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Today’s photo is of a tunnel which actually goes under the A12. If I want to get to the river from my workplace, I have to walk through this tunnel. To me it represents freedom, of sorts – it’s a barrier between me and work!

I’ve tried to encapsulate this by making the end of the tunnel colour with the rest of the tunnel being sepia. Anyway, you judge whether it worked or not 🙂 It is a bit of a cheesy effect these days but still.

Anyway, weekend update: well, there’s not much to say which I haven’t already really! That’s the good thing about doing these daily photo blog entries – it does mean I don’t have to update so much! Just wanted to say that yesterday was the first Sunday@6 of the new term, so I was there in the evening and playing with Chris. It seemed to go pretty well, numbers were up a bit on how we ended last term, and generally people seemed to enjoy it!

Um… actually that wasn’t very much of an update! Still, there you have it. That’s my exciting life for you…

Today’s picture is of the Colne, near Castle Park. I think that particular part of the river is covered with algae, it almost looks like a kind of green carpet on the river! If you weren’t paying attention you might even think it was grass and try to walk on it.

I took a few photos today, it was such a beautiful day I think they all came out pretty well! – this is why I like taking shots of nature: if the scene looks beautiful you can’t go far wrong! Still, I want to try and become a bit more adept at taking pictures. Our camera has got a variety of different options which I want to explore a bit more. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won’t – I hope it will be a worthwhile experience at least!

The problem is, there’s just such a lot to learn. Maybe it would be best to just focus on one thing at a time. I’d quite like to learn how best to do shots which had a longer exposure time, so you could do cool movement effects. Also getting proper depth of field / focus, you can do some really cool things with that. Let’s see if I can come up with anything!

If I’m being totally honest, the photo today was taken by Mrs. Phil. I wasn’t even there when the picture was taken! We went down to Stansted Mountfitchet to visit Sarah’s parents, in order for me to talk to Sarah’s dad about ministry (he is an Anglican minister so it made sense. I didn’t just pick the parents of one of my friends at random. That would have been silly).

Anyway, this little memorial looks a bit like the top of a spire poking out of the ground, hence the “sunken church”.

I don’t know if the photo challenge quite counts if the photo wasn’t taken by me, but I’m going to claim it as today’s photo even if it’s not strictly accurate :p So there! Tomorrow: I’ll select a random person’s photo on Flickr and use that as my photo. Bwahahahahaha….

Quick one tonight! At lunchtime today I didn’t have time to take a photo, and then we have a youth group meeting this evening. I thought I’d pop out into the garden and see if I could get any good flower shots!

I think this is my favourite one. This is a sedum, which is just coming into flower now (they tend to come out in September, late summer / early autumn kind of time) and is looking very good. I do quite like the flower close-up shots, as you may have been able to tell!

Anyway, that’s it for this brief post, I’m off to start getting some dinner ready…

Today’s photo is another “lunchtime walk” jobbie. (Like I said, there are going to be a lot of these…) This is taken from the lock just up the river from where Tuesday’s picture was taken.

There is a little waterfall the other side of the lock which may well feature in a photo at some point soon.

Anyway, this photo was taken from a little stage just downstream from the lock (presumably where people can moor their boats while they open the lock). I quite like the symmetry in the photo – I wasn’t going to use this one but there is something I like about the way the water almost perfectly mirrors the sky and the river bank.

My photo today was – again – taken at lunchtime. There are a few little paths near where I work, this is one of them.

You can’t see it in the preview, but on the post there’s a little direction arrow indicating the walk. I like this because it’s absolutely pointless – you can only walk in one direction there! I wasn’t massively happy with any of the photos I took today to be honest, but I think that’s the purpose of this exercise!

I will also mention the car. I might have said something last week about the clutch needing to be replaced. Anyway, it went into the garage today and the clutch is now replaced. It feels a heck of a lot lighter and smoother now – I can see why it needed replacing!

Also… I feel pretty stupid admitting this, but I’ll say anyway because it might actually be useful to someone. When I took the car in for a service last week, I asked them to look into a potential problem: it seemed that the engine was revving when it shouldn’t be, i.e. when I put my foot down it would rev up and then drop back down again. I initially thought this was due to the engine – maybe the turbo was kicking in too early or something like that!

