This link will take you to the start of my blog. where, when finished reading a page, click on next entry to see the rest of the work (some of the photos are really worth the effort of flicking through..)

oh and make sure you leave comment’s!

This blog is dead now, in the way that I have run out of room to add any more photo’s and that was what I made the blog for.. so I no longer add to it… I keep it online though as a standing portfolio of my work for friends to view my shots.

(see the writing following these photo’s)

I have set myself a personal challenge to photograph each bird of prey. They are absolutely beautfiul creatures..

This summer I was sat in my car, waiting for my mother to finish helping out a friend, farming one of his fields.. as I sat listening to the radio looking through the windshield.. what looked like a pied wagtail landed in front of the car, about 6 meters from me. I went for my camera sat on the passenger seat next to me, but soon pulled my hand back, realising the bird was hidden amongst the stubble of the field and I wouldn’t see anything to photograph. (big error) I stayed with my eyes on that spot waiting for a development that might be photo worthy when a red/brown streak of speed struck onto the spot the bird had landed.

Seeing the kestrel pause for a second before taking off left me scrambling for my camera, cursing myself for not having the lens trained on where the pied wagtail had been as i would have captured the swoop.

I left the car behind and chased after where the bird had flown hoping for a glimpse of it flying away.. turning around the hedge row I saw it sat upon a telegraph pole, enjoying its meal:

Trying to move closer in such an excitable state resulted in me being spotted:

Which made the kestrel fly away:

After landing on this tree, It then thought it’s position compromised and flew to another field. Such a Beautiful bird.

Well, I have just recieved a message from WordPress saying I have reached my size limit on this blog. So I cannot load any more photos without deleting previous ones. This marks the End of my Blog.

I know the arguments towards having thumbnails on here, with the actual photo’s loaded on another server, like flickr. This isn’t good enough… This blog was created for my photographic exploration, If to see the photo’s, you need to go to another server.. I might as well just use another site as my page. I will do this eventually.. now I am too busy, and making this Blog has been an interesting learning experience. Hopefully it will make my own site all the richer when it comes to being made.

It is a shame, as it doesn’t even seem to have got off the ground yet, but maybe that is a good thing, it would be more upsetting for a blog with a viewer base to hit this brick wall.

If you are interested in seeing any more of my photographs, visit www.alamy.com and search for seriousplay, under that name I am selling photo’s through this stock photography library, because of the nature of this sites admission requirements, it is a much slower process to get photo’s in, than it has been to load onto this site. This will change by the end of the year with alamy providing an online submission system.. As for now, i have sent off another 20 odd photos on DVD. (or i will have before the end of this morning) so it should be updated within the week i would hope.

so don’t expect the same speed of updates

I guess this is goodbye. For those of you I have not met, but have recieved encouraging comments off you, thankyou. Goodluck with your own photography and never stop experimenting. For the rest of my friends.. it was fun while it lasted. – I guess this means now you have to come and see me to go through my portfolio! cake all round!

The following photo’s are ones I have taken over a period of time from the first day i got my dslr to yesterday with the cemetary on smithdown road.

The first couple of shots are taken around Rocky Lodge which with its age, had some gorgeous textures:

This photo was taken yesterday across the nearby cemetary in Liverpool

Returning after dusk as well meant photo oportunities were few and far bettween. Annoying that the sky is overcast in this photo.. but the Virginia Creeper was too beautiful to neglect…

This next photo came about after the winter lull. The rapeseed fields came out, creating a blanket of yellow for the lodge to sit on if you looked at it from the right angle… This angle was achievable by sitting on the back of Tiny. Our biggest horse at 18’1″ She was a Beautiful pony and my favourate. Sitting so high meant you looked down on Everyone, and you could see over the hedge bordering this rapeseed easily making this photo possible!

At this time, the woods started coming to life with the rhodedendron explosion i alluded to earlier.. these following photos demonstrate how beautiful they were..

This being a view of how it covers the pathways in the wood. A magical time of year..

I would go over to feed Donkey, then walk across the course and sit by the lakes. One of the ducks was patrolling the course with her entourage of eight ducklings.. One morning I sat beside the smallest lake, trying to get a good shot of the coots..

Across the lake from me, I observed the Duck slipping into the lake with her Ducklings following.. so I focused on these instead of the coots which hadn’t seen me and ended up swimming directly in front of my camera!

They were under pressure from the Coots in this lake, and so they swam back past me again and left.. i made the decision to follow them, trying not to be seen.

as i moved back through the bushes i was sat in and crept around the reeds on the border of the lake, i knew i was coming up to a path with another lake the other side of it. I predicted the Duck would take her family across and into the other lake and set my Camera up in anticipation..

After having walked down the path towards me and slipping into the next lake, i followed them along, seeing they were not settling and making way for the other edge of the lake, i got out of eye shot and ran on ahead..

