Living the Dream

This photo makes me laugh and cry in equal measure. Cry, because it's just a bit too darn unclear and if I'd only been standing about a foot further forward in the crowd it would have been a really awesome picture because you'd be able to see the guy's face properly instead of just a weirdly bright nose and mouth. In case you can't tell, it's a guy sitting on his friend's shoulders at a concert, facing into the stage lighting and getting overexcited. Laugh, because the band in question were S Club 3, the last survivors of S Club 7, who were actually surprisingly good, considering. Bradley, Paul and Jo brought the house down with their renditions of such classic songs as "Reach (For the Stars)" and "Bring It All Back", to an ecstatic audience of twentysomethings. Paul may now looks like a chubby builder straight off the site, but their enduring appeal would seem to live on.

The Mermaid Inn

The Mermaid Inn

After my gap year travels were over, I went with my family on a summer holiday to Wittersham, in Kent. This is a photograph I took in Rye, another nearby town of the Mermaid Inn pub (see the silhouette of its sign?). I can't remember if we even went in the pub, but I do recall darting back to take a picture as the sun was setting and my family were heading off up the road.

Diorama of Iguana

Green Iguana at London Zoo

A photo of a Green Iguana at London Zoo. Although this one is extremely and obviously green, apparently these iguanas come in a range of colours, from multicoloured to red. These iguanas are pretty awesome; they have an extra photosensory organ on the top of their heads which is known as the parietal eye. While it's nowhere as developed as their actual eyes, it can detect movement and changes in light and dark, thus helping the iguana to detect predators coming in from above - a useful feature in a tree climbing lizard. Their actual eyes are able to see into ultraviolet wavelengths, so the iguana is easily able to ensure it gets enough UV light to produce sufficient vitamin D.

It's admittedly not an amazing photograph, but it's darn tricky getting a good picture through a scratched glass tank!

Wax & Wane

A photograph of a candle, in case you had difficulty working that out. Wikipedia, my trusty guide, tells me that while modern candles are usually made of paraffin, back in the day they could be made from beeswax, tallow, or even spermaceti extracted from the head of a sperm whale. Poor sperm whales. I was amused to note that their scientific name is physeter macrocephalus. I confess don't know what "physeter" means, but "macrocephalus" translates as "bloody big head".

I was also intrigued to discover that sperm whales have the largest mammalian brain both in proportion to its body size and mass, and is the only living creature that has a gullet large enough to swallow a human whole. The most famous sperm whale is obviously Moby Dick, but I have to admit that I wasn't a fan of the book. The only aspects of it that I really enjoyed were the ones in which Herman Melville got into the scientific aspects of whaling. There's nothing like the smug feeling of reading an author whose book you're not enjoying strenuously denying the existence of the blue whales we now know really do exist. Okay, so Melville was a Victorian living in the pre-Attenborough age, but that's not the point.

Little Bit of Lichen

A photograph of a rather lichen-covered bit of wood (in fact, it's the top of the same wooden post in the same stile as a previous photograph). I like the texture and the colours - really I have to admit I'm all about colours when it comes to photography. Some monochrome photography does appeal, but on the whole I'm definitely drawn to pictures where the colours are particularly intense, or unusual, or contrasting.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas candle

I have been most remiss at updating recently. This is largely due to Christmas. I apologise greatly. However, to make up for it, here is a lovely picture of a Christmas candle. There's nothing about the candle that makes it inherently christmassy other than the fact that I took the picture on Christmas day. And obviously any candle that is lit on Christmas day is a Christmas candle. It stands to reason.

Merry Christmas!

High Drama

A rather lovely and highly melodramatic rose, still covered in raindrops after a brief shower. I always find it tricky to get nice pictures of roses, and this took an awful lot of attempts, but I'm fairly pleased with how it came out! Worthy of a tragic romance...

Glass Light

This is actually a shot of the very modern stained glass windows at Buckfast Abbey which I mentioned previously. As well as the very traditional main building of the church, complete with elegant windows depicting various saints, they have a large and startlingly modern chapel section right at the back. The entire east wall of this chapel is taken up with a stained glass depiction of Jesus which, to be honest, I found wildly disconcerting. It's something that I would associate more with the very commercialised wings of American evangelism rather than a community of Benedictine monks, but there you go. Personally I'd rather not be stared at by a giant Jesus with square pupils, but whatever floats your boat. Or illuminates your monastery, possibly.

Anyway, alongside freaky Jesus there were some modern abstract stained glass windows which I actually rather liked, and this is a close-up short of some of the chunks of glass. I like the texture particularly.