For some reason, my journey through photography and particularly improvements in the technology used to take photos (I’ve really not developed much as a photographer myself) has been documented in turtles. I guess it had to be something so why not an adorable shelled creature. The first attempt at capturing a turtle image ended in frustration, disappointment, nothing tangible to see, and was quickly followed by the purchase of a new camera.

Yesterday, I wrote a very short post about photos of the moon that didn’t have a lot of point to it other than ‘wahey, photos of the moon!’ I realised that previously, I might have just tweeted something like that, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Twitter is going through some stuff right now.

This was a really interesting 30 day challenge for me. For the first week or so, it went perfectly, and then, of course, life got a bit busy and I started to lose the plot. In my head, ‘take a photo every day’ had become ‘take an amazing photo and post it to your website every single day.’ That, I think we can all agree, is much more challenging.

I’ve had a few months now that are more passive, reading challenges, so it’s time to turn the creative flow back on and do something productive. I’m going for something a bit more traditional this month - it’s June, it’s potentially summer, the sun should be out more than it isn’t, and there should be an opportunity for some good photos. That’s right, it’s a 30 days of photos challenge, where the plan, quite simply, is to take a fresh photo every day.

This seems to be a bit of a tradition now, making a handful of resolutions on this blog for the coming year. I try not to put too much pressure on myself to achieve these things, because twelve months is a long time and who knows where we’ll all be at the end of it? But sometimes it’s nice to have some guidance, so I’ve got some more for 2020.

A visit by the Thames, and good use of the Spectre app.

Late last year, restaurant chain Frankie & Benny’s launched an initiative to ban families from using their mobile phones whilst having dinner. As in, handing over your phone to the restaurant while you ate, and then getting it back at the end if you were a good family and ate up all your greens. I, as well as many others, was outraged at the restaurant’s audacity, controlling streak, as well as just the general tone of disapproval of people who use phones at table.

I’ve needed a new phone for a while, and was umming and ahhing about what specific iPhone to go for. In the end, I went for the 8 Plus and now I wish I had shut up and bought it sooner because the dual-lens camera is totally incredible. I’m not a natural photographer, but every single photo I’ve taken this past week or so is the best photo I’ve ever taken, thanks to the camera. The colours are gorgeous, the focus crisp, and portrait mode is something else entirely. Now I want to take more photos of everything, everywhere all the time, and I think that is worth every penny.

To celebrate some exam success this week, I was whisked off to the Apple store to purchase some Beats goodies - bluetooth in-ear headphones, and their mini portable speaker, the Beats Pill. Both are a lot of fun, however it was an impromptu off-the-shelf purchase that has turned out to be the real revelation. I’m always keen on gadgets that make photography more accessible. In this day and age of leaving the house with powerful photographic equipment tucked in your pocket, adding peripherals can make things even better. One of my key criteria though, is that they shouldn’t make you and your camera any less portable.

I’ve stumbled across an interesting problem that hasn’t bothered me for a while. The past few months have been hectic, with all the travelling and working and stuff, but it has resulted in me actually leaving the house and taking a handful of pictures here and there. When I got back from Houston, I suddenly remembered that I had a Flickr account. I hadn’t checked in for a very long time, since before they updated their accounts to give you oodles of space for free.

So much love for this. I often forget to check xkcd but every time I do, there’s always something that resonates.

This weekend, we had chance to test out the slow-motion feature on my new iPhone. It’s something we’ve been excited about (as there aren’t that many major feature upgrades on the phone), but we needed some time and something fast moving to video. Step up some trusty alcohol. I love it. Although, I’ve realised that many of the videos I take tend to be slower things that need speeding up, but I hope to look at things a different way in future!

Since I’ve been catching up with my news and views on Feedly, I’ve been making good use of the “Save for Later” feature - particularly when I stumble across things I might want to blog about. I managed to scrawl out something on that New York swimming pool, but the rest just isn’t inspiring me for a full post. With that and the fact I’m struggling with the heat, I thought it might be better to round up some of the things I’ve saved recently in brief, rather than leave them languishing forever!

I managed a quick visit to my parents over the weekend - something long overdue. We’ve had some unseasonably hot weather recently (although what is seasonable these days?) and it really felt like spring and summer were here to stay. Of course, today it’s cold, but that makes looking at these photos all the more pleasant. It’s always nice to visit my mum and dad’s garden as they put a lot of effort into it and the results are clear.

I’m going through one of those phases where I’m working on so many projects, that this here blog falls lower down the list. I know when I’m just posting Film Watches and Casual Reader reviews that I’ve got a little bit busy all of a sudden. I’ve got several items I’ve been meaning to write about, but there isn’t time, or I’ve written myself out of words on something else, or I’m just too darned tired. The topics are there, but they’re not inspiring me into whole posts, so I thought, instead, I’d capture them in note form. I’m not usually a massive fan of multi-purpose posts, but if I don’t get these down, they’ll just sit in my notebook instead. Better to publish and be damned!