I nearly ruined my chances then, having ran ahead of them and setting my camera up… in credit to how quiet i was setting up, the ducklings and duck didn’t hear, and they pushed through the reeds one meter from my postion.

This wasn’t good for either of us, i wasnt fully set up and was too close to focus with the lens i was using anyway.. The Duck then saw me and ushered her babies back into the lake.. before getting back in, this little fella walked further away to find a break in the reeds.. – into focus for me!

Staying put and not moving any more, i hoped they would not be disuaded from their exit of the lake from this side.. which paid off for they got out further up the field from my position..

They were heading directly for the Largest lake of the course, over a stretch of green cut close for the golfers and offering no cover for the Ducklings.. I waited for them to get about 5 minutes into walking across then disregarded subtlety and picked up my equipment and strode over to the Lake parrellel to their migration.. Thinking she would not risk crossing this vulnerable stretch of land with her little ones without determination to get there.. led me to believe she would not turn back after having got so far into the green and then seeing me.

I was right, she saw me as soon as i moved, but being behind her, she had no choice but to keep on moving… she couldn’t go faster or fly away without leaving her babies behind, so i moved on ahead and set up next to the rough bordering the next
Lake. Catching this photo as she led them into the rough:

Once in the rough, she stopped them all and rose above the grasses to look for me, but i had frozen minutes before and she assumed i wasn’t such a threat..

I now had the opportunity to scout this Lake, it was a strange choice for her, it was huge, with it being july (and ours was so hot this year) the water was low on the banks, meaning any potential protection from reeds was left higher up the banks and dry.

The water was one huge, open expanse and after discovering her discomfort with her babies in vulnerable open spaces, I guessed she was not planning on going for a leisurely swim.

She was heading further up the Lake than where i was, obviously disconcerted by my presence.. but the only local protection was from a bunching of reeds in front of me.. I couldn’t see her wanting to go anywhere else, so i shot into postition, getting as close to the edge of the Lake i could without getting wet.

I scared some moorhens out from the reeds as i settled down and set my tripod up but then keeping still, they returned after a minute.. finding then the Duck and her posse were swimming through the extremities of the reeds.. Pleased with accurately thinking like my prey i began shooting their progression up until they were two meters from me, standing on the stones at the edge of the lake and bathing for 20 minutes or more…

It was a great morning for me, seeing them leave their bathing and go over to the side of the Lake to have a nap i decided i had enough as well, there was no more action with the Ducklings and all the anticipation of earlier had quite worn me out.. besides.. the heat of the day was picking up…

What also acted as a compliment to me that morning, that was when i had finished shooting and stood up.. four moornhens burst from the reeds in surprize and the Duck also perked up paying renewed interest in me.. I had been sitting so still, none of them even knew i was there!

This was a shot when they settled down to rest..

Waheee!!

The next photo was taken at Rocky Lane too, I loved the detail of the craters so this photo makes me smile.. through that i wanted to share with you guys…

hope you like them!!

Me and my mother moved into Rocky Lodge for one year, the owners were going to rent it out to trial a new house they moved into, and mum, needing new stables for her horses, wanted to realise a dream of hers, to have her stables on her property.. to be able to wake in the morning and walk up the garden to the horses rather than drive to rented stables..

So we moved into Rocky Lodge:

Never before have i lived in a place that i truely love as a home, somewhere i have wanted to invite friends back to, Just to see the place.. Or not want to leave even to go out socially!!

The doors that are visible in this photo led to the stairs that climbed to my bedroom (the Whole converted attic!) The gate in the forground marked the end of the property, and where i am standing, taking the photo, is Thickthorn wood.

Even with the distortion of a short focal length, you can see it is close.. step out of my door and land in a wood!

This post is my homage to my wood So beautiful in spring:

When the Rhodedendrons came out the wood was awash with colour. I’ll save images of that nature for another post, yet this image as the petals fell from the rhodedendrons evokes strong memories for me:

This was also recurrent for me in the woods.. stalking around with my camera and my puppies.. we’d often chance across Muntjack and rabbits.. even buzzards when i was really lucky

I was so pleased when i discovered how this buzzard came out, it flew over my head from a tree i walked near by, within the first week of aquiring my dslr, i wasn’t so efficient at using it at this time and with my inexperience, i saw the bird and reacted, i shot the bird, thinking ‘it will only be a sillouette, but it is my first shot of a bird of prey‘

To see how the sun caught over its neck illuminating the bird throughout.. What a catch!

This was one of my favourate view’s out from the wood across the neighbouring fields… i am going to miss this place whilst surrounded by concrete, glass and steel for the next two years!

These two photo’s (above and below) should strike a cord with Anisha (a good friend of mine from Liverpool, well on her way to being trained as a vet – Lock your pets up Tight guys..) She was shooting her own shots next to me as i took it!

