what to look for, the photographic potential of your surroundings will become more obvious.

Take a camera everywhere. You probably cannot carry a DSLR all of the time but a compact camera or a mobile phone camera will enable you to take a photograph whenever the opportunity arises.

Photo Mosaic of my June 2011 Project 365 photographs.

Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, Leicestershire

2011-07-03T16:01:00.001+01:00

Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, Leicestershire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

On Wednesday, this photograph had 18 views on Flickr. Today it has had another 7. All of them come from an "Unknown Source." according to the Flickr stats. I am baffled as to why. It is a simple record shot that I did not expect anyone to look at really. I wonder why so many folk have suddenly taken an interest in it and where are they being referred from?

Digital Lomography with Vignette

2011-02-26T19:37:00.002Z

Leamington Spa, Warwickshire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I recently upgraded my mobile phone and chose the Motorola Defy. The main reason for choosing this rather than any other phone was that it is supposed to be able to withstand being dropped, banged and drowned - and it is claimed that the screen cannot be scratched. I wanted a robust phone. It is my first Android phone - the previous one was a Nokia and so ran Symbian. An unintended consequence of getting the new phone has been my discovery of apps that mimic lomography cameras such as Holgas and Diannas. I have been interested in trying these cameras for a while but been put off by the cost and inconvenience of processing film.

In common with most mobile phones, the camera on the Defy is not great but that means it lends itself well to this kind of lo-fi photography. I have been using the Vignette app to produce my photographs. it does a very good job of imitating the colour shifts, light leaks, vignettes and distortions which are characteristic of lomography. The range of options available is bewildering. For now, I have set it to square format and random - so that I do not know what is going to come out when I press the shutter. That is part of the fun though - if I do not like the result, I just take another photograph.

The Vignette App is available in the Android marketplace. There is a free version which is limited to 0.3 megapixel images. The full version allows images up to 5 megapixel although the instructions recommend not going higher than 3 megapixels. This is adequate for this type of photography. The full version also has GPS tagging enabled.

Calendar 2011

2010-12-27T22:16:00.004Z

In each of the last two years, I have made a series of calendar pages and posted them on Flickr. I have confined myself to photographs taken in Leicester and Leicestershire which is where I live. I decided to create some calendar pages again this year. This time I have used photographs taken anywhere during 2010. The photographs for each month in 2011 were taken in the corresponding month of 2010. I chose photographs that I thought would be most effective in the calendar templates - sometimes cropping them quite tightly.

The calendar pages are produced using the Big Huge Labs website. The site allows photographs to be transferred from Flickr for use in the calendar. The calendar pages can then be transferred back to Flickr.

You can see all of the calendar pages for 2011 here.

There is a county park near where I live called Watermead Country Park. This year I am going to try to take one photograph per month that I can use in a calendar for 2012. It will give me an excuse to get out more often and get some exercise and some fresh air - as well as take some photographs.

Leicester Marathon 2010

2010-10-15T21:35:00.001+01:00

Leicester Marathon 2010
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

The route of the Leicester Marathon passes within a couple of hundred yards of our front door and so my camera and I went to have a look. I misjudged my timing - the fast runners had already gone by the time I made an appearance. Still I was able to get some photographs of the runners as they passed through Thurmaston and Watermead Country Park. I have been surprised at the large number of views the photographs have received on Flickr. All of them had received over a hundred views each with three or four days. If I had known that they would be this popular, I would have got up earlier and taken more and better photographs. I have started a Leicester Marathon Group on Flickr as I was surprised that there was not one already. I will be looking for opportunities to try this type of photography again - preferably before the next Leicester Marathon.

Concord, Massachusetts

2010-10-02T20:41:00.004+01:00

Concord, Massachusetts
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

We visited Lexington and Concord after hiring a car in Auburn. These towns are the places where the American Revolutionary War - or War of Independence broke out on April 19th 1775. The British troops set out from Boston with the intention of finding and capturing the weapons which they correctly thought were being stored at a farm near Concord. They encountered their first resistance at Lexington where the first shot of the war was fired - but no one has been able to find out who fired it. The British troops overcame the minutemen at Lexington and marched on to Concord where they met much stiffer opposition - especially at the Old North Bridge. Here they were forced to beat a disorderly retreat to Boston. They were harassed all the way back and suffered heavy losses. The war was on.

The Old North Bridge pictured above in a reconstruction from the 1950s. There have actually been several bridges on the site since 1775 - and for a while there was no bridge at all.

There are several historic sites, commemorative statues and monuments in Lexington and Concord and in between. I photographed this statue at Lexington and edited it in Showfoto. I like the effect - although I hit on it by accident.

There are also sights to be seen that are not related to the Revolutionary War. Both Concord and Lexington are attractive towns. I was surprised to find a copy of the Michaelangelo's Pieta on the green at Concord.

Unfortunately, the fall was not very advanced during our stay. I was hoping that the leaves in this photograph would not be green!

Woodstock Valley, Connecticut

2010-10-01T19:15:00.001+01:00

Woodstock Valley, Connecticut
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

About three hours ago, we returned home from our journey to the United States. It was my first visit to the country. We stayed at Woodstock Valley in Connecticut at the home of a very kind and hospitable friend. This photograph was taken about fifteen minutes walk from her home. It is the Glenn Kovaciny Memorial Beach.

I did upload a few of the photographs that I took in the States to Flickr while I was there but I took many others. I will upload a selection to Flickr over the coming days. We visited Concord, Lexington, Hartford, Sturbridge, Mystic Port, Vermont, New York, Newport and Boston amongst many other places. The weather in the first week that we were there was remarkably hot - well over 25C most days. In the second week, it was cooler with rain and heavy cloud which meant that I did not take as many photographs as I would have liked.

One problem that I had with taking photographs of buildings was trying to cope with the fact that in most towns the electrical power and telegraph cables are suspended between poles above ground rather than being buried. Many potentially good viewpoints of buildings are spoiled by this. I was determined to exclude them as much as I could which resulted in some buildings being photographed from odd angles - alternatively I tried to concentrate on details.

Longstone Lighthouse, Farne Islands, Northumberland

2010-09-05T20:48:00.001+01:00

Longstone Lighthouse, Farne Islands, Northumberland
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I scanned 778 images in August - almost all of them negatives. it is time consuming although I have gradually speeded things up by adjusting the settings in my scanner software. It now takes about five minutes to scan to strips of negatives instead of 50 minutes.

The photograph above is one of my most successful negative scans. It also shows one of the benefits of going though my negative collection - I had forgotten all about this photograph and the lovely day that I spent on the Farne Islands with my friend Geoff.