It turns out that it was the clutch slipping. I didn’t really know what that meant when they told me at the garage, but I Googled the symptoms the other night and it turns out that the engine revving up is one of the symptoms. The clutch was also getting pretty heavy – when I drove someone else’s VW Beetle earlier this year and then went back to the Saab, it felt like I had to put a lot of effort in to depress the clutch!

So having the clutch replaced fixed the imaginary issue with the engine. Just thought I’d say in case someone else is having issues with the engine revving when it shouldn’t… it might be the clutch slipping!

If you’ve been following my Twitter for a while you will probably have seen photos of the Chelmer before. I often walk down there at lunchtime. I think rivers are just about my favourite subject matter for photographs, particularly on a sunny day. There’s just something beautiful about them, the reflection of the trees rippling gently in the water. If you click through to my Flickr fleed you’ll find a few more photos there. This was my favourite, just about, but it was difficult to choose (not because I’m a good photographer, but because I’m bad – I always take a few photos, and they all look about the same to me. I wish I was more artistic. Still.)

I should warn you that I will probably return here several times for photographs – possibly even this week! So I apologise in advance if you get a bit bored. I’ll try and make it interesting.

Anyway, it’s time for a quick holiday update! Some of it I’ve mentioned in the photo updates. Last week we were off, but we were at home. We spent some of the time looking for curtains! – next month we are going to spend a bit of time redecorating out front room. We’re going to replace our blinds with curtains – we think it will look a bit more ‘homey’!

I also booked up a couple of college open days. I’ve been thinking about theological colleges for next year, so in November we’re going to look at a couple of different ones! Exciting stuff.

On Wednesday we went to Walton on the Naze, which we hadn’t been to before. We did a nice walk around the seafront and along the Naze. It was a good day for walking, not too hot, and we managed to do it before it started raining! Result.

On Friday we went to the cinema to see Scott Pilgrim vs The World. It was awesome! Brilliant film – I definitely want to see it again. Probably not at the cinema, not at the price they’re charging at the Odeon in Colchester (daylight robbery, I tell you!) but I’ll hopefully get the blu-ray when it comes out.

Um, I think to be honest there’s not much else to say. We saw Sarah a couple of times and watched some “Flight of the Conchords” and “Starter for Ten” (because it’s got Benedict Cumberbatch in, who is very funny although a much different character from Sherlock). I’ve already talked about what we did on Monday.

So there you have it: that, in a nutshell, is the second half of our holiday: didn’t do loads but it was relaxing! I feel much better for the rest – beforehand I really needed some time off! Felt much better at work today because of it.

We went out to Fordham today to have lunch with AJ and Jen. We walked from their house over to the Shoulder of Mutton and had a very nice lunch. Phil had sausages and mash, while I had a cheeseburger with chips. Good honest bank holiday food!

This picture was taken on the way back, not far from the pub. I think it manages to capture the wide open spaces quite well, and there’s something I like about the colours.

I should say, though – the original picture didn’t look quite as good: I forgot our proper camera so this was taken on my phone. The camera isn’t bad but usually has a bit too much blue in the photo. I tidied up the photo using the ‘Auto Adjust’ colour setting on Paint.NET, which seems to work pretty well. The colours are now nice and vibrant.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. I’m quite enjoying this challenge so far, although it does mean I have to remember to actually take the camera!

All for now, for the time being.

Today we went round to see Jo for a bit. Evie (Phil’s god-daughter) was being very cute, as 15 month olds are, and I think this is the best photo I took.

When I say “best”, I also mean best in the sense that the others were a bit blurry! So this was the best of the usable photos.

Not a classic, but… isn’t she cute?

I’m afraid today’s picture isn’t very inspiring! I had a few ideas, but unfortunately it was a bit too dark and grey to execute them. Also, it started raining.

This photo epitomises what it’s been like this August: too wet to really use our outdoor table and chairs! I’m afraid it’s not such a pleasant picture as yesterday’s, but if this photo challenge is meant to describe what life is like on a day-to-day basis, this one is quite accurate for now 😉