Badger Parade Postponed

Obscure 20 year old British comedy references aside, Governments, unfortunately, have a nasty habit of picking and choosing scientific data to fit their ideology. The latest example from our current Government concerns badgers once again. Badgers are a natural reservoir of a type of tuberculosis that also happens to infect cows. Farmers don't like having their cows infected with TB and so are generally in favour of eradicating badgers anywhere near their farms. Most farmers and other rural types tend to vote Conservative and so it is that the humble badger finds itself pitched against the might of Her Majesty's Government.

Over the past two years there has been a pilot study in two areas to see if culling badgers will reduce the incidence of TB in cattle. The pilots were based on an earlier study, The Krebs Study, that found that to achieve a 12-16% decrease in bovine TB incidence you had to kill at least 70% of the badger population every 4 years. Yes, you read that correctly. 70% of badgers have to die to achieve a very modest decrease in the numbers of cows getting TB. The Krebs Study also showed that if you failed to kill as many as that then there was a good chance that you could actually increase the spread of the TB because the badgers become a lot more mobile once they realise the apocalypse has arrived. Who could blame them?

The pilot was conducted in two English counties, Gloucestershire and Somerset, where it was necessary to kill at least 615 & 316 respectively. By the end of the allowed 6 week period of the cull (the time frame is kept short so that the blow can be dealt swiftly to the badger population before they have a chance to move elsewhere) 341 badgers had been killed in Somerset and only 274 in Gloucestershire. On top of this, an independent expert panel found that the method used to kill the badgers (trapping them and then shooting them) was inhumane; an unacceptably high percentage of them were found to suffer and for longer than was permitted.

It is difficult to see how this pilot scheme could be used to justify rolling out the culling program more widely. It's quite possible that the cull could have made the situation worse and hundreds of badgers will have suffered and died for no purpose. The pilot was broadly based on research carried out over 8 years by Professor Rosie Woodroffe. She has publicly stated that the Government's position is not backed up by the evidence. She says, 'This announcement plums new depths. In [cherry picking the data], it does a disservice to the farmers it seeks to protect, by feeding their hope of a solution to the TB problem with an approach which actually risks making the problem worse.' Indeed.

Apparently building a decent fence would be too much effort to go to. Image used with permission

Dungeness: Black and White

Back in April I met up with a couple of fellow camera nerds, comrades from the 365 Project, for a trip down to the south coast. We were going to Dungeness, somewhere I had long wanted to photograph. I had looked into going there before but without a car it is prohibitively difficult; public transport doesn't best serve such areas. And they can't really be blamed, its own promotional website describes Dungeness as 'bleak and desolate'. This wasn't what was on our mind, however, as we headed progressively south. The weather was wonderful, one of the first truly beautiful days of the year. Sadly, it didn't last. By the time we had arrived the cloud had solidly set in and the exposed nature of the area left us open to a biting wind that soon left my ears stinging. Undeterred we set off to explore.

Anyone vaguely into landscape photography in the UK will be aware of Dungeness as a location unlike any other in the country. Basically it is an enormous bank of shingle, the largest on the continent. At a glance it is as bleak and desolate as advertised but upon closer inspection there is actually a lot going on. It is a part of a vast nature reserve that is particularly important with regard to bird and plant life, in fact it is home to one third of all the plant species to be found in the UK. There are also two nuclear reactors, Dungeness A and Dungeness B, the first of which has been shut down and the second of which is due to be so in 2018.

Although from a comfort perspective this was not going to be the most wonderful afternoon, from a photographic perspective it was pretty much exactly what I'd hoped for. It was Dungeness at its gloomy best. What little colour there already was had been further muted by the grey clouds and so tones and textures became ever more important. There was always going to be a lot of black and white conversions in post processing after this trip. A little tip, even if you fully intend to end up with black and white pictures it is generally a good idea to originally shoot in colour and then convert to black and white. This gives you a lot more options after the event in what type of black and white you want to apply and, of course, in staying in colour if you so choose.

The main photographic focus are the numerous abandoned fishing boats that sit just above the high tide mark in every imaginable stage of decay. There are a few where it's actually difficult to tell whether the boat has been left for dead or whether it's still a living, breathing boat; and then there are others where all that is left are the ribs of the hull and a few warped planks like the skin on the corpse of a rotting whale corpse. There are also tiny little railway tracks and wheelhouses that, once upon a time, were used to haul the fleet up and down the beach. The tracks can provide leading lines to help guide the eye around a carefully composed image.