September promises to be very busy for my camera. Next weekend is my mother's 80th birthday when I expect to be taking lots of family photographs. The following weekend we are going to fly to Connecticut. It will be my first trip to the United States. We are staying with a friend in Woodstock and will also spend two days in New York. I am really looking forward to seeing the Fall in New England. I also want to go to Boston and Hartford. In Hartford, I hope to visit the Mark Twain House and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House.

I will report on the results of my travels next month.

Poplar Tree Through the Year

2010-08-30T22:57:00.011+01:00

Poplar Tree - August
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

There is a large Poplar tree at the bottom of our garden. Actually it is partly in our garden and partly in the garden of the house next door. I have just completed a project to photograph it in each month of the year. The project took an unexpected turn in June when a fire caused extensive damage to one side of the tree. The trunk is still very black. We are hoping it will recover during the next year or so.

The photograph above shows the tree in August. Here is the rest of the set:

September

October

November

December

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

The Reluctant Flickr Admin Escapes...

2010-08-15T20:35:00.003+01:00

Lutterworth, Leicestershire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I was surprised to receive an email from Flickr telling me that I was now the Group Administrator of a Flickr Group called Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service. I was surprised because I had not applied for the position and had only ever posted one photograph to the group - the one shown above.

It turned out that the previous administrator had resigned without securing the succession. In these circumstances, the administrator role passes to the longest serving member of the group - me! I was willing to undertake the role but I know next to nothing about fire engines or fire services. I put a post on the group's message board explaining the situation and asking if anyone else wanted the job. I did not expect much response as the group has very few members.

However, two members offered to take on the role and they both seem much better qualified to do the job than I am. Thanks to Shaun and Danny - and good luck with growing the group.

You can visit the group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/1421102@N20/pool/with/3823404029/

Staithes, North Yorkshire

2010-08-08T18:09:00.001+01:00

Staithes, North Yorkshire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I have continued with scanning my old negatives during the last week. This is the photograph which has produced the most feedback so far. I did intensify the colours a bit - I am finding that many of my old negatives are producing rather pale images. I am not sure whether that is due to the negatives, the scanner, the scanner software or the settings that I am using.

I abandoned the idea of using VueScan as my scanning software. It did not seem to allow scanning negatives in bulk without manual intervention after each frame. Epson's scanning software does and so I will stick with this for now. I am scanning to TIFF and then editing the images in GIMP before saving them as jpegs for upload to Flickr. I sometimes give them a further tweak in Picnik once they are on Flickr.

It is interesting to see many of my old photographs - especially the ones where I now think - "Why did I take that?" I am also being reminded of places that I cannot remember ever going to.

Wheeldale Moor, North York Moors

2010-08-01T20:03:00.001+01:00

Wheeldale Moor, North York Moors
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I have a large collection of 35 mm negatives of photographs taken between about 1980 and 2007 when I switched to a digital SLR. I have decided that I need to liberate these negatives from the large black binders in which they have been imprisoned for several years. I do not know how many there are - it must be thousands. Most of them are probably dreadful but I am hoping that there a few that are worth editing and uploading to Flickr.

I am using an Epson Perfection 4490 Photo scanner to scan the negatives. Until today I had never used it for this purpose before. It is a slow process - taking about 50 minutes to process two strips of negatives. At present I am using the software supplied by Epson but I am planning to use Vue Scan instead. This should allow me to output RAW files and so give me more editing opportunities.

The photograph shown here is my "proof of concept" image. It proves that I can get the process to work. I need to play around with the process for a bit before I embark seriously on digitising my negatives.

As for this photograph, it would have been taken on a holiday in the North York Moors about 20 years ago. Wheeldale Moor is an old Roman Road which crosses the Moors. One of the fun things about this project is going to be that I will not know when photographs were taken - or sometimes have much idea of what they are. I have kept the negatives safe but neglected to label them with dates, locations or occasion. This is going to be something of a voyage of discovery.
I will record my progress here....

London

2010-05-31T21:21:00.001+01:00

London
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

This was an accidental snatch shot. I was sitting on the underground platform at Kings Cross Saint Pancras waiting for a train. I had my mobile phone in my hand. Just as the train was slowing down, I clicked the shutter. I did not even look at what I had until I got home. I was going to delete the shot but then decided to transfer it to the computer and see what could be done with it. In the end, I just cropped it to tighten it up a bit. I still was not sure if it was worth uploading to Flickr but thought that I might as well. I was amazed to wake up the next morning to find it had had over 50 views - and it is now well on it's way to 100 views.

New Template

2010-04-13T22:39:00.002+01:00

I have changed the template for this blog today. The new template is cleaner and gives a better background for the photographs. It is also wider so that I have a bit more room to play with and there is less blanks space around the sides of the pages. I need to make a few more adjustments yet and will try to do those at the weekend.

Spring Flowers

2010-04-11T18:00:00.002+01:00

Daffodil
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

After a long cold winter, the flowers of spring have bloomed in the last couple of weeks. The daffodils have been late this year but we have masses of them in our garden - some in the ground, some in hanging baskets and some in troughs. I bought this one indoors to photograph it against a sheet of blue card in the conservatory. I like the photograph above, but am less happy with this one:

I would have liked to capture more detail in the flower. I need more practice with my new lens.

I have also photographed some pansies. I took these photographs in situ - they are all in troughs hanging on the garden fence:

The new lens is not a macro lens and does not allow for a wide aperture so that true bokeh is difficult to achieve - but I quite like the pansy photographs. Incidentally all of the pansies were grown from seed. It is quite a long process. The seeds from which these flowers have grown were planted last summer.

Finally, I usually ignore the trite messages that some churches disfigure their grounds with but the Quakers know how to do this kind of thing. I was struck by this poster outside the Friends Meeting House in Manchester:

Good advice in a world in which so many people stubbornly hold firm opinions on matters about which they know nothing!

A New Lens

2010-03-28T21:48:00.002+01:00

Leicester
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I bought a Sony A100 body a couple of years ago. I have been using it with the two lenses that I had for my Minolta Dynax 404si which is a 35mm film camera. The lenses had the ranges of 28 - 80mm and 75 - 250mm. I mostly used the first one. I decided that it was time to get a new lens recently. I finally decided on a Tamron 18 - 250 mm lens.

Having such a wide range of focal lengths in one lens means putting up with some inevitable compromises. I felt that the convenience of having one lens that would suffice for most of my photography outweighs these. I have had the lens for three days now. So far, I have mostly been playing with the wide angle end of the lens as in the photograph above. With my previous lenses, I did not have the wide angle end of the spectrum covered at all. I take a lot of photographs of buildings and landscapes so this was a nuisance.

