[Eeeek! After a pretty bad hacking incident I think I've managed to get the site back together again. The bastards used my server to send about 35GB of spam mail in 2 days - sorry if any went to you :-) So I've used up all my bandwidth for this month and everything will be running really slowly until about the 6th May. The hackers got in through a vulnerability in AwStats. If you using AwStats please check their website and your version number - it could happen to you!]

Thanks for all your comments on the previous shot. It received more comments than any other photo on 'not as if...' so far. I could speculate why that is, but it probably doesn't pay to get too hung up on these things. Anyway, for those who think I attend weird occult ceremonies or Klan meetings, it was actually a piece of performance art involving fire and sound at a local arts centre.

Today's shot is back on the beach at Aldeburgh. These guys must love their fishing. It was blowing a gale but they were happy sat in their matching tents. How sweet.

On a technical note, I've been reading about sensor cleaning because I've gone and got a hair on my sensor. I'm not sure how it got there because I'm really careful about lens changing. I think I'm going to go for the 'Pixel Sweeper' approach as described on Petteri's site. (By the way, there is loads of interesting stuff about composition on this site). If I don't make any more updates then you know I've trashed my camera :-O.

Fire wouldn't usually be my first choice for a b&w subject, but I think it works with this shot.

A change from the recent floral shots...

This is the Schlumberger Cambridge Research Centre, an amazing building providing office and laboratory space for developing oil rigs. Its roof is made out of Teflon-coated glass-fiber membrane suspended from a steel superstructure - the same technology used for the Millenium Dome. To get an idea of the scale, check out the little guy sat in his office on the far left.

A technical aside...

This is actually a picture of some purple tulips and yellow daffodils. I was drawn to the colour combination but the flowers were past their best and starting to wilt. I took about 20 shots, moving the camera in different ways to blur the image. I selected this one because it immediately jumped out as the most interesting. I think the general shapes are still suggestive of green stems and flowers without being too pictorial. The sharp diagonal contour across the middle of the picture adds a bit of interest, too.

This is a fairly straight studio shot of a freesia stem. I like the way that you can see the progression from bud to fully-opened flower. It's almost like time-lapse photography.

This reminds me of one of those sliding puzzles where you have to un-jumble a picture by moving the pieces. The reflection is of St Mary's church in Cambridge.

Another Sempervivum (or house leek) from the botanical gardens. I think I prefer this one on reflection. It has more depth I think and the gravel adds a different texture.

This is another shot from the hot house at the botanical gardens in Cambridge. I've cranked up the saturation so it looks a bit unnatural, but I think it adds to the interest of the shot.

It's interesting how a good idea never goes out of fashion. Compare this ceiling from the porter's lodge of Corpus Christi college with this one.

For anyone that visits regularly, I'm sorry that I haven't been updating recently. I've been overwhelmed by work and haven't really had the energy to take pictures. Hopefully, things have settled down a bit now.

Another orchid from the Botanical Gardens.

Another shot from the Botanical Gardens.

I really should have made a note of the varieties of these orchids. Oh well...

A shot from the fantastic orchid house at the Botanical Gardens in Cambridge.

This is a detail of a bird of paradise leaf backlit by the sun. It was taken in the tropical house at the University Botanical Gardens in Cambridge.

Some typically understated English snow. Some countries measure their snowfall in inches or even feet; we count individual flakes.

If you look just to the left of the centre, you can see an actual 6-pointed snowflake. How fab is that? I've never seen one before.