365 Project: Photo 031

On The Thirds was the prompt for today's photo; this refers to the Rule of Thirds that is commonly cited in photographic circles. The idea is that if you were to divide the photo into a grid of 9, as if you were going to play noughts and crosses on it, then you should place the main focus of the photo in one of the 4 places where the lines intersect; apparently this is where we humans most like to see things and it gives a pleasing composition. This is commonly the case and the rule can be very useful but my advice would be to think of it as more of a guideline; in fact, breaking the rule can make for a very powerful image that stands out from the crowd.

In any case, today we were supposed to keep to the thirds, which I think I've just about done. I was walking over the Angel Lane bridge on my way to work today when I noticed that the sun, low in the sky, was hitting the road almost completely side on. This, like with all subjects, gives a sense of much greater depth and texture to what otherwise might look very flat. Try this for yourself, especially with portrait photography, try to never have the sun (or other light source) directly in front of or behind your subject; try to have the light coming in from one side and hopefully you'll get a little more pop in your picture.

365 Project: Photo 030

Another rush job today, I'm afraid. It was getting rather late and I remembered I hadn't got the photo sorted. The theme was Faceless Portrait. It's amazing how much more willingly people become models when they know they don't have to show they're face. Here's Sue tucked up in bed not wanting to be bothered.

365 Project: Photo 029

I had a plan today for getting a decent photo of Circles but that all soon fell apart. I was on my way out of a coffee shop trying to think what to do about it when I spotted a whole bunch of circles on the table before me.

365 Project: Photo 028

Today I was aiming for Sunset, however, I don't know if any of you were in London today but there weren't any sunset pictures to be had. So I needed a cheat. And what I came up with was this: a picture of Ra from another lunchtime foray into the British Museum.

365 Project: Photo 027

The theme today was Dislike, but I don't think that that is a strong enough word for how I feel about litter. An ugly photo of an ugly thing.

365 Project: Photo 026

I can only apologise for this; I'm sorry, truly sorry. It was nearly midnight, we were in the pub and I had willing models. In case you're unsure, the theme was Passion.

Mystic River

About a year ago I went on a little expedition to photograph the deer in Richmond Park, one of my favourite parks in all of London. Depending on your viewpoint the weather was awful. It was bitterly cold and and a heavy fog hung over the entire area throughout the day. This made the deer more difficult to spot, as visibility was below 50 yards, and any chance of nice bright landscapes non-existant. On the upside, it gave the Thames an ethereal quality that was quite magical. Another positive was the way that the branches of trees were highlighted due to the contrast with the overcast sky. I have always been fascinated by the intricacies of how branches grow; the journey, both physical and temporal, from green bud to mighty trunk. I did a module at uni on plant developmental genetics and it was one of the most interesting courses I've ever had the pleasure to do. For those interested, it's all to do with shoot apical meristems.

It was a touch on the foggy side

As you can see, the fog was substantial.

Richmond Bridge

Richmond bridge is rapidly approaching a quarter of a millennium in age and is still going strong. Thanks in part to a solid original design and partly to a sensitive widening project carried out in the 1930s so that it could cope with the increase in traffic. The upstream half of the bridge was completely dismantled, each brick being saved and labelled, the centre portion extended and then the original facing rebuilt. A single lane on the downstream side was kept open throughout the project.

I could edit these photos to make them clearer, increase saturation and contrast and remove some of the smothering effects of the fog but I've decided to leave them as is. As they are they do a much better job of conveying the scene as I saw it that day; cold, dank and quite beautiful.

An artist I met on the riverbank

This is a chap who will be known to anyone that regularly walks along this portion of the river. Say hello if you see him, he's very friendly and an excellent painter.

The war memorial had recently been adorned with its sombre wreaths of remembrance and I took the opportunity to emphasise the colour of the iconic poppies. To be honest, this didn't take much in the way of editing, it was a dark day indeed.

365 Project: Photo 025

With less than an hour to go to get a photo for day 25 (Hands) I got a bit desperate. No prizes for guessing which hand is mine and which is Sue's.

365 Project: Photo 024

Luckily there was still a bit of snow on the ground for day 24's theme, Frozen. Russell Square again with some editing in Snapseed and a sneaky pigeon in the bottom left hand corner.

365 Project: Photo 023

This blog has been going for nearly two years now and so I thought it's about time I posted a picture of a graphically explicit act of homosexual paedophilia; and so I have. But don't get too excited, perverts, it's also a little bit artsy and I reckon I could even work a history lesson in if I tried.