Here is another photograph that I could not have taken before:

This is going to be my general purpose "walk around" lens. As funds allow, I would like to add some prime lenses - probably starting with a 50mm and then moving on to a 105mm macro lens. First though, I have lots of fun to come experimenting with my new toy.

A Horse Portrait and Snowy Photographs.

2010-02-27T10:53:00.002Z

Horse
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I did not do much photography this month and most of it was in the last two weeks. This horse grazes in a field about five minutes walk away from our house. He was right alongside the fence when I arrived and posed nicely for several photographs of which this is the one that I like best.

We have had more snow this winter than we normally do. I went to try to get some photographs of the snow one morning - especially of the village church and the nearby country park. I had hoped for more snow on the church than this!

A bit more snow on the roof would be nice.

This is the nearby Thurmaston Lock on the Grand Union Canal.

There were some bright sunny days during February. This photograph was taken on one of them.

It is a detail of a sculpture called Spring by Oliver Barrett which is outside the parish church in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

January Photographs

2010-01-30T21:10:00.003Z

London
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

Looking back through the photographs that I took in January, I am surprised to see how many of them have clear blue skies in the background - like the one above showing the London Eye. The first two weeks of the month brought more snow than we normally see in this part of the world. At times travel was very difficult and hazardous. I would have liked to take more photographs of snowy scenes but work got in the way. At this time of the year, I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark.

The best snow pictures that I managed were of the church at Hatton in Warwickshire. This is on my way to work. I was approaching it one morning when I realised that the sun would be falling on the church and producing a great photo opportunity. I stopped for a few minutes and managed this shot:

If you look carefully, you will see that I even managed to get the moon into the shot.

I wanted to get a photograph of the poplar tree in our garden in the snow. I had hoped that the snow would settle on it but that did not happen. I did manage to photograph it while it was actually snowing with this result:

This is one of a series of photographs that I am taking. I am taking one every month for a year to show how the tree changes with the seasons.

I wonder what Feburary will bring. I am hoping for more snow - the days will be longer and so there will be more photographic opportunities.

Colour Popping

2009-12-21T20:52:00.002Z

Lollipop Tree by Ann Perch-Nielsen
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

As I reported last month, I experimented with using Gimp to produce sketch like images from photographs. I have now attempted colour popping or spot colour as it is also known. This effect is created when a colour photograph is converted to black and white but a small part of it is left in colour. It takes more time than producing sketches but is fun to do. Lollipop Tree by Ann Perch-Nielsen (shown above) was my first succesful attempt. I have had an enlargement of this made. It is now being framed and will hang in our house - not sure where yet!

Above is another example of the use of this technique.

I have made a set on Flickr of the results of my experiments with Gimp. It is at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenlamb/sets/72157622729928147/.

Poppy Sketch

2009-11-21T09:10:00.003Z

I created this image using Gimp and the procedure described in this article:

How to turn a jpeg image into a sketch in Gimp | eHow.co.uk

This is the original photograph:

The technique is quite straightforward and gives good results. I will be doing more I think!

Swithland, Leicestershire

2009-11-08T19:45:00.002Z

Swithland, Leicestershire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I went for a walk in Swithland Woods on Saturday afternoon but did not feel in the mood to take any photographs even though it was a nice afternoon. I wondered around some of the quieter parts of the woods and encountered only a few people. I drove into the village of Swithland afterwards and took this photograph of a round tower.

I then took some rather unsuccessful photographs of the nearby church. The sun was in the wrong place in relation to the building - a morning visit might be more productive. After leaving the village, I drove along the road which crosses Swithland resevoir.

A steam train from the Great Central Railway was crossing the bridge over the road - another photographic opportunity which did not work out very well! I have cropped the photograph quite heavily to put it into something like a panorama format and get rid of a lot of extraneous detail.

Old Photographs and Flckr Statistics

2009-11-01T16:43:00.004Z

Penmon Lighthouse
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I have been having a look through my archives today - and found a series of photographs of Penmon Lighthouse on the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales. These photographs must be some 10 years old. They were taken on 35mm film and have been scanned from the negatives. The Penmon Penninsula is an interesting place for a walk - as well as the lighthouse, there is the chance to see Penmon Priory and Puffin Island which is about half a mile off shore.

This view shows both Penmon Lighthouse and Puffin Island.

While going through my old photographs, I also found this view of Quorn Church in Leicestershire which I like.

All of these photographs have been uploaded to Flickr. My Flickr statistics have been a bit strange for the last couple of days. I normally have between 100 and 150 views per day. Yesterday I had 471 views which more than doubles the previous highest number which I think was about 230 views. 364 of these views are listed as coming from an unknown source. I normally only have about 5 views listed as unknown source. Are my photographs suddenly more popular? Or are Flickr's statistics misbehaving? The trend has continued today. So far, there are 213 views listed with 162 coming from an unknown source. I wonder what the coming week will bring.

Barrow on Soar, Leicestershire

2009-10-09T20:15:00.002+01:00

Barrow on Soar, Leicestershire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

For this Leicestershire Parish Walk, I completed one of the three walks described in the leaflet of walks from Barrow on Soar. The leaflet can be downloaded from here. The walk I chose took me away from the River Soar over fields and wooded paths before returning through the village and passing several interesting buidings.

This is Stranscliffe Lane which starts in a modern housing estate but soon becomes a track enclosed by trees.

Stranscliffe Lane leads to Walton on the Wolds. Just before arriving there, my walk took me down a bridleway towards a footbridge over Fishpool brook. It was almost dry which is a consequence of the very dry autumn that we have had.

This fine house was the birthplace of William Beveridge who was the Bishop of Saint Asaph.

This is the Roundhouse which used to be a lock up for offenders.

The only part of the walk where wayfinding was at all difficult was the last part through the village. I lost my bearings several times in the jittys - narrow paths between houses - of which there are many in Barrrow on Soar.

Anstey, Leicestershire

2009-09-26T21:35:00.004+01:00

Anstey, Leicestershire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I used to do a lot of walking in the countryside and have decided to try it again. I am hoping to do a walk each weekend from now onwards - and of course my camera will go with me. Leicestershire County Council have published leaflets detailing walks in the county and I am using them as a starting point. My first walk was last weekend from Anstey which is to the north west of Leicester. The route took me from the village to Bradgate Park, Cropston, Crown Hills Park and then back to Anstey. The walk is about 10 kilometres or 6.25 miles. A leaflet about the walk can be downloaded from here.