I'm going to post a second Dungeness article full of colour images, there were a couple of occasions where having a splash of vibrancy was the right path to take. Our final path led Rachel, Christin and I to a local pub where we could warm up and refresh before the long drive home. I'm very happy that I finally made it down to Dungeness, it was a photographic and social success; I highly recommend it to those with a bleak streak running through them.

Brick Lane By Night

Last Saturday night I joined up with the people from London Photo Walk to go on an all night solstice walk. We covered about 23km over 11hrs or so. It was a long but extremely rewarding night and I look forward to doing it again next year.

Given that this took place all through the night exposures were all very long, generally 15-30 seconds. It was also quite difficult to even know exactly what you were pointing your lens at as it was so dark in some of the back alleys and so composition wasn't always straightforward. This meant that over the 11hrs I only took about 100 photos; but there was a definite benefit to this. It was a bit like shooting with film, you were forced to put a lot more thought into what you were doing. If you pressed the shutter at the wrong time then you wasted half a minute of your life, which may not sound like much but it is quite the motivator when the wind is blowing at three in the morning.

As I said, we covered a lot of ground that night but the four photos in this post are all from the ever fascinating Brick Lane; one of my favourite streets in the world. Endlessly interesting and always full of life I have spent countless hours walking it's length, generally in the dead of night, but this was the first time I had ever taken my camera with me. I think it paid dividends. It isn't very difficult to make great art look good and obviously street art lends itself to street photography, something I normally struggle with.

Except for the fox, each of the pictures here have undergone quite a lot of post processing to bring out the best in them, or, rather, conceal the worst in them. These pictures were quite busy and messy to start with and mostly what I have done is to crop them down and remove colours to hopefully simplify them and make them easier on the eye. The shot below is a great example of where the original exposure wasn't up to snuff. There was different coloured crap all over the floor, the edges of other artworks to either side and and some unattractive lintels over the top. I cropped out most of all that, made it black and white to remove the distracting colours and then just allowed the reds and yellows to come through to keep it simple. Hopefully the result is a more satisfying picture that allows you to focus on the graffiti. It's a cliche but less is often more.

Magna Carta - what the hell is it?

Magna Carta are two words that nearly all of us would have heard at some point in our lives, but how many of us actually know what they mean, both literally and figuratively? The literal meaning is easily clarified, it means Great Charter, but what does it stand for? Perhaps at best you'd have a vague idea that it has something to do with law or democracy and that it was a bloody long time ago. That much would be correct; but I think it might be a good idea, with both a general election and the 800th anniversary looming, to become a bit more familiar with what many would call the birth of democracy in what is now the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I give our state its full title just to contrast with what the situation was in the summer of 1215, we were a long way from being a united kingdom. The ailing King John had been on the throne since 1199 when he had succeeded his elder brother Richard (of Lionheart fame). Richard had been a popular king and John's failed attempt to usurp him whilst he was away on the Third Crusade did not endear him to the masses. The masses had little power, however, so it didn't really matter what they thought. The power in the realm was held by the triumvirate of king, church and barons and John managed to rub both of the other sides of that triangle up the wrong way.

A drawing of the effigy of John's tomb in Worcester cathedral

The barons weren't happy because he charged them high taxes for his wars with France. They were also expected to provide men and supplies for the campaigns, campaigns that many of them, the northern barons in particular, thought did not concern them. A lot of them also owed him money and John had begun to get into the habit of giving the most lucrative positions to his cronies instead of allowing them to proceed by birthright through the baronial lines. A few years earlier John had had a significant falling out with Pope Innocent III who excommunicated him in 1209. John was seen to lack religious conviction and some even suspected him of atheism; almost unthinkable at that time.

The final straw was the complete failure in France of John's efforts to recapture Normandy. Since the time of the Norman conquest the 'King of England' had spoken French and also ruled over substantial parts of northern and western France. Some kings had actually spent rather more time in Normandy and Anjou than they had in England. John was finally defeated by Phillip II of France in 1214 leaving not with the title Count of Anjou but merely a long list of failures and debts. John, then, had long been unpopular and, unbeknownst to him, only had a year or so to live. Things were not going well. To give you a measure of his popularity, in 1235 Matthew Parris, the creator of the wonderful map of Britain from the 1250s, seen below, said this of John: Vile as it is, Hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of John.