The picture below is of the Warren Cup, one of the treasures of the British Museum. I work just a five minute walk from the British Museum and can frequently be found wandering its galleries during my lunch break. I was there today when I remembered that I still had to take today's photo for the 365 Project, the theme of which was Snuggle. I was thinking of ways I could best pull this off when I remembered that in the Roman Gallery sat the beautiful piece below. Made of silver sometime between 5-15CE the Warren Cup has two images hammered onto its surface, both of a similar nature. In the image below the active lover, the erastes, sits below the passive eromenos who we can tell is a young boy by the lack of beard, wreath and musculature. I chose this half of the cup to show as it has an extra element to it, a servant peeking in through the door to see if now would be a good time to disturb; I'm going to guess: no.

One of the reasons I like this cup, other than marvelling at the intricacy of 2,000 year old craftsmanship, is that it perfectly portrays the way cultures can change over time. Public buildings in Roman cities were very often adorned with scenes of a graphically sexual nature, it was the done thing, and there could have been nothing more normal than for a man to have sex with another man - homosexuality was so common that the Romans didn't even have a word for it. Also, incest and what we now call paedophilia were not frowned upon, especially amongst the ruling classes. The cornerstone of education in Ancient Greece was to pair up a young boy with an older male teacher; tutorials were thorough.

In the UK in 2013, far from commissioning an expensive piece of silverware to show off to your friends, the perpetrator of such an act would be incarcerated for the protection society. One of my pet hates, though, is when people today try to reframe the past through a modern lens, pronouncing events or ideas to be savage or brutal or wrong. The example that annoys me most frequently is that of the Maya, Toltecs and over Pre-Columbian cultures. There are so many interesting things to be leant but every documentary seems obsessed with portraying the human sacrifice associated with the cyclical demise of their cities and proclaiming it evil. It doesn't even have to be a culture of years gone by, however; there are plenty of disparate societies alive and kicking in the world today and what's wrong in one will be mainstream in another. The age of consent in Germany, Austria, Hungary and Italy is 14, in Spain it is 13, for me that's too young, but hey, they can do what they like.

Cultures, by their very nature, change. Think of your grandparents as young children and what would have been considered 'normal' or acceptable for them and how that has changed in just one life time. What more will change before we all die? It's impossible to say, but let's hope there are records made of it and that they're at least half as beautiful as this cup.

365 Project: Photo 022

Today the topic of choice was Freezing, aptly enough. This picture started out its life on the mean streets of Russell Square, where I spend my lunchtimes. The friendly neighborhood crow was quietly going about his business in the snow when I papped him. Since then I have clearly jiggered about with it but I quite like the resultant two tone image.

365 Project: Photo 021

The theme today is Equal and so, naturally, I'm thinking mathematics. What else? Occasionally at work I have to do a bit of basic maths, today's photo shows the workings for figuring out the relationship between a volume of liquid and the concentration of a solute within it.

365 Project: Photo 020

I have just returned from a weekend visiting my siblings in my home town of Huntingdon. Whilst there my youngest sister, 14 year old Shannon, thought she might like to play around with my phone and set about creating a portfolio of delightful self portraits. Given that Playing was the theme I was aiming for today I thought I would take advantage of this. Technically, then, I haven't taken this photo but, sod it, I'm using it anyway. Now, whilst I'm sure Shannon would prefer I didn't use this photo, I'm feeling much less charitable towards her as I've just seen that she has posted a new album on Facebook containing a series of close ups of my nose that she took using her new camera. This is a valuable life lesson for her: if you live by the sword you die by the sword.

365 Project: Photo 019

I imagine anyone that vaguely likes taking photos has been papping away at the snow this week. I quickly grabbed this unedited shot with my camera.

365 Project: Photo 018

This is not a great photo but the theme was doorways, it was late, I was drunk and this church had a pretty big door in it. Job done.

365 Project: Photo 017

On the 17th the theme was Favourite Toy. I don't have any possessions from before the age of 18 (I grew up in a Siberian gulag) so I don't really have any toys, and those I do have are mostly just electrical gadgets which aren't very interesting. Somehow, though, I have managed to get to a point where people keep buying me robot based stuff, which is good because robots are pretty cool. I made this little dude myself and he has a motor in him that makes him move (in a circle because he's a bit lopsided.)

365 Project: Photo 016

I just about managed to stick to the theme on the 16th. Jumbled was what I was aiming for so I took this photo of some leaves whilst on my lunch break in Russell Square, central London. It's been Instagrammed a bit.