Here are some of the photographs that I took along the way:

This is an old packhorse bridge which is crossed on the way out of Anstey towards Leicester.

I liked the stark outlines of this dying tree - it was alongside the path that I walked along.

The ruins of Bradgate House are in the foreground. It was the home of Lady Jane Grey who was queen of England for nine days in 1553 when she was 16 years old. Her accession to the throne was part of a plan to stop Mary Tudor becoming queen and reversing the protestant reformation. The plan failed and Lady Jane Grey was executed for treason the following year.

Part of the ruins of Bradgate House - the building on the left is the chapel and is the most complete part of the ruins.

King William's bridge was built for the visit of King William III to Bradgate Park in 1696.

Golden Eagle

2009-09-10T22:46:00.001+01:00

Golden Eagle
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

This collage is made up of photographs of a Golden Eagle that I took on a day organised by "Photographers on Safari" at a farm near Whissendine, Rutland. The photographs were taken using the long end of a 70mm - 300mm zoom lens. On the Sony A100 camera that I was using this is equivalent to 450mm and has produced the bokeh effect in the images. I have had this image printed at 15 inches by 10 inches. I mounted it in a black wooden frame which complements the image very well.

Lonely Tree

2009-08-27T22:28:00.001+01:00

near Nettleden, Hertfordshire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I came across this scene while driving one evening. The road was narrow and there was nowhere to park so I carried on until I could stop safely and walked back. I liked the quality of the evening light and the way that the tree's shadow reached across the frame. One of my most popular photographs on Flickr is of a lone tree and so it will be interesting to see how this one fares.

Lutterworth, Leicestershire

2009-08-15T21:22:00.001+01:00

Lutterworth, Leicestershire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

Over the last few weeks, Cindie, Maria and i have been making greetings cards with the intention of selling them. Actually Cindie and Maria made most of the cards - my contribution was some photocards using photographs that I had taken. Our first public outing was at the Lutterworth Carnival. When we arrived we first had to put up the gazebo. The gazebo was borrowed and none of us had ever put up a gazebo before. It took us quite a lot of trial and error to get all of the poles in the right place. It was quite windy which made it more of a challenge. Actually another gazebo broke loose and had to be chased across the field by it's owner.

Business was slow at first. We were located in a corner which meant that we did not get many people passing us. Lots of people just cut off the corner and hardly noticed us. Still those people who did come to browse seemed to like the cards even if they did not actually buy. In the end, we sold enough cards to make it worthwhile going but not as many as we hoped we would. It was an interesting experiment but probably not the best way to sell our cards. We are going to try some other methods in the next few months.

10 Photography Quotes that You Should Know

2009-07-25T19:10:00.001+01:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

10 Photography Quotes that You Should Know

View more presentations from rycoleman.

Photofunia

2009-07-18T16:10:00.003+01:00

Leicester
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I have just discovered a site called Photofunia. The site has some 100 templates into which you can insert your own photographs to produce various effects - some of them silly and some of them fun. The first result that I achieved with it is shown above. I have inserted five photographs that i took in Leicester into a template showing a view of an art gallery.

From left to right my photographs show:
The Haymarket Clock
The Curve Theatre
A milepost in Watermead Park on the National Cycle Network
The National Space Centre
The statue of Ghandi on Belgrave Road.

This is another Photofunia image - using a wall template with a picture of the bridge over the River Soar in Abbey Park, Leicester.

It is worth having a go with Photofunia. New templates are added fairly frequently and so there is always something new to try. There is a link to the site on the right hand side of this page.

Molly

2009-07-05T20:18:00.002+01:00

Molly
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

This fish is a molly with dalmation like markings.

This is photograph comes from my first attempt at photographing the fish in our tropical aquarium. I found it more difficult than photographing our cold water fish. This was mainly for two reasons - they are much smaller and they move more quickly. I used the long end of my mid range zoom lens with a +3 Cokin close up lens fitted to it. This at least made the fish a reasonable size in the veiwfinder. However there were a huge number of blurred and unusable shots. Despite the use of a close up lens, I still had to heavily crop the photographs before uploading them to the net. I will try again and hope I can get better results in the future. The photographs were taken with the ISO set to 800 and the aperture at f5.6. The aquarium lights were on. No flash was used.

This is another molly. We have four of them in our aquarium - all with different markings. I failed to get usable photographs of the other two on this occasion.

Hatton, Warwickshire

2009-06-30T21:29:00.002+01:00

Hatton, Warwickshire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I am on leave from work this week. I normally work in Warwickshire and planned to spend a day of my leave as a tourist there. I wanted to visit Hatton Locks, Baddesley Clinton and Packwood House. Unfortunately I did not do my research! A long stretch of the towpath alongside Hatton Locks was closed for repair work. Baddesley Clinton and Packwood House do not open on a Tuesday. In addition the weather was against me. Although it was one of the hottest days of the year so far, it was not sunny. It was muggy and cloudy all day with some rain showers. The result is that I came back with a lot of relatively dull looking photographs - I will just have to do the trip again one day!

This photograph shows steps leading up to one of the locks which form part of the Hatton Locks staircase.

Postscript - On the next day I discovered that all of my photographs had been taken with a circular polarising filter attached to the lens. I had not noticed it was there. That will have made a dull day appear even duller!

Pansy

2009-06-29T23:24:00.004+01:00

Pansy
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I wanted to try close up photography but at the moment I cannot afford a true macro lens. I decided to experiment with close up lenses as a more affordable option. I bought a Cokin +3 close up lens and used it at the long end of my kit lens which as a focal length of 28 - 80 mms. This is one of the first photographs that I have taken with it.

Poppy

2009-05-31T20:07:00.011+01:00

Poppy
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I have been attempting to create simple images of flowers against a white background. This is one of my early efforts. I set up a sheet of white card on a table in the conservatory and placed the poppy in a jar in front of it. I took several shots at different exposures. I especially varied the exposure compenstation. At the editing stage, I used the levels command to get the background as white as possible. I found that it was sometimes difficult to get to pure white. This is one of my more successful efforts.

A Splash of Colour

2009-04-12T09:18:00.004+01:00

A Splash of Colour
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I got the idea for this series of photographs from an article in the May 2009 issue of Digital Camera magazine. I filled a vase with water and placed it in front of a white background. I set the camera up on a tripod with a remote cable release fitted to it. Since there is nothing to focus on, I put the handle of a wooden spoon into the vase and focussed on that with the camera on manual focus. I then poured some food colouring into the vase and took a series of photographs as the colouring spread through the water. I found that a very small amount of colouring worked best. I tried blue and red colouring.