I’ve just finished watching this video (via Kottke) of a photographer who collects the best moments of sporting events and collates them all into one image. That’s oversimplifying it somewhat, why not take a look? I love the concept. A picture captures a snapshot in time, but why not extend that idea to bring in lots of singular moments into the one image.

With a reformatted Mac comes the opportunity to start things over, to organise better. I decided that I would try out iPhoto in all it’s proper glory - as in attempting to use it as a photo library, instead of as just a way to get pictures out of the iPod. I’ve sorted everything out into Events, which was pretty dull, and then I took a look at the face recognition part of it.

When I was putting my Life List together, I added a vague “photo a day” item. In my head, it was the idea of making one of those videos where you take a picture of yourself every day, and see how you change over the course of a year. Then I thought about it a bit more and realised I’m unlikely to remember to take a picture every day, I don’t really like looking at myself that much, and I can’t imagine anyone else would either, so it was a silly idea.

A rather damp looking Franck, presumably after getting out the car: Photo Credit: chkltcow

It’s always a bit of a struggle to find decent pictures for your blog. You either have to go with something you’ve taken yourself, or start battling with copyright free imagery. The answer could lie in a genius new site called PicApp. Mr C has written about this over on Sidepodcast and says: PicApp reimburse content providers via advertisements that appear when you rollover the images or during specified time intervals of inactivity. It has to be said, we’ve yet to see this in action, so it’s hard to judge how obtrusive the advertising might be. Assuming though that you can live with what appears to be a fair exchange, PicApp seems like a fine idea.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of baby animals that are cute. I’m quite specific when it comes to which ones I like, but either way, it doesn’t seem like a sensible idea to take me to a country farm show. Where there are cute baby animals. For sale. No, I didn’t get one. Sadly I didn’t have £75 on my person, but if I did… well, we could be having a very different conversation right now.

I’ve just discovered this really interesting page on Flickr (via The Next Web) which collates information from all its users and shows us which camera is the most popular. The iPhone has made quite the leap, and other graphs on the page, show that it is by far the most popular supplier of photos from cameraphones. All the point & shoot cameras are Canon’s as well, which is just plain wrong, if you ask me. We all know the best P&S camera in the world is from Lumix.

Here are some more of my favourite photos from our visit to the West Midlands Safari Park: As I alluded to in the previous post, the lions were quite popular, and the traffic backed up as we got towards the corner of the park where they were all resting. Considering how long it took to get near them, it’s only fair to come away with a great picture like that.

This past weekend, we visited the West Midland Safari Park. It hadn’t actually been part of the plan, but sometimes visiting animals you wouldn’t normally see is the only way to brighten up your day. There were the usual deer type animals, some buffalo, and plenty of zebras and things. It was the rhinos and elephants that we enjoyed seeing though. It was interesting that as we were going round, the cars piled up when we got to the lions. It was impossible to get anywhere, and we spent at least twenty minutes making our way past the big cats. Now, lions are exciting, I will grant you that, but when there are elephants just around the corner? No competition.

Credit: David Merrett/Flickr Not sure about the turn-ups, but if anyone can pull them off, FKM can.

Back in December, I discovered Picnik, an easy to use photo editing web app that pretty much made my day. Just recently, particularly with the introduction of my gardening pictures, I have returned to Picnik and love it even more than I did last time. The best thing about Picnik is that it is unbelievably easy to use. If you are editing a lot of pictures, or particularly massive ones, it may be a little too slow. For heavy use, I imagine it could be frustrating. However, for simple pictures, one off retouches, and really easy functionality, I think Picnik is for you.

If you are not already subscribed to The Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog then you should go there right now and do so. Bookmark it, copy and paste the RSS feed, do whatever you have to do so that you don’t miss an entry. And when you’ve done that, go back through the archives and enjoy what you have already missed. The Big Picture is a collection of photographs around a particular theme, telling a story that is in the news at the moment. It has no agenda but just wants to spotlight moments from our lives that should not be forgotten. The subject matter can vary from week to week. Space missions get good coverage, Formula 1 is how we were first introduced to it, the tennis got a mention this week. Very often, there are harrowing images from war-torn countries, or places desperately trying to recover from a natural disaster.

Whilst I was searching Flickr for some cute baby panda photos, I came across this project called One Thousand Portraits. Naturally, the premise is to take 1,000 pictures and it’s a very simple idea. Our project is a true portrait of Britain created by photographing 1,000 people. We stopped everyone who crossed our path on the streets of London, excluding nobody, asking the same question more than fifteen hundred times.