For as long as there had been a king, or queen, of England the ruler had always taken the attitude that they were in that position by divine right, literally appointed by God to rule as they saw fit. Their decisions were completely their own and they could change the law of the land at a stroke without consulting with anyone else; they considered themselves to be outside of and above the law. Magna Carta changed all this. Much of what was written in Magna Carta was a little parochial and dealt very specifically with issues of the time; but there are two points that stand out from all the others, what are now called articles 39 and 40. They read thusly:

"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."

"To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice."

Flowery language aside these are two points that are, today, the cornerstone of justice systems around the globe and come June 1215 John was in no position to refuse when the barons presented him with their list of demands. In green and pleasant Runnymede, near Windsor, John conceded to the demands of the barons. Being John, though, he had completely reneged on the Great Charter before the year was out. He had appealed to the Pope to declare it null as it impinged on his holy rights; that was typical of John, always thinking of others before himself. The Pope who, remember, had excommunicated John only 6 years earlier came to his rescue. He recognised the risk to the status quo that this precedent might set and duly declared Magna Carta null and void claiming that it was 'unjust, illegal, harmful to royal rights and shameful to English people'.

In what was probably the best result all round, John died in October of the following year whilst still waging a campaign against the barons. His son, Henry III, was only 9 years old and not considered capable of ruling on his own; William Marshall was appointed as regent to rule in his stead, and he did a pretty good job of it. In conjunction with the young Henry he reissued Magna Carta but with some of the clauses removed, most notably clause 61 which appointed 25 nobles to act as a kind of arbiter of whether the king was doing a good job or not; if not then the clause gave the populace explicit permission to openly rebel against the king. This new charter achieved little in real terms but it did show that the new king and his regent were open to negotiations, at least more open than John had been.

No fan of King John, Matthew Parris produced what was
then one of the most accurate maps of Britain ever made

In 1225, at the age of 20, Henry began ruling in his own right. He once again reissued Magna Carta, importantly he did so completely of his own volition and with his royal seal attached; he promised to honour it so that he could legitimately levy taxes, technically every monarch since has had to ask permission to raise a tax. This 1225 version of Magna Carta is considered the definitive version and it allowed Henry to go on to rule for 56 years, an astonishing feat in the 13th century.

Although these events happened a full eight centuries ago they were the birth of what can be considered our modern system of Government. Committees were established to provide oversight of the monarchs actions, some were lords, some were commoners; and so the first version of parliament was born. Today parliament is not especially popular, with anyone. It is as if it has become the unaccountable despot it was supposed to protect us from. But I don't look at this as a bad thing because everybody thinks this. The left think parliament is rubbish, the right think parliament is rubbish, everyone thinks parliament is rubbish and this is a good thing, because it shows it's working. For a democratic society to work there has to be an enormous amount of compromise, and whist it is better to bend than to break, compromises rarely make people happy.

This isn't to say that there aren't problems, there are, not least the lack of engagement of the populous at large with the political system. Young people in particular seem to think that politics isn't relevant to them, so they don't vote, so politicians don't pay them much attention and so politics actually does become less relevant to them. But the solution to this isn't apathy, it should be a motivation to become even more involved. The days when you could change the system from without are gone, they've been gone from this country since the 1650s. For centuries we've been a stable, prosperous nation and we have our hated bureaucracy to thank for that. If we want something to change we have to engage with the system, compromise and ensure that no one is happy. This is the secret to our happiness.

The Magna Carta was the beginning of this unhappy happiness and it has weathered all challenges. That of Charles I resulted in a brutal civil war and his execution but parliament and the charter persevered. No monarch since has put up any serious resistance to the supremacy of the people and its parliament - at least not on these islands. On July 4th 1776 the British colonies in the fledgling United States, who had been rebelling against what they considered to be a despotic King George, won their independence. They, rightly, didn't want to pay taxes without a say in how they were spent; no taxation without representation. When they wrote the Declaration of Independence the founding fathers were coming up with a new Magna Carta for their newly founded country. Even there, though, it has retained its prominence. Magna Carta has been referenced more than 400 times by the US Supreme Court and in the crypt of the Capital building there is a golden copy of the Magna Carta along with a golden copy of King John's seal.

In about a month there will be a general election in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The result looks finely balanced at this stage. I don't care who you vote for. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't even really matter who wins, over a lifetime, over the centuries, it all balances out. I do think its important that democracy wins, however.

Get out there and vote.