I emptied and refilled the vase four or five times and ended up with about 200 images. I then transferred them to the computer. The selected images all had to be cropped to get the final composition and to remove all signs of the vase. Other than that, the main editing was to use the levels command to clear up the background and to get it as white as possible. I also intensified the colours a bit.

The main problem with these photographs is that the vase was not clean enough. There are streaks on the outside of the glass which are visible in the photographs. I need to be careful to remove them next time. The other thing I will do differently next time is to use a vase with straight sides - the one I used was circular. I will also try using more colours in the future - and I wonder how it would look with two different colours in the water at the same time?

Finally, this quote seems apposite here:

"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality." (Pablo Picasso).

Tulip

2009-04-10T17:10:00.002+01:00

Tulip
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I planted a bowl of purple tulips last autumn. The bowl has been sitting on our patio all winter and the bulbs have just flowered. I brought the bowl indoors so that I could photograph the flowers more easily. I placed the bowl in front of a sheet of white card in the conservatory and tried to isolate one flower. I could not quite do that in camera and so this image is a crop from a larger photograph. I did not get the exposure quite right - forgot to check the histogram - but I am pleased with the result.

I have been surprised at how many of the Christmas photographs that I uploaded to Flickr last November and December have been looked at in the last few days. It is actually Easter but some people must be trying to get into a Christmassy mood!

Harris Hawk

2009-02-28T15:42:00.004Z

Harris Hawk
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

During the session that we had with the Harris Hawk, a deceased mallard was placed on a bale of hay and the Hawk allowed to land on it. It promptly began tearing away at the mallard's feathers until it got to some meat. The hawk is holding it's wings in such a way as to protect and cover it's prey.

I liked this side view of the hawk at it's meal.

Birds of Prey

2009-02-25T22:35:00.004Z

Barn Owl
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

On Sunday, I went to photograph Birds of Prey. The day was organised by "Photographers on Safari." We had the opportunity to photograph four birds during the day. They were a Golden Eagle, a Barn Owl, a Harris Hawk and an American Red Tailed Hawk. The birds were brought to a farm near Whissendine in Rutland by the Falconer. For each bird, we first took portrait shots and then took photographs of the birds in flight.

There were five photographers on the day - all of them much more experienced and better equipped than me. Our guide and instructor - John - was brilliant at helping us to get better shots. He also taught me how to use the histogram on my camera. It was worth going just for that!

I am pleased with some of the portrait shots that I got. My photographs of the birds in flight are not so good though. I need more practice at panning.

I came home with 974 photographs - by far the most that I have ever taken in one day. I was glad that I had bought an 8GB memory card a week or so before the day. I probably took over 1,000 photographs because I deleted quite a few in the field.

I enjoyed the day; learnt a lot and took photographs that I would not have been able to take in any other way. I intend to go to more "Photographers on Safari" events.

Photographing Fish

2009-02-15T22:57:00.004Z

Oranda
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I have tried to photograph the fish in our aquarium on a few occasions but with unsatisfactory results. These are the first that I have taken that are anywhere near good. I have set up a new aquarium in the last few weeks. It is much bigger than the old one which makes photography easier. The old tank also has a mirrored background which makes it look bigger than it is but also makes it difficult to get a good photograph.

The tank is glass all around and so I put a large sheet of black card behind it to give a uniform background. I first tried taking photographs in the evening using just the aquarium light. This did not work very well because I could not get a fast enough shutter speed. Many of the photographs were blurred.

Next, I tried taking photographs during the day with the room lights and the aquarium light on. This enabled me to get much faster shutter speeds although I still had to use an ISO of 800. I set the white balance to florescent - the aquarium light is florescent although the room lights are tungsten. As I usually do, I set the camera in aperture priority mode. I set an aperture of 5.6 to give me the fastest possible shutter speed. It was then a matter of taking lots of photographs and accepting a high failure rate as fish suddenly changed direction and I was too slow to keep up with them.

The two fish shown in these photographs will go back into their old tank in a couple of weeks time. I have cleaned their old home and am setting it up again for them. Their present tank will then become a tropical tank. This will give me many more opportunities to practice taking photographs of fish in aquariums.

La Shark at the 333 Club, London

2009-02-06T21:00:00.008Z

Above is a photograph of Pete Sach playing for the first time as part of La Shark. It was also my first attempt at photographing musicians in concert. I decided not to take my SLR along as I was not sure whether I would be allowed in with it. I took my compact camera instead - it is a 7 megapixel Canon Ixus 75. It allows some manual control of it's settings and so I set the white balance to tungsten and used the highest available ISO setting of 1600. I did not use flash. I got as close as I could to the stage and took over a hundred shots. Most were failures - due to poor framing and poor lighting mainly. The usable photographs needed cropping to make them usable. Next time, I hope to try using my SLR. And La Shark are a very good band - look out for them.

From my vantage point, I could not get photographs of all six members of La Shark. Above are the members that I could get close enough to photograph.

Selcuk, Turkey

2009-01-26T23:14:00.002Z

Selcuk, Turkey
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

This photograph has just been viewed for the 100th time on Flickr.

It is the tomb of Saint John the Evangelist. When he was on the cross, Christ asked John to look after Mary. After Christ's death, John and Mary made their way to Ephesus. Mary lived in a house near Ephesus during her final years on earth. John died when he was about 100 years old and was buried at Selcuck which is near to Ephesus. A basilica was built over the tomb but destroyed in the fifteenth century leaving the ruins that we see today. The ruins have been partially restored so that it is possible to get some idea of how the building might have been before it's destruction.

I had to be patient to get a photograph of the tomb with no people in it. I have read reports of people actually getting into the baptismal pool in order to be photographed but did not witness such behaviour.

Snow Globes

2009-01-25T23:27:00.004Z

Stonehenge, Wiltshire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

The March 2009 issue of Digital Photo magazine has an article about creating snow globe images. A template is supplied on the accompanying CD. I decided to give it a go. Basically you load the template into a photo editing programme and insert your photograph into the template. The photograph has to be moved around a bit to get the part of it that you want into the globe. You then adjust the number of snow flakes and the amount of snow in the bottom part of the globe.

My first attempt resulted in the Stonehenge image shown above. This photograph was taken on a hot, sunny, cloudless day in the middle of the summer. However I thought that the blue sky would be effective.

For my second attempt, I thought that I would use a photograph with real snow in it. Unfortunately, I do not have many of these. There has not been much snow in Leicestershire (or anywhere else that I have been) in the last few years. Anyway, I located a snowy photograph of Birstall Lock after a fall of snow in my archives and decided to use that.