Earth Day was about a month ago, and I misssed it. I didn’t feel particularly guilty at the time because it seems to be a US holiday, but everything since then has been telling me how green I should be. Firstly, Boston.com’s Big Picture - which features sets of brilliant photos around a certain theme, if you’re not subscribed to this already, do so now - had some shots of Earth Day, which are really beautiful.

There’s a great new post on the Internet Blog regarding the BBC’s use of Flickr. They’ve got a group for users to add and source pictures that show up on the all over the site, specifically on the iPlayer and the homepage. I find it fascinating that not only is amateur photography becoming a mainstay for the most professional of organisations, but also that they can be so open and honest about it. Spotted a picture you like on the BBC? Check out Flickr, you may find it there and be able to comment directly to the photographer.

The official Franck site has recently uploaded some more pictures to the gallery, featuring photos throughout the man’s career. Whilst perusing these pictures, it reminded me of something from Autosport International. We were busy stalking FKM, as expected, and he was asked to pose in front of the Peugeot car, with fellow driver Nicolas Minassian. The photographer said: “Let’s see some smiles.” And Franck muttered something like: “I am smiling.”

The Mac doesn’t really have any cheap and cheerful image editing software. You’ve got the very limited features of iPhoto, and then you’ve got the expensive software of Fireworks and others. I don’t do that much image editing, as I let the other half invest in the software. However, as I intend to blog more, I at least want the ability to resize and crop as needed. I discovered Picnik.com recently, and it is amazing.

TV Scoop: TV Review - Sleeping with my Sister, Channel 4, Thursday, March 27, 9pm (Link retired) I didn’t watch it, and to be honest, it creeps me out a bit. Eastenders: HILARIOUS!!! Bianca’s Jackson Five Spoof Video - Unreality Primetime (Link retired) Clearly the singing leaves something to be desired, but now the song is stuck in my head. 10 Millionth Article Written on Wikipedia I don’t know why, but I would have thought more than 2.3 million of them were English.

We went to a firework display recently. As is our way, we arrived late to the display, but nothing had started yet. We found an empty spot, climbed a fence, got a good view, set up the camera, and were ready to go. The countdown began. 3, 2, 1… Whoosh. The first fireworks went up. We tried to get some pictures, but nothing really worked. The lenses weren’t really capable of what we wanted from them given the dark, and the exposure time and things like that.

Because we live in England, and wanted to go out and take some pictures with the new camera, it rained all weekend. But that’s okay, instead of moaning about it, we decided to go back to the scene of the crime and get a picture of that damn turtle. This is the new picture. You obviously have to ignore the fact that the water is murky, there’s not much I can do about that, especially as it was feeding time and the fish were churning up the tank something terrible. The fact of the matter is, the turtle is in focus, and that’s all I care about.

Those that read instruction manuals, and those that try everything in their power not to. After the fiasco of the snapping turtle incident (see what I did there? Snapping pictures, snapping turtles? Oh, come on, it’s Monday morning!), Mr C decided to go out and buy a new camera. It is the best camera ever. The first thing I did, was take it out the box and root around for the battery pack. Mr C, however, picked up the instruction manual, turned to page 1, and cleared his throat.

Last time I went to an aquarium, I mentioned how difficult it is to take a picture of a fish. Firstly, they are behind glass. Secondly, the lighting is usually terrible. Thirdly, these damn fish like to swim around - a lot. And fourthly, I have the worst camera in the history of the world, ever! I took Mr C to such an attraction this weekend, and whilst we got some pictures of stationery things (eg. starfish, anemone, coral), the best bit was the turtles.

Towards the end of December, I ordered something off the internet. I really wanted to support the project, because I’m becoming more and more interested in people self-publishing. Plus I like photographs. The money was taken in early January but I didn’t see anything for a month. After emailing to chase it up, I discovered the order had got lost and would have to be redone, meaning another 2-4 week wait. I wasn’t best pleased with this, so I chose the refund option instead.

My father has been in the habit of buying himself a new camera for his birthday every year, and he passes his old one to my mother who then passes her old one to me. It works pretty well, and I’ve just recently become the proud owner of a snazzy silver number, with a great zoom in facility. I hate getting my films developed at a counter. I do not like the whole charade of taking a slip and waiting an hour or until the next day and going back in there and knowing that they’ve looked at all my photos. I know they see hundreds of photos a day and mine are hardly going to interest them, but that feeling is always there. I don’t like them having seen what belongs to me before I’ve had a chance to look. I don’t like the knowing air they have about them. I would much rather send my prints off to a company such as Truprint, and have the pleasure of only an envelope looking at me in that knowing way, rather than a person.

Today, I almost managed to finish reading the whole of The Economist. I’m getting closer and closer every week, but my worry is that I won’t ever actually reach my goal. This week’s edition had no surveys in it and had only the basic sections, two special reports, stories from different countries plus business and finance. If I couldn’t read it when it’s at its smallest, when will I ever be able to?