This is one of only 4 original copies of the 1215 Magna Carta. This one is held at the British Library near Kings Cross
and will be on display through the summer

http://www.bl.uk/magna-carta
http://magnacarta800th.com/

The View From St. Paul's

A few months ago my mother came to visit. She wanted to visit St. Paul's cathedral and climb to the summit, and so we went. On that occasion I just took a few snaps on my phone but I returned a few weeks later, awesome annual pass in hand, to try and get some decent clicks with my proper camera. Unfortunately the weather was against me. The photo above has been quite heavily processed to try and make the best of the sky; I've gotten quite lazy and you can see halos (no pun intended) around the buildings on the horizon. I also need to clean my lens and sensor. Below, I've deliberately gone for a silhouette type effect to mask the fact that otherwise it would be quite an underwhelming picture.

Still, I've learnt a lot about the location; I know what sort of shots I want to get, what time of day I need to be there to have the sun at the best angle and, like I said, I have an awesome annual pass and so I'm going to keep going back until the weather is in my favour. God willing.

Quintessentially English

Atop the Captsone

A few weeks ago I had the absolute pleasure of giving a friend away. No, not at some sort of charity car boot sale; it was at her wedding. She had had the good judgement to get married at Tunnels Beaches in Ilfracombe, Devon. Not only is it a fantastic venue in which to get married with views out to the Irish Sea and your very own private beach to explore, but the town of Ilfracombe itself is a very picturesque one. Having spent 6 hours on a coach getting there after work I was keen to get out and about the next morning. As luck would have it my hotel was just opposite the Capstone, as locals call it, or as you and I might, the big cliff thing.

Freshly fueled with eggs and bacon I charged up to the top as fast as my little legs could carry me where, at the summit, I was rewarded by fantastic views in all directions. To east and west were views of the coast and cliffs, and to the south all of Ilfracombe was laid out before me. The terrain is hilly and the bulk of the older part of town nestles in a valley running parallel with the coastline; some newer developments have followed the valley as it kinks south. Very little land is wasted, the hills are steep and so many streets are terraced, clinging to the sides of the slopes as the terrain permits. The result is lots of little blind corners, narrow alleys and sudden inclines that frequently put me in mind of the time I spent in south Wales as a child; which shouldn't be so surprising given the two are only separated by 30km or so of water. Indeed, the hotel played Welsh radio in the dining room, which rather threw me as I hadn't undergone the normal mental preparation I would customarily go through before returning there. Also at the peak was the statue in my photo at the top of this post, although I'm afraid I must confess that I have no memory of why it is there or what it represents. I can say that it does a good job of conveying the energy and movement that is so evident atop the cliffs there.

The Landmark Theatre, at bottom left, tends to polarise locals; they either love it or hate it.

My time in Ilfracombe was short but very pleasant. I have been to that part of Devon before and will happily return again in the fullness of time. I don't get to the coast as half as much as I would like which is a shame because the UK is blessed with hundreds of miles of beautiful coastline. I must make sure I don't neglect it so in the future.

Lest We Forget....

Pretty much everyone in London must be aware of the various commemorative public art installations that have been happening over the past few weeks to mark the centenary of the First World War beginning. With the passing of Harry Patch in 2009 this conflict did truly become history; he was the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of western Europe. It is now only through books, documentaries, films and other second hand sources that we can learn about what is sometimes called The Great War.

I'm not sure a war should ever be called great. Whilst there are certainly circumstances where it is worthwhile to take up arms to defend an ideal or way of life I don't think that we should necessarily glory in it. War should be a last resort, a terrible necessity carried out only to the extent necessary and only when no other option remains. Was the First World War one of these occasions? I honestly don't know. I've read conflicting views on this and am not qualified to make a judgement. I'm not sure that anyone is. I am sure that we must make sure nothing like that ever happens again and that is why installations like this are welcome. Each ceramic poppy in the pictures here, and I have by no means covered them all, represents a fallen soldier. I don't know how many there are, many hundreds of thousands. Too many.

The same as the first picture but original colour

The Thames Barrier

Ahhhh, this feels good. Today I did something I haven't done in a long time: I went out with my camera, in the sun, to take photos just for fun. I wasn't doing it because the stupid 365 Project was making its daily demand; nor because I was at some event where tradition demands that a few badly shot pictures of blurry revellers be taken for posterity; nor because I happened to be visiting somewhere that, theoretically, I should be taking photos of. No, today it was just me, the camera, good weather, London and science podcasts. Bliss.

So it was I decided to head down to the Thames Barrier. It's only a few miles from where I live but I had never gone down there before; I soon realised I had been remiss, there were ample opportunities for some interesting photography. 