Polaroid

2009-01-18T19:31:00.002Z

Following on from yesterday's post, I found out today that there are plans to restart the manufacture of Polaroid film. According to a post yesterday at www.savepolaroid.com, a group called The Impossible Project have bought Polaroid's film making plant and intend to start making instant film for Polaroid cameras in 2010.

Save Polaroid have an interesting group on Flickr. Click here to go to it.

I may even think of getting a Polaroid camera myself now.

Poladroid

2009-01-17T23:32:00.005Z

Florence
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I have recently discovered a program called Poldaroid. It takes a photograph and processes it so that it looks as though it was taken with a Polaroid camera. The program mimics the operation of a Polaroid camera with the sound of the photograph being taken. A blank canvas is produced and gradually develops on the desktop as you watch. Poladroid reproduces the slightly odd colours of photographs taken on a Polaroid camera - they were never quite right. In a further step towards authenticity, the program only allows ten photographs to be processed in each session. A Polaroid cartridge has the capacity to process ten photographs.

The program is a free download from www. poladroid.net.

The photograph above is an example of the output from the program. It was taken in the Boboli Gardens in Florence. There are more photographs that I have processed in Poladroid in my Poladroid set on Flickr which you can reach by clicking here. There is also a Poladroid group on Flickr which you can visit by clicking here.

Stonehenge, Wiltshire

2009-01-12T22:19:00.001Z

Stonehenge, Wiltshire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

Yesterday I decided to look through the archives of my old photographs. I was looking for photographs that I could upload to Flickr. I came across some photographs of Stonehenge that I took in 2004. I edited and uploaded four of them. This one has turned out to be by far the most popular. As you can see, the weather was very good on the day that I took it. I remember waiting quite a long time to get a shot of the stones with no people in the way. I deliberately placed the stones in the lower half of the frame in order to make the best of the wonderful blue sky.

Brussels

2009-01-03T21:34:00.004Z

This is an animated slideshow that I put together using photographs that I took in Brussels and the wonderful animoto.com website. The music by Handel. It is played by Ivan Ilic and taken from the musopen website. This site makes classical music freely available to download. You can download a complete cycle of the Beethoven piano sonatas from the site completely free which must be one of the best bargains available on the web. There is a link to the Musopen site in the right hand column.

Project 365 Finished!

2008-12-31T16:04:00.001Z

Project 365 - December 2008
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

This is the mosaic of my final batch of photographs for Project 365. December is a difficult month in which to take a daily photograph and I was grateful for Christmas lights which helped to provide a large proportion of the images. We went to Brussels in mid December and three of the photographs came from there. At the end of the month, I went to try to take photographs of birds in flight at the country park near where we live and one of these made it into Project 365.

Project 365 Finished!

2008-12-28T19:23:00.003Z

Watermead Country Park, Leicester
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I completed Project 365 today. Actually I took photographs for 366 days since 2008 was a leap year.

I decided to start and end in the same place. This photograph was taken in Watermead Country Park, Leicester. One of the entrances to the park is a few minutes walk from our house. I took a photograph of this sculpture of a mammoth on December 29th 2007. The one shown here was taken on December 28th 2008.

Why is there a sculpture of a mammoth here? The remains of mammoths have been found in the area. The sculpture is called "Silent Witness" and is by Daniel Jones. There is a plaque nearby which reads:

"The remains of woolly mammoth have been found on this site. The lie of the land has changed but little else has. At least 10,000 years have elapsed since the last herd of mammoths passed this way. Using your imagination, cast your mind back in time and gaze over the lakes....mammoths are still here - are'nt they?"

It has been a good experience to have to take a photograph every day for a year - but I am glad that the burden has now been lifted. The project has made me think more about photography and in particular how to find the photographic potential of unpromising situations. I am thinking especially of times in the winter when the days were short and I had not been able to take a photograph during the day - usually because of the need to work! Some of the photographs that I took in these situations are not good. I would not have taken them - still less put them on Flickr - if it were not for the need to satisfy the requirements of Project 365.

Since I was trying to complete Project 365, I took a camera with me virtually everywhere and at all times. This meant that I was able to take photographs that I would otherwise have missed. Having a camera with me is a habit that Project 365 has helped me to get into and which I hope is now well enough engrained that I will continue with it.

Some people continue with Project 365 after completing the first year. I will not be one of them. I want to move on to other challenges. However I think I might do it again in a few years time. It will be interesting to compare the set of photographs that I have just completed with the ones that I take then.

Self Portrait

2008-12-27T19:30:00.002Z

Self Portrait
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

This is the 365th of my photographs for Project 365. To complete this project, you need to take a photograph every day for a year. I decided to show myself in my den - and then had the idea of taking it a bit further by showing myself looking at a photograph of myself on the computer monitor. As you can see, I did not bother to tidy up before taking the photograph - although it is tidier than it often is. With a bit more time and care, this set up could produce a much better photograph but I did not have time to do that today.

This is not quite the end of Project 365 for me. This has been a leap year and so I intend to take another photograph tomorrow in order to complete the project fully. I started on December 29th 2007 and so will finish on December 28th 2008 with my 366th photograph.

Brussels

2008-12-23T23:03:00.001Z

Brussels
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

We visited Brussels a couple of weeks before Christmas. Travelling by Eurostar is very easy from Leicester since the Leicester to London train goes into Saint Pancras station. We just had to change platforms to get the train to Brussels.

In the Grote Markt, there was a Son et Lumiere show every evening. This was mostly automated but on Saturday night there was a live show. This photograph was taken during the performance. Most of the show took place on the balcony of the Hotel de Ville. Towards the end of the show, there was a coup de theatre when this stage rose from the square with the singer on top. He threw confetti in the air creating the effect seen in the photograph.

There are other Son et Lumiere photographs on my Flickr photostream.

Loughborough, Leicestershire

2008-12-07T22:54:00.002Z

Loughborough, Leicestershire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

This is the first of my photographs to be viewed 200 times on Flickr - which is some kind of landmark. It is not necessarily the best or most difficult to take photographs that get viewed frequently on Flickr. This one was taken quickly and easily. The reason for it's popularity is that it is linked from http://www.loughboroughcarillon.com - which is the website of the Loughborough Carillon. This photograph sits at the top left hand corner of the Carillon's website.

The Carillon was built as a memorial to the people of the town of Loughborough who died in the First World War. The first recital was given on 22nd July 1923. Edward Elgar composed a piece especially for this instrument. It is called "Memorial Chimes" and was played at this first recital. The Carillon is played regularly on Sundays and Thursdays.

