1x1

I was going to post another one of the shots from Morocco, but we travelled to Ronda today and I shot quite a bit of new stuff. We spend a few hours in the town, which is fantastic btw, and also visited this place, the bull fighting ring. Personally I am against bull fighting, but whatever your position on the subject, it is a beautiful place to visit. It's one of the oldest and most famous bull fighting rings in Spain and is steeped in character.

A storm had just passed and the light was creeping out from behind some brooding clouds, the bull ring half in and half out of shadow, I couldn't resist shooting a panoramic sequence. On returning home, I decided to try a 'little planet' creation. It's the first time i've tried one of these and, although not technically perfect, I am happy with the results of my first attempt. I hope you like it.

On the way back from shooting the sunrise, we stumbled upon these dew drop coated spiders webs. I've only isolated one here, but the whole area was covered in them, it was quite an amazing site, very hard to capture well on camera though.

I've been preparing some prints for an upcoming exhibition, details here , and stumbled across this shot, which has be prepared and ready to post since last year.

It was taken on our trip to the Czech Republic , just before Christmas last year. I'm not sure why I skipped over posting it, but it jumped out at me , so I'm putting it up now :-)

What I particularly like about the lamppost is it's perfectly straight, but the cap is tipped to the side, it's a lamppost with style! 

This is another of the Wander gesellen' or 'Wandering Apprentice' we met at the recent party in Austria. I can't remember this fellows name, but he was a friendly guy and I think that comes through in this photo.

I'm off to the British Formula 1 Grand Prix this weekend and am hiring the Nikon 200-400 VR which should be a bit of fun!

Another one in a mini-series from the archives. This was shot on Boxing Day 2006 , again in Morocco. And as I mentioned in the last post, unfortunately, this sort of scene is common place too.

We travel to Morocco every other year as Idoya my fiancée has family there, although pre-warned , I was really shocked the first time I went there and saw the poverty first hand.

Very unexpectedly and pleasantly surprising, we had a reasonable amount of snow at the weekend! Probably the most i've seen in the South of England for 10 years and in April too!

Idoya and I popped out pretty early before everyone had chance to disturb the pristine white covering and got first tracks at the local hill :-)

I've got a bunch of pictures that i'd like to post, the first being the burnt common again, featured in other entries on the site. I tried to frame this one a similarly as possible to the others, but found it difficult to find my bearings in the flat light.

The forestry commission has actually started to chop down the bracken now , as can be seen by the stumps that pepper the landscape. There are still some interesting shots to be had though.

This portrait was taken in a small square by a Church in the Czech republic. There was a small, candlelit Christmas shrine in the square which I may publish a picture of tomorrow.

This lady was sitting quietly, asking visitors for a small donation, which we did, then I asked for a shot, well sort of haggled really. I'm still getting used to asking complete strangers for a picture. Initially reluctant and shying away she turned round and gave us this beautiful natural smile!

I know posting pictures of homeless people is supposed to be a cliche and it probably is, I work in the West End of London and see a lot of homeless people, street sleepers, addicts etc.. but i'd never seen anyone begging in such an extreme manner like this, and it humbled me a bit. This style of begging , if you can call it that seems to be the trend in the Czech capital as we saw on our visit.

I don't have much more to say about this one, I think it speaks for itself.