Well what a nice Saturday. Although there is no doubt a good month or so to go before the real thing, spring is in the air today. The sky has been clear, washing on the line - rather than in the tumble drier - and it has been warm enough to open windows and venture outside without a coat. At last some good weather for pictures perhaps? Tobias certainly enjoyed it and got out on the garage roof to soak up some of the surprisingly warm sunshine.

So, what did I do? Prance through the open countryside of East Yorkshire with the sun on my cheeks and the wind in my hair? No, I think I proved that I am a real man after all by tidying my garage.

Mmmm, toolboxes, old things that we might use one day... and a spare freezer for Kenny. So satisfying. But whatever happened to dEUS?

Who would have thought that months would go by and there not be a single cat picture on this blog? The reasons are many, some along the lines of Tobias is black and it is winter and black cats are difficult to photograph at the best of times. But just to catch up on what he has been up to and perhaps gain more of an insight into the work of cats, here are a couple of cat pictures.


Cats do spend a lot of time looking for things. They don't always seem to find what they are looking for but that doesn't seem to matter. It might be a mouse, or just a leaf that looked a bit like a mouse from the corner of the eye, though that doesn't really seem to matter either. If it moves, it is worth having a good look at. Maybe even a chew.


A lot of the time the things that they look for are in places that they can't quite seem to reach. Quite possibly so that they don't look too stupid when they can't find it. Or remember what it was. Oh, and there is something more interesting over there anyway...

Apart from his magic key wielding, broomstick piloting abilities, Tobias is no exception to the fascination that cats have with looking for things. As for me, I need to practise photographing fast moving black cats.

They were in the top 10 Christmas presents of all time. They are so cool, they are old skool, they are the ideal form of footwear. I now want to get a BMX or some other teeny tiny kind of bike and feel some big spikey pedals dig into those waffley soles.


I can't believe then, that I left them in Guildford last time I was there. The only consolation is that someone is looking after them... and not just anybody. So this post is a special request.

Please, please dear Pirouette Girl will you bring my old skool shoes with you when you journey north next week.? We will rendez-vous in historic York. By the way, I think that they might also be the perfect footwear for super heroines.

Hull needs some sunny weather so that I go somewhere and play with my new camera.

Sun like this


and not horrible spirit sapping uniform light sucking grey like this


would be very welcome for giving it a fair test. So come on cold winter sun. Bring me some challenging yet interesting light conditions, some deep long shadows and stark harsh contrast. If you do I will do my best to make the most of the incongruous combination of equipment that I have at present.

So, let me see...

In no way is this blog meant to become an inane tribute to Badger. But he has found a further use for crystal webs' wonderful iPod covers. They do make perfect Badger sleeping bags.


We (badger and I) have heard on the grapevine that there is a non-organic organism webring in the offing. Of course we don't want to be jumping the gun here, but it is something that he and a number of other smaller friends are rather interested in. There are stories to tell and sights to see and such a forum would be welcome in non-organic society.

"If the best photography is about presenting the world as you see it, what's the use of a picture that depicts the world as you've never seen it?" These shrewd words of my good friend Puplet - who for such a young dog, says the wisest things - struck a chord, particularly in light of my last post.

Maybe the dog has a point about this new Olympus E330. An SLR with a live view function? Preposterous, because that is just not the point of an SLR is it? And the fact that you can tilt the screen up to allow shooting from difficult angles without guesswork or contortionism adds to the if you want a digicam then just get one argument. I would however like to remind Puplet that he is about two inches tall and getting shots like Emma's guinea pig must be a lot more accessible without the kind of bruising that us bigger people might suffer from.

In fact I am sure that we are actually writing of the same thing in terms of "presenting the world as you see it" or the "mind's eye sketches (...) seen through the plastic view finder" of the point and shoot box of my youth. I am glad that we wrote about the same thing in our last posts, because Puplet just confirms how important and yet how easy to forget this key aspect of photography actually is.

Of course cameras like the E1, my D100 and even that preposterous E330 make that sooo much easier than we deserve. But the challenge remains... recreating what someone else would never see if we didn't manage to pull it out of the plastic box and onto the monitor.


I took this shot with my D100. I didn't lie in the mud by the Humber estuary. I pointed the camera in the vague direction, took a guess and checked the result after the shot. And it turned out OK, even though I don't have a 90 degree variable angle screen with live view function. Enough is enough.