As any one in the U.K. will know, this has been one of coldest winter spells we have had in a number of years ,with temperatures set to drop below -5c this evening the media are dubbing it 'The big freeze', and rightly so! There is widespread snow and ice and as a consequence everyone is complaining about traffic problems especially in the lead up to the holidays

I actually love the cold weather - especially the snow - as it makes a change from the usual grey damp weather we usually experience here around Christmas time.

For one thing the landscapes around here are stunning at the moment and I got the opportunity to get out on Saturday and take a few shots.

Today's post is a subject I have photographed before in the summer ( see Oak 1 and Oak 2).

It was interesting for me to revisit this spot and see the tree without it's leaves. I did manage to get a couple of shots from a similar angle to the previous 2 and tried compositing one over the other - which was cool. I may post a comparison next.

Moving on from that, the obvious next step will be to take another couple of shots in Spring and Autumn and complete the series.

Well, I haven't posted anything on the blog for a long long time..

From starting Lightflows a couple of years ago, I've changed careers and am now working professionally as a photographer, which is a dream come true. The down side is, I am so busy working and promoting the business I haven't had time to sit down a post!

Any how... we've just returned from a pre Christmas break to Prague in the Czech Republic and I actually found time to relax and take some pictures for fun!

Prague really is a supremely picturesque city - with it's Christmas markets, interesting shops and alleys, wrapped up in the Eastern European architecture it's a photographers playground.

This shot is of some art installations we saw in one of the plaza's or squares in the town, there were a bunch of other interesting pieces to see, but this cage around the lights was the most attractive to me.

Hopefully I'll have more time to post over the holidays, and that just leaves time to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas!

It's been ages since I've posted any new photographs on Lightflows, but was prompted back into action this week.

It was my great pleasure to appear on BBC1's Countryfile program this evening to help Chris Packham and Jo Brand launch the programmes 'Wild and Wonderful' Photography competition.

The photography section of the CountryFile programme was partially filmed at Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, a location famous for being the home of Winnie the Pooh.

Filming took place in the last week of April and I was pleased to arrive on location just after sunrise to capture these early morning mists. A number of the shots taken on the day made it into the final show. All in all it was a fun afternoon and the production team and presenters, Chris Packham and Jo Brand were a really good laugh.

This Episode is available to view on the BBC iPlayer here until next Sunday 17th May.

I found this shot sitting in my archives, it was taken last year at Goodwood. The 'Goodwood festival of speed' is an annual hill climb held a Goodwood park and features sports cars from multiple generations and genres.

Sitting in front of the stately home, this amazing structure, constructed from girders with Landrovers mounted on them was a sight to behold, it has a really surreal quality to it, an angular monolith.

This isn't normally the sort of shot I would post on Lightflows and it wasn't what I was intending on photographing this day, but this little chap landed alongside me whilst I was framing up a landscape shot. He was only a couple of meters away and I couldn't resist taking a photograph, so I've decided to post it!

I've been busy working on an update to the site. I am changing my hosting next month and felt that with that upgrade I would re-vamp the site a bit - It was coded when I was new to html and css and I've learned a bit since then. That said, it's not going to be a radical change, I'm going to add some new features, like a 'collection browser' , groups of images that work well together as a collection. The blog will pretty much be the same with maybe some graphical additions here and there. Should be up next month...

This is definitely one of my favorite shots of the year, the recent hoar frosts have created simply the most spectacular cold weather I have ever seen in England. On days like this I feel grateful to be a photographer, and appreciated how lucky I am to live in the beautiful countryside that surrounds Guildford.

This image is actually a stitch of 3 separate exposures, the widest lens I had on me was a 24mm , and that didn't quite show the whole panorama that I was seeing, so I re-constructed the shot using PTGui to stitch the images together. The color's have been slightly enhanced, with a warm cast removed from the snow.

Update

I've just been looking through some of the other shots taken on this day and realised that the pictures I stitched were taken on my Canon G10 not the Nikon D300, I've updated the EXIF info accordingly

Continuing with the cold theme, here's another shot from the weekend. I can't describe how truly beautiful the frosts have been here, maybe even more beautiful than fresh snow. I'll be putting up some more landscape shots in the next few days.

I'm taking a break from the Moroccan series as we've had some amazing weather over the past days and I've been out shooting quite a bit. It's been an unusually cold winter here in South England and the last few days have seen extreme hoarfrosts, beautiful white crystals covering everything. It is truly beautiful.

Another shot from my recent trip to Morocco, this one was taken in one of the souks, or markets, that can be found in Tangier.

O.K. so after a little detour into Spain, I've returned to the Morocco series I had intended to post.

This shot is from the dusty little village we visited just outside Asila in Northern Morocco and must be the local taxi rank. This shot was taken from the car window on our way out of the village, and again, what attracted me the the subject, is the texture and colours of the building and the colorful character sitting on the chair.