365 Project: Photo 015

I've fallen way behind with the challenge! I've been taking the photos but haven't had the chance to post any so now I'm going to play catch up. Day 15 had the theme Nut. I guess this could be interpreted literally in the sense of nut and bolt or acorns or you could think instead of someone who is a bit nutty. None of this really matters as I didn't stick to the theme. Instead I have a picture of a war memorial taken on my phone on a snowy evening

365 Project: Photo 014

I went down to Waterloo Bridge after work today to get a low light shot to fit the remit of the day. 

365 Project: Photo 013

Once again I flout the rules of engagement! The goal today was to get a photo of a stranger smiling. Now, there are two ways you can go about this; you can surreptitiously pap someone without them knowing, or, you can walk up to a stranger, start chatting, build up a rapport and ask them for a quick portrait. The first method is, let's face it, creepy. The second requires more interpersonal skills than I currently posses and so, whilst I did actually manage to get a photo of a stranger smiling, I have gone with something slightly different. I was at the Natural History Museum today to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which was very good, and I hung back once the rest of our group had left to try and find some decent shots of the central hall. I came up with a few that I liked, using long exposures to blur out some of the tourists that were swarming about. This has to be in my top 5 buildings in the city, maybe even the world, it is a feast for the senses both inside and out. Dotted throughout are animals climbing the balustrades and pillars, the columns and the rails and this little fellow stood still just about long enough for me to grab a snap of him with the hall behind. A moment later and he had scuttled off back to the rafters.

365 Project: Photo 012

Another cheat today. The theme today was supposed to be a self portrait but, well, I don't do self portraits. I was having breakfast out and saw that there was a little mirror opposite me, and then I noticed the bloke opposite had his head conveniently placed and so I thought I'd take advantage.

365 Project: Photo 011

The theme for day 11 was 'climb'. I have climbed up and down this set of escalators thousands of times. Thousands.

365 Project: Photo 010

This photo is a bit of an odd one. The theme today was supposed to be real life, but I couldn't really think of anything. Whilst on my lunch break I took a snap of some trees in Russell Square and it ended up reminding me of my retina. A few days before I had had my first eye test, not because I was worried about my sight, it's perfect, as the optician confirmed, but I was interested in the process. So I did a little messing around with this picture to make it look a little less tree like and a little more like the picture of the back of my eye.

365 Project: Photo 009

Peaceful, that was the theme for day 9 and what could be more simple than this? Simple as.

365 Project: Photo 008

As you may have noticed I am a bit behind in posting photos for the project, I have still been taking the actual photos, though. This is clearly not the greatest photo ever taken, even by me; but it does represent today's vague theme: discouragement. I had been having dinner with friends, we'd paid the bill and I had just nipped to the bathroom but upon my return I found that some douche or other had emptied the entire contents of my wallet out onto the table. Still, I did go on to have a most enjoyable night so I can't have been that discouraged. I can't explain how I got the blurry, streaky effect going on, all I can say is that I was drunk.

365 Project: Photo 007

There was supposed to be a vague theme of movement today. I decided to be contrary.

365 project: Photo 006

Today I went to the Barbican Centre to see the National Youth Orchestra perform Holst's orchestral suite The Planets. Whilst there was healthy disagreement about whether Mars or Jupiter is the best piece (clearly it's Mars) we could easily agree that they played beautifuly. The design of the centre itself is quite controversial; it tends to divide people. It was completed in 1982 and is surrounded by the Barbican Housing Estate, all completed in the Brutalist style. Some people love it, others hate it; it has been Grade II listed and also voted the ugliest building in London. It's certainly quite unlike anything I've seen before and on a vast scale. The interior is no less unusual and seems to have been based on an NCP car park combined with a 1970s disco with bare concrete and brightly coloured lights being the order of the day. Today's picture is a shot of one of these sections from the roof of the cafeteria as pointed out by Sue. Not as beautiful as Holst's masterpiece, but colourful nevertheless.

365 Project: Photo 005

Today it got to about 5pm and taking a photo hadn't even occurred to me; great to see I still have that Killer Instinct. For those using the CaptureYour365 prompts then today's suggestion was food, however, I had already eaten. But then Sue said she was going to do some baking - back in the game! I had no intention of taking a shot of whatever the final product would be, I totally don't get the taking photos of your food phenomenon, it bores me to tears. The process is far more interesting, that's when stuff actually happens; for example, melted chocolate being poured into the beaten sugar and butter. I have no idea what this will be, it's still in the oven as I post this, some sort of cake I'd imagine; it certainly smells amazing.....

