echohelloworld

Let me tell you right now, clipping the claws of rabbits is a painful business. That having been said, they’ve been so good tonight. I don’t know whether they’re grateful or whether they just don’t want us to be mean to them again. Either way, it’s been nice. Rabbits are awesome pets.

I entered one of my photos in an arbitrary forum-based photography competition. The theme fit so well with what I’ve been doing this week, I couldn’t not enter. I don’t care about or expect to do well, but who knows - some validation is always nice. It could, however, go either way!

On a totally unrelated note, the film 25th Hour is very good, if you watch it, don’t be surprised if the end makes you feel like you wasted 2 hours.

Yeah, it’s very similar to last night’s. I’m so incredibly tired, I thought I’d take advantage of Southampton’s architecture again. The way this week’s going, it’ll probably be more of the same tomorrow, too!

This is slightly late (though it was taken on Friday!). I had to be in Salisbury today for a mate’s birthday party, so I thought I’d kill some time with my camera before we all had to meet up. I remembered that I’d never actually spent any time in the grounds of the Cathedral; it’s an incredibly beautiful building so I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult. I spent about an hour wandering round the building, getting frustrated that I couldn’t get the perspective right and it was too late in the day so the side I wanted to shoot was in front of the sun. It was a disaster. Most of the shots I ended up with put the tower in totally the wrong perspective and made it look tiny, so about 75% of them were binned straight away! (more…)

Today, the picturesque village of Lyndhurst taught me that just because you’re picturesque, doesn’t mean you’re photogenic. Forests are not really that interesting, and neither are graveyards (which is annoying because I was hoping they would be!).

I do, however, like horses (well, all animals really) and this guy wasn’t scared of me at all. Good for him!

This really sums up today’s weather. It rained, then some more, then some more so we stayed in and had cookies. I wanted to take some macros but all the bugs are probably in having cookies too. Charlotte went and grabbed this fuschia flower, and water droplets were clinging to it and retaining their shape (there must be a name for this).

I have no idea what the magnification of this is, but the droplet is about half a mm across in real life. It was taken with 64mm of stacked tubes and a Raynox MSN 202 at 70mm. It’s ridiculously difficult not to shake when taking photos at this magnification, I think VR will help one day!

(centre!)

So, Charlotte had her theory test today and passed. Not that I ever doubted her, but an individual’s own self doubt is enough to throw yours into question from time to time. I wandered all around the dock gate 20 end of Southampton this morning, but the horrible weather wasn’t really that inspiring. I had a good stab at South Western House, too but I think that would greatly benefit from a nice sky so I posted this one instead.

I absolutely love this kind of architecture and Southampton has it in droves. Huge blocks of concrete with amazing adornments and unlikely symmetry that were probably put up in the 60s - I’m likely to post a lot of that sort of thing. I love the external staircase on this building, it looks like it has a corresponding half that someone moved.

I don’t use my camera nearly enough. I spent loads on it last year, then just didn’t use it, then I was alerted to a deviantart user named yellowpumpkin, who’s taken a photo every day for the last year, and some of them are totally amazing. I haven’t had chance to go through all of them, but he really inspired me to get out with my camera. This afternoon, not content with settling for bunny/girlfriend-related photos on the first day, I went for a wander up the Avenue in Southampton. Every day I drive down there, I see a little corner of amazing-looking graffiti that I always mean to check out, so today seemed like the perfect opportunity! (more…)