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.

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.

This is another shot from the dusty mountain village in Morocco and was taken shortly after shooting the Mercedes that I posted yesterday. Again, the main thing that attracted me to these gas canisters was the beaten up texture.

As for the processing, I have enhanced the foreground/background separation by increasing the defocusing of the background using a mask, in addition the canisters were originally blue, but I adjusted the hue to a rusty red to suit the surrounds and overall toning. Although simple, this is one of my favorite shots of the whole trip.

Today's shot was taken last week on our trip to Morocco. We stopped off in a small mountain village near to Asila and amongst the hussle and bustle of the market town I found this beaten up old Mercedes, at least that's what I think it is - the badge is missing.

I just love it's beaten up old texture and grime, it really caught my eye. This shot was taken using my new Nikkor lens - 24-70mm f/2.8, and i'm really pleased with the quality it produces, particularly the depth of field.

I'll be posting more shots of the textures, places and people of Morocco over the coming days.

Well this is the 1st time i've had the pleasure of making one of these. It been a great year and looking back over the posts from this past year reminds me of the diversity and change that has happened over the last 12 months.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by, I'd like to wish you all a very Happy New Year, and as i'm in Spain I should really say '¡Feliz año nuevo!'

It's been a long time... As you can see from this shot, I'm not in England this Christmas! In fact we're in Spain right now after a wonderful 5 days in Morocco. Christmas day saw us go to the beach, where my finacees brother enjoyed riding the waves.

After a busy end to the year, I've finally been able to get out and shoo, taking a nice collection of shots from Morocco and Spain to post over the coming days.

This is a shot of one of my favorite trees, albeit a background feature in this image. I've been struggling to keep up with posting recently as my photography and web business has really taken off, which is good.

One of the other shots featuring this tree can be found here... Oak 1 and here Oak 2

This is probably the last in the series of posts and is one of my favorites.

One more from the current misty dawn series, I have one or two more to post and then that's it. This is one is taken just after sun up.

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.

Up early this morning and got out to shoot the sunrise, there was a wonderful mist hanging over the landscape this morning, it was so beautiful , it makes you realise you are lucky to be alive.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the last one, this shot is not massively disimillar the last, but I like the rays raking across the tree and the warmth to it.

You know summer has ended and you are in Autumn when the mist starts to appear in the mornings.

This happens to be one of my favorite times of the year, for photography anyway. This particular morning there was a lot of fog and the sunshine was just breaking through. I'll be posting a few more of these in the coming days.

I don't post or process many HDRI's , but this one I like. The barns lined up perfectly and with a very bright sky I wanted to capture all the detail. The HDR generation was done in Photomatix Pro with 3 exposures.

This was taken on our visit to the fantastic Eden Project in Cornwall. If you're in the UK this place is well worth a visit.

Well, it's seems i'm finding it harder and harder to find time to post at the moment. My VFXY ranking is slipping all the time, if anyone cares to add me as their favorite maybe I can climb back up :-)

The reason for the lack of posts is i've started a new business, which is going well, I just happen to be spending more time building other people's blogs that posting on my own.

With all that out of the way , I can talk about this entry. We've had lots of rain this summer in England, the only positives I can take from that are : there have been some fantastic cloudscapes to shoot!

This is the calm after the storm and I have resisted processing this one much, i'm trying to focus on natural colours and improve my photography in camera.