The Thames Barrier, then. Why is it there? How long has it been there? How does it work? And why does it look so weird? Some of these questions are easier to answer than others. The reason it is in that specific location is quite straightforward; the Thames, if you look at it on a map, is wrigglier than a three year old with ants in their pants but in this little section, between Silvertown in Newham and New Charlton in the borough of Greenwich, the banks are quite straight and parallel to one another; this makes it much easier to build a massive, water tight, movable barrier - the second largest in the world. Also, the underlying chalk bedrock in the area happens to be a little harder than the chalk and clay on which most of London sits and so could support the structure. As an aside, London is steadily sinking into the ground much as Venice is now, but that's a problem for another century. The other interpretation of the question Why is it there? - as in Why do we need it at all? - is also simple enough, if not a little tragic.

In 1953 a spring tide coincided with a severe storm over the North Sea, this led to a surge in sea level of over 5 metres. The first area to be affected was Scotland where 19 fatalities were reported, but conditions only got worse as the surge travelled south into the progressively more shallow waters of the southern North Sea. Approximately 1000km2 of eastern England were flooded with the sea encroaching as much as 2 miles inland in Lincolnshire and Norfolk. Over 1600km of coastline was flooded along with severe floods in Silvertown and Canning Town in East London; just a mile down the road from me. The result was tens of thousands being made homeless and 307 deaths. At sea, many trawlers and other boats were lost producing another 224 deaths.

Sadly, by comparison, we had it easy. The Netherlands, where a fifth of the country is below mean sea level and half of it is at less than 1m above sea level, over 1800 people were drowned as a quarter of the country was lost to the sea. There were also long term effects as being flooded by sea water is not like being flooded by fresh water. Having that much salt dumped onto the land devastates farm land or, indeed, any land where you might want vegetation to thrive.

As a result of this natural disaster, the second worst in British recorded history, the Government began planning how to protect us from such 1 in 1000 year catastrophes. Sea defences around the country were built/bolstered and a plan for some kind of barrier to protect central London was commissioned.

The design was first drawn up in the 1950s by Charles Draper but construction didn't begin until 1974; it was opened by Her Majesty The Queen on my 1st birthday in 1984 and, in today's money, it cost nearly £2b. There are five large piers and two smaller ones creating four 60m navigable spans and two 30m navigable spans. The 60m spans were specifically that size so as to be the same as Tower Bridge, i.e. anything that could get through Tower Bridge had to be able to get through the barrier too. I think my photos struggle to convey the scale of this area adequately; the river is over half a kilometre wide here, and you could fit Tower Bridge onto it four times just in the central section. It's huge.

Used with permission

So how does the damn thing work? Hopefully the diagram to the right will help explain. Between each pier there is a hollow gate with a circular cross section; when the gates are closed this rests in a depression cut into the riverbed  allowing the free flow of water. To stop the fluvial flow these can be rotated such that nothing pass. To close the barrier isn't a simple task, though, it requires coordination with many other flood defences in the region and costs about £16000 per go.

The Barrier can protect London in two different ways depending on which direction the flooding is expected: from the North Sea or from the river itself. It's easy enough to imagine how it might protect London from the type of disaster experienced in 1953, you simply close the gate and, with any luck, nothing will get passed it and the areas down stream won't be too badly damaged either. But it can also help if there has been a lot of rain and the flooding is coming from upriver in the Thames basin. It does this by closing the gates during a low tide, this means that once the tide starts rising again it can't get back up river and this creates a basin of low level water that the flood water can run into allowing it to drain out of the city more quickly.

As it approaches it's 30th birthday the Thames Barrier continues to provide protection for Londoners; disconcertingly, though, this protection is having to be deployed more and more frequently. In it's first 6 years of use it was only closed 4 times, in the last decade it has averaged 7 times per year. Is this a possible measure of global warming? Are flood events occurring more often? In the fantastically complex science of climate change it isn't possible to draw a conclusion from one measure of anything, but it would seem to support that. The barrier was only designed to protect against a surge in sea level of 4.67 metres. If sea levels raise by a metre this century, as seems likely, then the capacity of the barrier to protect the capital would be greatly reduced. Add to that the slightly odd fact that Britain is tilting (the south and east are sinking and the north and west are rising at about 5cm/century) and the future looks ever more precarious. The original design was supposed to provide solid protection up until the year 2030 followed by a period of ever diminishing returns after that. The Environment Agency, however, who now runs the barrier, has said that it has no intention of replacing it before the year 2070. I do wonder if this is based on good scientific advice or on Governments that are not willing to spend money on insurance policies. Hopefully it won't take another disaster of the kind seen in 1953 to force their hand.

