Today’s Daily Shoot assignment: “Make a photograph of something that captures a small bit the flavor of where you live or your culture.”
Well, given the weather today, I thought I’d take a picture of good old English culture: rain. Rain is a pretty big part of the culture here – if you’re not English that statement may not make much sense to you. But it is.
I would suggest reading a book called “Watching the English” by Kate Fox if you want to know more to save me going on about it here 😉
The Daily Shoot assignment today is: “Make a photograph that features the color yellow in some way or another.”
I was out at lunchtime today and saw this. It’s not exactly pure yellow but I think it still counts 🙂
The Daily Shoot assignment is: “Happy, sad, frazzled, or joyus? Make an abstract or literal photo that expresses how you feel today.”
Well I think the weather today was a good indication of how I feel: a bit fed up of all this winter, but hooray! – the sun is beginning to break though!
Daily Shoot challenge is: “Make a high key photograph today dominated by bright tones.”
Well, looking at what other people have done I think everyone’s done a much better job than I have! I wanted something which was colourful and bright.
This is the dinner I cooked tonight – pasta with roasted red pepper and courgette (very nice, by the way).
Not sure whether it’s very high key though. Still, I quite like it, even if it doesn’t fulfill the criteria very well!
The Daily Shoot assignment today is: “Make a photograph of something old. Be sure to show us the character that age can give a subject.”
Well, my choice today was this tree. I think it’s pretty old although I’m not exactly sure how much. Either way it’s definitely not a tree sapling!
Bonus points if you can name the song the title is a lyric from. I’ll give the answer at the bottom of this post.
Anyway, this will be a ‘real’ blog post, i.e., it won’t just be rambling on about what I’ve been up to! It will be me rambling on about other stuff! Shock! Horror! But first – some rambling about what I have been up to. (If you don’t want to read that bit, skip the next two or three paragraphs).
Friday evening: 21. Saturday: mostly spent doing shopping and preparing for the evening. In the evening we had Laura, Pete, AJ and Jen around and had a really nice evening eating curry and playing Risk (not simultaneously, that would have been risky. Ba-dum tssssh. I’m on fire tonight.)
On Sunday it was Mike Neville’s last Sunday at Fordham! As rector, at least. He preached in the morning, quite a moving sermon about standing firm in the gospel, and then we had a leaving meal for him afterwards. (Not us personally, there were about 150 people there). That was really nice, and it was quite emotional actually! – seems strange to think that he’s going to be leaving after 18 years. He’s been the minister there for as long as I’ve been going, which will be 10 years this year! – can hardly believe it. Aaaanyway.
After that we popped home for a bit, and then came back out for the youth service in the evening. I was playing guitar in the band, although I wasn’t leading which was quite a relief. I don’t mind leading but it’s not really my strong point, it’s quite nice just to play in the band without having the pressure of leading as well! Then we came back home and watched Top Gear.
So that pretty much brings you up to date. Now, to biz, so to speak. The quote in my title was actually relevant! It was Phil’s birthday just over a week ago. She was 30. Now 30 isn’t really much of a landmark age these days, not in the way that it used to be. People are living longer, and as such I think the 30s are a sort of extended 20s for a lot of people. That said, it is something of a landmark. It seems like the age of responsibility is upon us.
A lot of our friends are settling down and having children (seriously, it’s ridiculous. With apologies to all those who are having or have had children, just stop it, alright? 😉 It seems like everyone is settling down and getting on with building a life.
Not me, however. I may be going off to college this September, in a life-changing move which could see me becoming an ordained CofE minister. (Oh yeah, I should have said, if you’re my boss, please don’t read this. Thanks). I was thinking the other day, that will mean I’d be going back to college ten years after first starting at university! The way things work out is strange sometimes.
Anyway, it just seems like life is changing fast – people are moving away, we are potentially moving away (from Colchester)! – and I don’t know whether I’m quite ready for it. It’s tremendously exciting, of course, thinking about what the future holds – but I’m the kind of guy who actually quite likes to *know* what the future holds. To an extent, of course.
Still, if all we ever did was stay at home (or stay in our current, comfortable lives) – nothing would ever happen. That would be a very boring life. I’m sure God has plans, and I’m sure those plans are far better than anything I could have come up with for myself. I certainly don’t feel like I’m particularly satisfied with what I’m doing at the moment, not because I don’t enjoy programming but just because I think it’s maybe God’s way of pushing me into doing something which otherwise I’d be quite happy to miss!
*phew* I’m not usually this whingy, honestly. But I just wanted to share what’s happening with my blog readers, I feel like I owe you that much given how rubbish I’ve been with updating recently! The main issue is lack of time – it’s that time of year again, where basically we are swamped with a variety of (mostly church-based) activities. Hopefully that will quieten down again after March.
Sorry for the “stream of consciousness” blog post, but … well, why I am apologising? You know what I’m like 😉
The song is The Arcade Fire – We Used to Wait, which was used as the background for the excellent The Wilderness Downtown interactive video.
This was another attempt at the “Vertical lines” Daily Shoot challenge. I thought it came out well as a photo but didn’t really illustrate the concept.
… with some flowers in front. The Daily Shoot challenge is: “Look up today and make a photograph of the sky. Cloudy, clear, or somewhere in between? Tell the story of your sky today.”
Well, the story of our sky today is… bland, boring, grey, dull, rainy. It’s one of those days where there is just a flat, grey layer of cloud covering everything (it’s the shade of grey in the background of the picture). It’s a pretty horrible day for taking photos of the sky. So I thought I would put a nice flower in front of it to try and counteract the drabness a little bit!
I think that might be cheating slightly but still…
The Daily Shoot assignment is: “Tell the story of a subject today in a photograph by photographing one specific detail of it.”
Well I’m not sure if I succeeded in that exactly, but this is a shot of an old Roman Villa in Castle Park, Colchester, It was built around the 2nd century AD and was excavated in the 1920s. In the foreground you can some of the remaining tiling. In the background you can see the bandstand in the modern-day park.
Daily Shoot assignment is: “Sometimes what’s out of focus can make the shot. Create a photograph today where some/all of your subject isn’t in focus.” I was picking out some music for our youth group music practice later, and thought this might make a nice shot.
I’ve tried to focus on the middle of the page, which is something I’ve never tried before. Think it came out quite well too.
I did try lightening up the page a little bit but it just didn’t look right to me. I know the page is kind of dark but it just looks way more natural to me.
If you’re interested the music is the Stuart Townend version of “The Lord’s My Shepherd”, which is a fantastic song 🙂
I think this came out much better than my previous attempt at sheet music (which is about the second or third day of my Project 365 set).