Goose

2008-12-06T16:02:00.003Z

Goose
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I took advantage of a sunny day to take my camera to Watermead Country Park again. I used my 75 - 300 mm zoom. As I have written previously, this is a full frame lens and so on my Sony A100, it is effectively 450 mm at the long end. I mostly used it at the long end too. Attempts to photograph birds in flight all failed but I was pleased with some close ups that I was able to take. This goose posed very nicely for me!

Watermead County Park is the stretch of the valley of the River Soar which runs between Birstall and Thurmaston and has it's southern portion in Leicester. The park was made after a programme of gravel extraction had come to an end. The gravel pits have been made into lakes. Many of these are left to the wildlife but some are used for water sports such as wind surfing and water skiing. The area often floods making it useless for building development. I am fortunate to live less than five minutes walk away from one of the entrances to the park.

I saw some grebe on the water today. I would like to get some photographs of them but they were too far away from the shore. It was fascinating watching them dive below the surface and then come up quite along way away from where they had dived. I am hoping to find one close enough to the shore for me to photograph soon.

Project 365 - November 2008

2008-12-01T22:41:00.003Z

Project 365 - November 2008
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

This is a mosaic of my Project 365 photographs for November 2008. The laptop screen; the narcissus bowl; the orange and the clock signal my occasional desperation to find a subject as the hours of daylight decrease. There are signs of the seasons though in the pumpkin for Halloween and the Christmas lights. I missed out on fireworks for Guy Fawkes night though. The photographs that I like best are the cyclamen and the swan. Just one more month to go now!

If you are considering undertaking Project 365, Jason Webber has posted some excellent advice on his blog at:

http://jasonmarkwebber.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/tips-for-a-one-photo-a-day-project/

I wish I had read this before I started! Jason's tips are very pragmatic and will help anyone to complete the task of taking one photograph a day for a year.

Swan

2008-11-30T20:26:00.001Z

Swan
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I live close to Watermead Country Park and decided to take a walk around one of the lakes this morning - and I took my camera along with me. I found a platform at the side of the lake which is intended for people to use for feeding the water birds. There was no one else around and so I had it to myself. I used my 75 - 300 mm lens. This is a full frame lens which I used to use on my 35 mm film camera and so it effectively extends to 450 mm on my Sony A100. I did not have a tripod with me and so had to use it handheld. I concentrated on taking close-ups of swans. This is one of the results. I set off for home after about half an hour - it was bitterly cold and my fingers were too numb to operate the camera any longer!

Snitterfield, Warwickshire

2008-11-22T08:52:00.002Z

Snitterfield, Warwickshire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

Snitterfield is a village near Stratford on Avon. The church is a large one with hens roaming in the grounds. I would like to take photographs there in better weather conditions than I found on my visit. It was a very dull day. When I got home I decided to see what the photographs would look like in black and white - and I think that they are much better. I did the conversion in Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. I think that I would like to experiment a bit more with monochrome images. A colour and black and white version are shown above for comparison.

Halloween

2008-11-08T19:24:00.001Z

Halloween
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I drove along a long narrow lane from Barkby Thorpe this morning. I noticed that several carved pumpkins had been put on walls and posts for Halloween. I photographed this eerie specimen.

I have just finished revamping my "Stephen's Images" website. I have widened the pages; added more photo galleries; added Google Sense Ads; added videos and redesigned the menus. It should make it easier to add to and maintain in the future - and easier for visitors to.

I am now going on to revamp my "Leicestershire Churches" website which I have neglected for too long.

Brabo Fountain, Antwerp, Belgium

2008-11-02T18:19:00.003Z

Brabo Fountain, Antwerp
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

This photograph has been included in the recently revised Schmap guide to Antwerp. I must confess that I had never heard of Schmap until they contacted me to ask if they could use my photograph. I have now had a good look at their site and am very impressed. They produce free guides to various places around the world which can be viewed either on a computer or on various mobile phones - including the iPhone. Most of the guides cover North America and Europe which I guess reflects where most of their contributors are. I am going to Brussels next month and will try out the Schmap Guide to Brussels while I am there.

The photograph depicts a fountain in the Grote Markt. Brabo was a sailor who fought a giant who was stopping every ship and demanding money from the crews before allowing them to continue on their journey. Brabo defeated the giant and cut off his hand. The statue shows Brabo throwing the giant's hand into the water.

The name of the city of Antwerp comes from "Hand Werpen" meaning "throwing a hand."

This information came from the Schmap Guide to Antwerp - I said they were good! You can visit Schmap at www.schmap.com - follow the link on the right.

Barton Stacey, Hampshire

2008-10-27T22:40:00.003Z

Barton Stacey, Hampshire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I was on my way to a meeting in Salisbury this morning when I stopped to take this photograph. I was fortunate with the weather which was clear and sunny with cloudless blue skies. I needed to take a photograph for Project 365 and knew that it would be difficult later as it would probably be dark when my meeting had finished. I have took several photographs of this church and will upload more of them when I get home tomorrow. This one was uploaded from my hotel room using a 3G connection.

Ring of Fire

2008-10-20T23:05:00.001+01:00

Ring of Fire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

As the dark nights draw in, it is time to try some low light, long exposure photography. Otherwise I will never get Project 365 completed. I have about ten weeks left during which time the days will get shorter and shorter. I have to take most of my photographs in the evening after work and so this is a real problem.

The idea for this photograph came from reading an article in the November 2008 issue of Photography Monthly. I took the photograph using only the light from the gas burner. The exposure was 45 seconds at F16 with an ISO of 100.

Coventry

2008-10-18T19:24:00.001+01:00

Coventry
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

Coventry Cathedral was bombed during World War II. A new cathedral was built alongside the old when the war was over. It has become an important symbol of peace and the futility of war. This photograph shows the east window of the old cathedral captured in late afternoon yesterday.

Leicester

2008-10-12T19:43:00.001+01:00

Leicester
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I took this photograph of the Highcross Centre in Leicester this morning. While I was taking photographs, I was approached by a security guard who informed me that it was illegal to take photographs of the Highcross Centre. When I said that I was mostly taking photographs from a public road, she said that that did not matter. Taking photographs of the Highcross Centre was illegal no matter where they were taken from. She did say that the management of the Centre might give me permission to take photographs if I asked them. I did not argue with her as she was polite and was presumably only following orders.

It does seem that some property owners are getting a bit above themselves if they are claiming that it is illegal to take a photograph of a building from a public place. They may be justified in preventing people from taking photographs from within their building but I cannot see how they can claim jurisdiction over what people photograph from a public place.