365 Project: Photo 004

Today I had my first real worry that I might not get a photo of anything other than my coffee table but then I remembered I was going down to the South Bank tonight to take a look at the excellent Landscape Photographer of the Year Exhibition, currently upstairs (and free) in the National Theatre. This means that I get to walk along Waterloo Bridge, one of my favourite experiences in all of London. Waterloo Bridge is my second favourite bridge in the capital, after Tower Bridge obviously, as its location is just perfect. To the east is St. Paul's Cathedral; looking south from the north side you have the panorama of the South Bank playing out in front of you with the OXO tower, the National Theatre, the British Film Institute and the South Bank centre all in a row; and to the west you can see the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament and the building below, Shell Mex House. This art deco behemoth used to be the headquarters of Shell and BP and is adorned with one of the largest clock faces in the country, colloquially known as Big Benzene. It's a shoddy photo but an impressive building.

365 Project: Photo 003

Today at work, for reasons I'm not 100% sure about, a work colleague had a peacock feather that had made it's way over from India; I think it might be for her upcoming wedding. Apparently you're not actually allowed to buy peacock feathers there so she got her visiting parents to just keep their eye out for one that had fallen by the wayside, and this is what they got. Very pretty. We have a vague plan to go to India ourselves in the spring, I'll keep an eye out for one of my own.

365 Project: Photo 002

Last night, having just committed to this project, I was starting to wonder what on Earth I'm going to find to take a photo of every day but today has not been difficult. When I woke up this morning there was a very strange orange glow smoothly gliding past our otherwise industrial strength, lead-lined curtains. I pointed it out to my wife and asked, only half jokingly, if the world was on fire. I peeled back the curtain to reveal one of the best sunsets I have seen in years; I was in an African desert the last time I saw a sky as orange as that.

In a perfect world I'd be back in that desert, I'd have been up before first light, I'd be taking my time and using graduated neutral density filters on my best camera to balance out the exposure of the sky and the land as I composed a shot of a sand dune with, maybe, the silhouette of an oryx side on to the camera; and it would have been one of the best photos I had ever taken. But that is not my life. Instead, I grabbed my phone and hastily took a few vaguely out of focus pictures of my neighbours cement covered wall and a lamp post, complete with weeds slowly cracking the building apart. Within five minutes the display had ended and a wet, grey, very typically British winter's day had set in.  The photo is unedited in any way. Only just now have I spotted that there was a pigeon sitting on top of the lamp post and I'm pleased that she's there because it adds a little more character to the shot.

The view from my bedroom window. At least I managed to keep our satellite dish out of frame.

365 Project

Okay, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do one of those 365 photo projects I've heard so much about in recent years. On a basic level it involves taking at least one photo every day and sharing it online. On a less prosaic level it means forcing yourself to try and get creative every day, to look for something interesting in the mundane, to come up with something different than the last even when the characters have remained the same. From what I understand, until you get into a decent pattern it's actually quite a difficult thing to do and, so, with that in mind I'm going to be realistic about this:

• Not every photo will be great, or even good. Some will be blurry, some will be under exposed.
• Although I intend to take a photo every day I won't necessarily post it here every day; I'll probably batch them a bit.
• There are lots of lists online that can provide guidance and inspiration for days when the creative juices just aren't flowing. I'll probably have a look through several of these for hints and tips.
• I'll likely take duplicate photos that are very similar to each other. Expect to get very well acquainted with my living room and commute to work.
• At some point I will probably want to quit. I'll try not to.

So, starting today, I am going to come up with 365 posts each with its own little photo of something from my day. You'll be pleased to hear that I won't bother tweeting and facebooking about it every single day, we'd all get pretty tired of that pretty quickly; I'll maybe just do a weekly or monthly round up. I shall still be doing my usual photography posts and, hopefully, as I heal up and get more mobile as the year progresses I'll be able to take more higher quality pictures again. I'll also be carrying on with the more scientific and sceptical posts that I started recently, in fact yesterday I started work on what will either be a series of posts or one very long post on one of my absolute, all time, most infuriating topics: chiropractic. But that's for another time.

Here, then, is photo 001 of my 365 Project. I went for a walk today to blast away the cobwebs from last night's celebrations and Primrose Hill in north London was the place to do it. I took this photo on my phone and Instagramed it up a bit so this isn't going to score highly on quality or looking natural, but hey ho.

1 down, 364 to go. Wish me luck.