I made a poo joke.

On the way to and from a meeting this morning, the world created some beautiful light for me to take advantage of, so I did.

I’ve always wanted to capture the quintissentially British red postbox (and phonebox, but that’s by-the-by) but it always seems really cheesy to make it the main focus of an image, so here it is vying for attention.

Another example of Southampton’s glorious architecture. It’s clear that cab drivers in their wisdom do not like this style, so this is an ode to that glorious and emotive man.

My favourite Rush album, I think.

I decided on Friday that I wanted to give film photography a go. There’s something about the results from a film camera that seem so natural and unaffected and I love that. After trawling the amazing Ken Rockwell’s site for a day (I must donate to this man, and if you use Nikon, so must you), I set my heart on a Nikon FE and began watching eBay for them. There weren’t too many, but there seemed to be some excellent examples so I quickly got really excited about it. I even bought some film! Upon unboxing said film, Charlotte delighted in telling me that she was surprised at my foray into film, as the rolls contain gelatine. My heart hasn’t sunk quite so low in some time (yes, a great indication of how easy I have life, but it’s really all relative!), and I simply had to find some vegan-friendly (my non-consumption of any animal-death-derived products isn’t really characteristic of vegetarians) film. Turns out, there’s no such thing, so that killed that!

I have, however, resolved to shoot like a film photographer. As all users of digital cameras, I am occasionally guilty of chimping, an act that I find repulsive, but occasionally useful (especially in low-light!). I am now giving this up in favour of trusting my instincts. On top of this, I will not be processing images (unless they absolutely need white balance or a touch of levels) to see if I can emulate a more natural look to my photos.

Why? Because I can (hopefully).

I know it’s childish, but I’m quite childish

Cute? Pain.

I have to get into this building. Any takers?

I’ve wanted to take those top two for ages. With the shutters down, The Hub on Lower Shirley High Street looks so simple and distraction free. Problem is, I’m usually in a hurry to get to the train station when I go past at the right time.

Same with that house, really. I missed the decent opportunity – there’s way less stuff out there now than there was before, but it still looks pretty cool, I think.

It’s gone. 4 years and 30GB of photos gone because of a stupid lapse in concentration. All my originals are just nowhere – rsync –delete really fucked me this time!

Never the one to look on the dull side of things, this presented an interesting challenge. Seeing as I don’t know exactly when it happened, the chance of an undelete was pretty slim. So I turned to Google to see what was available to me in the way of backing up my flickr photos. It’s not quite 30GB of originals, but 1145ish decentish resolution exports is much better than nothing.

There are a couple of things available, but the only notable one is Java, slow, crap and doesn’t download some photos with no explanation, so that’s that. Seeing as I basically only wanted a straight backup of everything of mine on flickr, I figured that there had to be a way that I could just get a list of all my photos so that I could archive them and be done with it. This wasn’t really the case, so I opted for using flickr’s API calls for everything in sets and everything not in sets. Because, if I ever decide to put it out in public, I wouldn’t want it getting abused; I’ve decided to use flickr’s authorisation API to confirm the user as well. It works really well, and is downloading my originals as we speak.

The only potential issue is, because it puts your set photos in their own directory, there will probably be some duplicates, but I’d rather have 2 of one than none. If you want a copy of the script, you’ll need OSX/Linux with PHP 4 at least. Leave a comment and I’ll email it over.

And, now it’s time to start a new era of photos.

We understand why it’s called fighting like cats and dogs.

Another stupid iPhone photos post.

Tasteful interior at puppy classes.

Amelie usually stands on my shoulders, but today she got comfortable, and freakish-eyed about why she could see her reflection in 2 places, I guess.

I don’t know if this is a cat thing, but she likes to hide behind things, but wonders where her tail has come from. Attacks usually ensue.

In lieu of my relinquishing social networks, I’m going to try blogging more frequently. If nothing else, I’ll write more sentences; maybe encourage some abstract thought that I don’t condense to 140 characters.

Considering today has been spent doing a godawful job of painting a bathroom, playing with a puppy in the snow and drinking nasty rum, I thought I’d post some photos of the 21st century’s answer to polaroid; my iPhone.

Dead-centre of this gorgeous, frosty sunrise, trying to stop a dog picking up and eating sticks.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t post some pictures of snow.

I love our house.

It seems that water supplies are intent on giving me crap at the moment. Luckily, the external pipe is low on my list. Downstairs toilet, however, is another matter entirely.

A few rare moments where he’s still enough to capture on the awesome iPhone camera.

Look at those legs. Since we got him, he hasn’t been a 100% proportionate dog. Funny how all his body parts grow at totally different speeds.