The Daily Shoot assignment is: “Make a photograph of something that is glowing today. Use any meaning of the word you like.”
Well, one of the dictionary definitions is: “brilliance or vividness of colour”. I think these crocuses qualify 🙂 It’s a definite sign that spring is just round the corner…
The Daily Shoot assignment today: “Make a photograph that illustrates the idea of connection”. Well I saw this old telephone today and had to use this as my daily shoot.
I love these old style telephones. I tried to make the photo look like it came from the 50s!
The phone is at the East Anglian Railway Museum at Chappel, by the way. We were there today for the Chappel Winter Beer Festival, photos of which should be going up soon…
The Daily Shoot assignment: “Make a photograph featuring strong horizontal lines today.”
I think this fulfils that criteria – just a plain ol’ brick wall, with some creeper on it. Or whatever kind of plant it is! 🙂
Over the past year or two, I’ve been contacted about three times by Packt Publishing, asking me if I want to write a book for them. The first time round (actually it might be the first couple of times), they asked if I wanted to write a book on IceFaces, a product I was using quite a lot at the time for work purposes. I was also blogging quite a bit about it on my Java Enterprise blog. The first time I politely declined, the second time I think I basically ignored the email.
Anyway, I was contacted again by them this morning asking if I wanted to write a “Spring Web Services Cookbook”. Apparently this is because I once blogged on Spring Web Services. Well, let me show you the first two paragraphs of the email they sent me:
Hi Phill,
I am an author recruiter at Packt Publishing (www.packtpub.com). We publish computer-related books on a wide variety of IT topics.
We are planning to publish a new book on Spring Web Services. While trying to look out for potential authors to write this book, I came across your profile and blog which shows your expertise in Spring Web Services. This gives me an impression that you could be a potential author for this book.
The first time I received one of these emails, I was flattered. But the second time, and third time… etc – well, it gets a little bit old. I think what they must do is have a look round at books, have a look round at potential subject areas, decide what needs covering, and then do a blog search for those topics. Anyone who comes up is a potential author.
Now, this struck me as being… well, a bit strange. Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure Packt are a 100% legit and above-board company, there doesn’t appear to be any funny business going on here. This is a pretty innovative way to do business in some respects – finding out who is involved in the community and getting them to write a book for you.
But what worries me slightly is the scattergun approach to authors that they seem to be taking. Not exactly “anyone will do”, but – I am FAR from an expert on Spring Web Services. If they found me, they didn’t exactly do their research.
Now if I was going to buy a book on Spring Web Services (which I probably wouldn’t – but that’s a whole other area of discussion) I would like it written by someone who was a bona fide expert. Not someone who once wrote a blog post about it. I’d ideally like it written by someone who was actually on the team who developed it.
Still, like I say, it’s an interesting way of doing business and it looks like it’s paying off for them, so they can’t be doing too much wrong. As always with my blog posts, there’s not much of a conclusion to this one. Just some random thoughts! 🙂
The Daily Shoot assignment is: “Illustrate your idea of peace and harmony–or maybe just peace and quiet–today with a photograph.” Well, this photo isn’t perhaps everyone’s idea of peace and tranquility!
But what I really wanted to capture in this photo is the isolated nature (or at least, relatively isolated nature) of where I like to go to get away from the office. It’s actually not isolated at all, but it’s somewhere I can get away from things for a while.
That is where I find my peace and tranquility in the midst of a busy day at the office!
Well, today is day 183 of my Project 365, erm, project. Challenge. I’ve done 182 photos, and I have 182 photos remaining. I can’t believe it’s gone so quickly – although the prospect of doing another 182 photos is slightly daunting! That said, having come half way does break a psychological barrier. I’ve done half of it – how hard can it be to do the other half?
Anyway, to celebrate the occasion I’ve put together a set of 19 of my favourite photos from the past 6 months. You might be thinking, “19 is a bit random!” And, well, yes – you’re right. But I didn’t want to choose too many, and I think what I’ve ended up with is a fair representation of the photos I have taken since I started.
So, here’s to the next 182 days: I hope I manage to continue improving and take even better pictures!
The Daily Shoot assignment is: “Beauty is all around us. Make a photo of some naturally occurring beauty in your area today.”
Well today it was raining so I didn’t hold out much hope of getting outside, let along getting a photograph! But the rain eased up a bit at lunchtime, so I popped out and took this. I think this captures the one thing which rain does well for photographers: water droplets!
I think this turned out pretty well, despite me being in a bit of a hurry because of the wet weather.
Daily Shoot: “Make a photograph today that illustrates of the act of waiting.”
Apologies for doing a lot on spring recently, but as soon as I saw the assignment that was my first thought! Waiting for spring to arrive.
You can see the buds here are very nearly there, it won’t be long now!
Can’t think of anything more exciting to post than that unfortunately! It’s half-term this week, so it was the last 21 of this half-term on Friday night. It went pretty well, I was doing the talk and I think they were generally paying attention and understood.
On Saturday we didn’t end up doing all that much. It was kind of nice to have a day off after the busy couple of weekends we’d had recently. Phil was working on her Moore Course, and I was… defrosting the freezer (hey, it needed doing, there was more ice in there than there was food). In the evening we watched “The Social Network” which was much better than I had expected. I honestly didn’t know what to expect from the film – I mean, how interesting can it be to have a film about the creation of Facebook? – but it was well written, directed (and acted, surprisingly, given that Justin Timberlake was in it. Seriously). Even if the film was a complete work of fiction (in some respects at least), it’s an interesting story and worth watching.
Anyway. On Sunday we didn’t go to church in the morning! Surprised, you there, huh? It was our morning off. Then in the evening we went to Sunday@6 (by “we” I mean “I” – Phil wasn’t feeling great so stayed home). After that I came back and we watched Top Gear, which was really good this week. And then QI. And then bed.
So there you have it. I should point out (usual caveats about my boss looking away now apply): I have very nearly finished my application form for theological college next year. This is quite a strange prospect. I will try to get it sent off this week. I met up with the DDO on Saturday morning, so that would pretty much be all I need to do on my application for the next few weeks. Scary stuff.
The Daily Shoot assignment is: “Work with scale today and make a photograph that features a subject either larger or smaller than expected.”
Well these are some bulbs that are coming up in our garden at the moment. They’re only a couple of inches high but I think in the photo they look quite big!