Finishing with one of my favourate views of the wood itself… Spring was a beautiful time..

Joel soon realised the error of his ways, now having trapped himself in the field… pleading with the photographer for assistance.. – too many days spent watching nature documentaries left the photographer with a strict ideology of no interference with the subjects however:

So instead, Joel tried to escape for himself…

Too late… the dogs were released and a viscious attack ensued… (he put on a brave face.. poor lad)

None of the Adults paid any attention to the drama as they were concentrating soley on his Brother, who felt incompetent as all he could do was anxiously watch in anticipation…

then things tipped into the kids favour with an excellent demonstration of swordsmanship, he fended the giant of a dog off untill it got bored and followed my girls barking into the woods after some rabbit or other…

N.B all events depicted in this post are purely fictitious and in no way was any puppy injuried in the making of this documentary.

As a post script to this, i have added photos of my puppies in their own page too. might take a while to load.. but they are so pretty… worth it no?

New Vibes

New vibes is an event organised at the Patrick Centre as part of the Birmingham Hippodrome. Each year they invite local Choreographers to apply for a dance slot (approx 12 mins in length), where, if they get selected, they perform to a potential audience of 190 people. An oportunity to showcase your abilities like this is incredible for up and coming performers and Choreographers..

Two of my friends that i met through Gymnastics are budding Choreographers and they decided to apply to New Vibes the summer just gone.

While i was in India, i heard they had been accepted. and, estimating when i would be home from my trip, they were enthused as i would be able to watch the show. – as it worked out, i came home earlier than expected from India, not being able to justify to myself the extra £100 it would cost to postpone my return flight.

This meant i was back in England before my friends had got very far into rehearsals for the show, they had managed one before i was back.. so Kate (Choreographer extraodinare) who is one of my best friends, met at Gymnastics, she introduced me then to kung fu! – recruited me into the show. I became the Seventh dancer, with Kate, Hannah, Ruth (yet another Gymnast friend!) and Jane (Kates younger sister) i joined David, Leah and Laura, friends of the others that I met when rehearsals began.

This was my First oportunity to see the workings of theatre since developing my passion for photography.. with a mind for taking photos for promotional work i brought my camera to rehearsals… for the majority of them, i had no use for the camera, focusing on learning the routine’s and not having a particularily photogenic room to work with.

Our Technical rehearsal however, was Amazing. I risked the wrath of Kate to play with my camera with any given oportunity… the stresses were high, so I hadn’t the flexibility to express the dance properly.. but as we were testing the lighting possibilities Jane was playing in the Tissu (courtesy of Ruth and Hannah, see RED) which looked incredible..

These were the pick of the photo’s i got, finishing with a Poster I knocked out in anticipation of promoting the show;

This is Jane sillouetted behind the Tissu, she has stretched it out and formed this shape as the back lighting hits the material, the lighting director was showing us varieties of spot lighting, and this one looked incredible, hundreds of stars of light shining onto the stage, not aplicable for our performance, so we didn’t use it, didn’t stop this moment looking great though..

Jane achieved some amazing shapes wrapping herself in the Tissu, i loved having a dark stage with a singular light source.. it brought the Tissu to life..

This was then the Poster:

No points for guessing who is the star of the poster..

This Following image is from when Ruth jumped into the Tissu to play!!

I was So torn between wanting to perform and show what we had been rehearsing hard for over the past couple of months, or running off stage and grabbing my camera during the performance.. i would have loved to be in the audience getting photos. the Lighting was incredible.

All the more credit to Kate, she had never designed any stage lighting before and in the Tech rehearsal it was all on her shoulders.. she designed the lighting for the whole show in about 3 hours and had to go off and finish designing the show to suit. We were split between Leicester and Coventry and rehearsals were few and far between.

In Fact, David pointed out on our last rehearsal.. The Monday when we performed on Wednesday the 5th of july, that this was the First rehearsal since inception that we were All there together!

I had a brilliant time.. Thank You Kate!!!

Training has suffered with my interlude of going to India, I feel like i haven’t done anything for months.. feel the blood coursing back through my veins!!

a Huge Thank you to Hannah, without whom this oportunity would still be a dream of mine..

Her peformance was two part. Her first showstopper was a solo trapeze act. be amazed

see why i was so excited for the chance?

now her second part was a duet in Ribbon or Tissu, this is obviously only one half of the duet, but imagine another girl on the oposite side of the stage doing the same movements..

I Loved the strength of the light at this moment, it was only from the top and powerful enough to create such a contrast in the image, i remember how striking it was seeing the show, unfortunately it was only a transitional stage, swiftly moved onto a more ambient red that coats the whole stage like below shows..