The view to the west, Docklands and the O2 can be seen in the distance

After three hours I had only covered about 200 yards of the riverbank but I had had a great time. The weather and light were fantastic and it was good to be there knowing that I could write it up at my leisure in the style that I used to before the 365 Project consumed my hobby. I knew I would have the time to look into the history of this impressive structure and do it some justice in words as well as in pictures. Basically, I have my blog back and I love it. I hope you enjoy it too.

Review of 2013....

Soooooooo, it has been rather a long time since my last post. This has been due to a number of reasons, partly laziness, partly lack of inspiration and frustration with the 365 Project, and partly because I have been in Romania for the last 3 weeks and internet connections there were few and far between. I will finish off the 365 Project, I have a bunch of photos on the back burner that I need to process and get written up and I will try to have that done by the end of the month. For now, I'm going to do one of those lazy Review of the Year posts with some of my favourite pictures from 2013. I won't include any from the period I haven't posted yet, you'll just have to be patient for those.

In 2014 I will be going back to my usual format of a post every fortnight or so. I think this gives me time to get some decent photos together and the words to go with them. I think the daily requirement of the 365 Project ultimately lowered the quality of what I do here, which was one of the reasons I became increasingly disenchanted with it. However, this does not foreshadow the year ahead, I am optimistic and enthusiastic about the blog for 2014. I have had 70,000 hits so far which is orders of magnitude more than I ever expected and so thank you to everyone who takes time out of their day to see what I've been up to. I'll try to raise the bar.

The last 12 months have been the most traumatic and difficult of my life, much of it self-inflicted, but there were certainly some good times too. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me this far.

Gargoyle from inside the Natural History Museum, January.

View from Westminster Bridge, January.

Chain in Vienna, March.

St. Marco's piazza, Venice, March.

Venice, March. 

 

Parliament Square, London, May.

Pocketwatch, May.

Parliament Square, London, May.

 Dead flower, July.

 Olympic Park, September.

365 Project: Photo 349

Tonight I set off for Romania. We're going by car. Yup, driving the full width of Europe. It's about 2,700 miles and we're expecting it to take about 36 hours of actual driving time; about 40 hours in total. We don't intend to stop but for comfort breaks. This was my last view of Blighty as we chugged out of Dover headed for Calais. The rough route is France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania; the final destination being the town of Mangalia on the Black Sea Coast.

The sea was not exactly smooth as we pulled out and quite a few people were struggling to find their sea legs, Georgiana included. Even though it was raining and very windy I was very excited and insisted on spending as much time as possible up on deck. 

365 Project: Photo 343

Real Mandela has died and so people lay flowers at the feet of Zombie Mandela. Strange.

365 Project: Photo 336

The view from the train back down to London. I love the flat landscapes of east Anglia.

365 Project: Photo 316

The theme today is Simple Pleasures. This is one of the gateways into Russell Square where I come to sit and read my book every lunchtime. A simple pleasure.

365 Project: Photo 301

I took this one out of the window of a bus on my phone and then HDR'd it up a bit.

365 Project: Photo 295

A night out with workmates inevitably ends with me going for a walk along the river. Conveniently, the theme was Dark. This was taken on my phone, when drunk, from the Millennium bridge. The bright star above the moon is, in fact, Jupiter.

365 Project: Photo 288

A pleasant sunset stroll along Hampstead Heath, my first visit there in a very long time. Taken on my phone and cropped, hence the graininess.

365 Project: Photo 284

Yesterday I played around with the tilt shift effect on SnapSeed and today I've been using the new HDR effect they have recently added to it. I'm still undecided about HDR. I think that, in general, people over do it; although I have seen some fantastic examples of the genre I suspect the amount of effort that needs to be put in to do it 'properly' makes it not worth the hassle. Here, I've tried not to overcook it too much. If anything, though, there is a more distracting element to the picture that I can't get passed. To me it looks like the left side is the near side of the Eye and the right one is furthest away, which isn't the case. I find it incredibly distracting.

365 Project: Photo 283

I was waiting about on the steps in front of Stratford Station and remembered that I had been on the look out for somewhere with a bit of height to try out some tilt shift shots. Sadly, I don't actually have a tilt shift lens to properly achieve the effect but most apps these days seem to be able to apply a blur filter in such a way as to give the miniaturising effect for which tilt shift is famous. I did this using SnapSeed, my phone editing app of choice.

365 Project: Photo 281

Mirror Image.

365 Project: Photo 280

Repetition.