This is one of the photographs that the security guard said that I should not take. It was taken from Freeschool Lane and shows the roof of the part of the Highcross Centre that includes the cinema.

London Eye

2008-10-11T16:25:00.001+01:00

London
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I have been going through my old photographs today and cataloguing them in Digicam. I came across a series of photographs that I took in September 2007 when I went on the London Eye. Most of them have a blue cast as you can see in this example. I have dusted a few of them off and put them on Flickr. I especially like the photographs of Charing Cross and the Houses of Parliament. I would like to go again at night and see how London looks then.

Squirrel

2008-10-05T13:29:00.001+01:00

Squirrel
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I took this shot a couple of days ago in Jephson Gardens, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. The squirrel was scampering around the gardens but would halt briefly from time to time. Much to the amusement of onlookers, I followed it around trying to snap it when it stayed motionless. There were a lot of failed shots but I am pleased with this one. It is actually cropped from a much larger frame. I was using a mid range zoom and so could not get close enough to fill the frame with the squirrel.

Swithland Woods, Leicestershire

2008-09-13T16:57:00.001+01:00

Swithland Woods, Leicestershire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I went to Swithland Woods today to see if I could find some fungi to photograph. I found a quiet, damp, shady place that had quite a large crop. I do not have a tripod that allows the camera to be fixed at a low level and so all of my shots were handheld. I did not take a plastic sheet or bin liner to lay on. The shots were taken kneeling down - and my jeans got damper and damper. I have not taken these kind of shots before. I think that they are OK for a first attempt.

Project 365

2008-09-03T22:32:00.001+01:00

Flash!!!
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

This is one of the desperate shots that I have taken at the end of the day in order to meet the obligations of Project 365. I do not use flash very much but on this occasion I did use it so that I could photograph it's reflection in the glass of the bathroom window. To the right is the rim of a mirror.

Chasing Rainbows

2008-09-02T22:03:00.002+01:00

Chasing Rainbows
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

It rained heavily when I was driving home this evening. I had not taken today's Project 365 photograph yet and was wondering what it was going to be. Suddenly the sun appeared and I noticed that a rainbow was forming. I was on the motorway and so I could not stop. I decided to stop at Leicester Forest East services, which were about fifteenminutes away and hope that the rainbow would still be visible. Fortunately it was. I took about 20 shots very quickly as it was raining quite heavily and I did not want the camera to get too wet. I thought about cropping the lamp post out of this shot but decided to leave it in as it helps to give a sense of scale to the image.

Project 365 - August 2008

2008-08-31T19:57:00.002+01:00

Project 365 - August 2008
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

At the end of each month, I have made a mosaic of my Project 365 photographs. This is the one for August 2008. I use the Mosaic Maker at the Big Huge Labs site - there is a link to it to the right of this post.

Most of my photography takes place outdoors. August was quite a dull month and this is reflected in the photographs. I visited Kirby Muxloe castle on a rare bright and sunny day and I think that the photograph that I took there is the best of the month. There are two photographs that speak of my desperation to get a picture taken - the ones of lights. The first is of a street lamp at the back of our garden and the other of a chandelier in our lounge.

Splash!

2008-08-30T21:48:00.001+01:00

Splash!
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I decided to try something different today. Browsing through some old Digital Photo magazines, I came across an article which described taking photographs of an ice cube dropping into a glass of liquid. I decided to give it a go. I set up in the bathroom since this was clearly going to be messy. The backdrop is a piece of black card. The glass was filled with a red berry cordial - I did not want to waste any wine. The camera was on a tripod. The bathroom is quite small and I could not get the camera as far away from the glass as I would have liked. I used the on camera flash since this is the only flash that I have.

I started dropping the ice cube into the glass and trying to press the shutter as the cube hit the liquid. Getting the timing right was a bit hit and miss. I took about forty shots. None of them really turned out how I would have liked. I hoped to get a shot in which the ice cube would be visible but this did not happen. I do not like the reflection of the flash - and the background is no longer black. I will have another go at this sometime and try to put these things right.

Mountsorrel, Leicestershire

2008-08-28T22:11:00.001+01:00

Mountsorrel, Leicestershire
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

Sometimes a very ordinary photograph suddenly gets lots of view on Flckr for no obvious reason. This photograph of a stone swan in Mountsorrel, Leicestershire is a good example. There has been a surge of interest in it over the last few days. I wonder why! Have people been searching for photographs of stone swans?

Project 365

2008-08-27T20:11:00.001+01:00

Self Portrait 08
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I decided early on that one way of keeping up with Project 365 would be to have a few themes going through the year. One of these themes was that I would take a self portrait every month. This is the eighth in the series. I am standing at the top of the stairs in our house looking into a large mirror. Light is provided through window to one side. You can also see my Sony A100 camera with which most of my photographs are taken.

Project 365

2008-08-26T21:35:00.001+01:00

Tiles
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

Here is an example of the desperate lengths to which attempting to complete Project 365 has driven me. At the end of a cold, wet day in February 2008, I took a photograph of our kitchen floor. Surprisingly, it has been viewed five times on Flickr - although no one has commented on it or made it one of their favourites. I cannot think why.

Project 365

2008-08-25T17:46:00.001+01:00

Watermead Country Park, Leicester
Originally uploaded by stephenlamb

I was going to start Project 365 on January 1st 2008 but I took a few photographs on December 29th 2007 and so I thought I might as well start then. In case you do not know, the idea is to take a photograph every day for a year and to post it on Flickr in the Project 365 group. I have managed to take a photograph every day since I started so far. Sometimes I have had to resort to desperate measures - especially on wet days and on days when night falls early. I will share some of these photographs with you on another occasion. Look out for photographs of a lamp standard in a hotel; a teddy bear and an empty vase....

I am on day 240 now - although I have not taken today's photograph yet. The most difficult time is to come - I think it will sometimes be hard to fit in taking a photograph with the demands of work during the cold dark days of November and December.

The photograph above is the first of my Project 365 images. The mammoth is in the Watermead Country Park, Leicester. One of the entrances to the park is less than five minutes walk from my home. The mammoth was placed on a hill overlooking one of the lakes in commemoration of the fact that the remains of mammoths have been found in the area. I am planning to take my last photograph of Project 365 in the same place.

Beginnings....

2008-08-24T22:05:00.000+01:00

At the time of writing, I have 1,221 photographs and videos on Flickr and also a website at www.stephensimages.com. I have decided to experiment with a blog - and this is it!

These are two of the photographs that I took today. I live just outside Leicester and went into the city centre to do some shopping and take some photographs.

This is Thames Tower which has recently been refurbished.

These tulips are on the Belgrave roundabout.