Not that is manages to take away from the effect from the shapes Hannah creates… i am eagerly awaiting the next show I can see of hers.. The pest has only gone off to Canada for Uni! Lucky *£%… If you are based in Ontario, and want a performer like Han, leave a comment to this post and i will act the intermediary..

one of my favourates from the photo shoot; (once again that magic light)

Spitfire Pyrotechnics

Fireworks

My dad is a pyrotechnician, one of, if not, The best in the country.

His company spitfire pyrotechnics were competiting at the National Fireworks Championships at Stanford Hall.

This year, since its inception, was the only year he was beaten, and that was due to the fact the Sound technicians screwed up. they skipped his second track after having manhandled the cd all day and dirtying and scratching it.

Due to this, i didnt not get any memorable photos of his competing this year, and these are photos from the competitors.. get onto his website if you want fireworks for any occasion, you wont find better. I am anxiously waiting for his next display now, so i can do his displays justice with my new cam. watch this space

Aside from this enforced blip on his record, he has won:

The British Music and Fireworks Championships 2002 (southport)

The British Music and Fireworks Championships 2003 (southport)

The National Music and Fireworks Championships 2004 (Stanford Hall)

The National Music and Fireworks Championships 2005 (Stanford Hall)

use the link on my blogroll to his site

This is a shot i wanted to capture of my friend James, i set the camera and asked him to jump, but it didnt come out quite right, he got bored and asked to get one of me, so i thought i’d give it a shot, So he took this one of me. one of my favourate self portraits!

I like how he just caught the frizbee before i went out of frame. captured the mood of that night on the beach perfectly!!

Catarmaran Halo

These two images are from my summer sailing trip from Germany through to Plymouth (if you want more info, visit the blue dragon link in the blogroll) This halo effect was from a circluar rainbow directly above the Cat. I have never seen one first hand before, only having seen one from a photo from space.. it was so amazing!!

Baboons

These were in the pen set aside for car drivers stupid enough to subject their windscreen wipers to abuse…

Spotted Deer

Chittal, as i remember their name from India (their home country) bambi never looked so cute…

Peacock

I miss the sound of these singing come dusk more than anything else in india.. such beautiful birds…

I have a collection of photo’s over the last few months since I bought my dslr. My passion in photography exploded when I was in India, the light there making everything incredibly picturesque, combined with seeing so many completely new things, made me never let go of my camera. (at the time an Olympus 3.1 mega pixel point and click) I was so frustrated with the results from that camera, I resolved to get something more worthy.

Looking into camera’s in magazines and reading books in the libraries of the cities I went to (the British council libraries were air conditioned.. which at 42 degrees c in the shade was a definite bonus)

However, before I got home and bought a dslr, I had to make do:

This monkey was one of about 30 that surrounded me on the steps of a temple, sited on a hill in a town called Pushkar in Rajasthan. I climbed the hill after hearing the view of the town, which bordered a lake, was stunning when the sun rose in the morning. So I took to the hill and observed the sun rise, sitting on the edge of a mini cliff in the hill drawing the city, when I noticed a monkey climbing a tree just off to my left..

I had been given a mission from my dance partner Emily, to get her a photo of a monkey, as she loves them.. so I dropped my sketchbook and my bag, and ran to get a shot of this monkey that jumped off the tree and out of my sight.. I turned a corner to see where he went to, looking down the hill where he was, as I noticed out of the corner of my eyes lots of furry shapes back up the hill to my right.

Slowly turning my head I took in masses of the monkey’s.. they were reclining all over the steps and expecting people to give them food as they approached the temple..

I sat for about 8 hrs that day sketching the monkey’s and taking photographs, this one was one of the cutest..

For a while this blog is going to have to be a retrospective, i have a collection of images from this summer i want to share with you.. though when i have an image that i want to share, taken recently, i shall interupt the retrospective to blog that then, considering i am going back into my second dose of Uni, i forsee i am going to be too busy to get photo’s that are worthy of showcasing each day, so i shall fill you in on my past year on those days.. hopefully then there will be enough interesting material to keep the blog running on a daily basis.

Hence, here i am. I am tired for tonight, so i shall leave this site set up with just my opening photograph.

hopefully this site can archive the efforts i go through to capture beauty on my camera.. watch this space…

enjoy the show..

Donkey

This photo is of my pet lamb, unfortunately he died a few weeks ago, we suspect he may have ingested too much yew tree before we responded to his tendancy to eat where-ever people were (usually around the yew pine needles falling from the trees near the vaulting arena) and moved him to a field with other lambs and no poisons..

This photo was one of the first i took with my new dslr (canon 350D with a sigma 70-300mm f5.6 lens) so it always brings a smile to my face seeing it. The bluebells were all carpeting the wood outside of my back door, it was stunning. beautiful to hack around the woods on tiny (my favourate of my mum’s horses.. unfortunately sold on this summer)

i think they make an beautiful border to the photo.