Time to change the flowers perhaps?

There's something utterly splendid about sunflowers that have passed their sell-by date. There comes a time when you have no choice but to bin them of course, but in the three or four days leading up to that unhappy moment I find the magnificence of their decrepitude completely irresistible. They're like flamboyant old theatrical heart-throbs living on former glories.

Due South reception from above

In haste tonight because I'm tired and I want to go to bed (and I had a little drink about ten minutes ago...) but here's another aerial shot of the outside area at Due South. I say 'another' but I'm actually not sure whether I've used one on here before. I quite like the wonky perspective on this one. I straightened it in Lightroom rather than twisting myself so completely off the pavement above the restaurant that I fell into the ice bucket - seemed sensible at the time. And of course the shadows work for me too.

Poppies

This one pretty much does what it says on the tin. It's a field of poppies. I was hoping to get something better, frankly, but the light was drearily flat for most of the time I was there, and there have been just so many poppy shots appearing on Flickr that I felt devoid of fresh ideas. I might try again before they disappear but it'll mean heading up there around 9 on a clear evening I think, not before 6 on and overcast one, as I did today. Still, they can't all be masterpieces can they? (I've got a horrible feeling I've resorted to that line before...)

Scary bike

Yet another apparently fruitless amble along the seafront revealed a golden picture opportunity the other day, when this rather distinguished chap rode past on his unfeasibly tall bike. I was intrigued by what he'd do when the time came to dismount but I'm afraid the answer's rather prosaic: he simply swung a leg over the back of the saddle so he was hanging off one side of the bike, then tilted it until it was safe to skip off sideways. The manoeuvre was dexterous but undramatic so I won't dwell on it. But I wouldn't fancy trying it in traffic...

Superman saves the day

Superman fearlessly rushed to the assistance of a lady in distress while the lady's over-heated looking dog watched proceedings with a somewhat supercilious air from the comfort of her bike rack. The lady in question had been multi-tasking furiously: talking into her phone, balancing the top-heavy bike and negotiating her way across a busy bike lane (it was the London to Brighton ride yesterday - there were more cyclists around than you could shake a stick at). It went wrong when the back of the bike started going over. Reluctant to allow her idle dog to be injured in the fall, the noble lady allowed her phone to drop instead as she made a grab for the handlebars. Alas, the phone was trashed, but Superman helped her pick up the pieces and gave her a little pep talk on health and safety issues before flying off to the next crisis.

Double portrait

I think Simon might be slightly happier with this shot than Annie. She said as much just after I'd taken it and of course she's right. But I have limited sympathy - they're both so sickeningly photogenic that it can only be in the interests of fairness and balance that one or two dodgy shots appear every now and then. And anyway, the happiness is there for anyone to see (as am I, unfortunately).

Seaside diva

We spent much of today sipping lager in the sunshine on the beach, to mark the 40-somethingth birthday of Mrs humbert15, bless her. Our day was made all the more special by the arrival of this charming creature, who set up shop not ten yards from us and sang various arias to seafront passers-by. She had an amazingly good voice - and a wicked sense of humour. When someone tried to take her photo she pulled various hideous faces as she sang - never missing a note mind you - to spoil their shots. Luckily she did no such thing when I approached her - perhaps it because I gave her a quid...

Snapper's delight

I went to a Brighton Flickr group beach barbecue last night and had a great time. There were many good photographers there, some very interesting cameras, and some very nice actual people too. I didn't take many photos for some reason - not sure why really, perhaps I was intimidated by the sheer weight of photographic experience on that beach. Or perhaps I was just having too good a time. I did get this one though - that sky was a truly amazing colour and the clouds were swirling in the most extraordinary patterns. This doesn't do it any kind of justice but it still looks pretty good. It takes a lot to persuade me to photograph anything sunset related on the seafront these days because it's all been done before so many times, but this one seemed justified. I hope you agree.

Birthday girl

The blog pic choice was a no brainer today: it's Marni's sixth birthday! So of course we had waffles and strawberries for breakfast, and to be frank I wouldn't recommend them. It was a very sickly and insubstantial meal and I felt both hungry and bloated about ten minutes after I'd finished. Nothing wrong with the strawberries, obviously, and I'm sure there'd be nothing wrong with top notch waffles either, but these were Bird's Eye. Nuff said there I think.

There are plenty more photos of the happy event on my Flickr pages in case you're interested. But in a nutshell, it was a lovely day, Marni was happy as Larry with her gifts, and one of them - a hamster who was originally going to be called Hovis but who is unfortunately now more likely to end up being called Georgina or Gizmo - is curled up in a rather cute little ball downstairs as I type. Happy days.

Venerable old A-1

This old beauty is now more than a quarter of a century old. A photographer called Phil gave it to me for nothing when we were both working at the Dover Express newspaper - my first employer. I was a trainee news reporter on the Express for a couple of years and probably learned more there than I have anywhere else - school and university included. It was a great place to work, even though I was only paid something like £5K when I started. I'm beginning to sound like a Hovis ad now, so I'll move on.

The A-1 was my only camera for years. I've taken thousands of very bad photos with it, a couple of hundred decent ones and maybe a handful of excellent ones. Its proudest moment was probably when it nearly got me killed on our honeymoon. We were on safari in South Africa and keeping as quiet as we could in a hide near a watering hole in the hope that some decent sized beasts would show up. Sure enough, a massive bull elephant came to drink and of course I took his picture. The trouble was that the shutter was so loud he heard it - more importantly, it really pissed him off. His ears started flapping, he stamped his foot and started swaying in a rather obviously agitated way. Then he did a couple of little mock charges, which filled me with fear - a fear that became almost blind terror when I realised that our hitherto rather cocksure guide was also bricking it. He actually advised us to start running away if memory serves, which can't be the best thing to do when faced with a charging elephant, surely.

Anyway, we survived, obviously, and the A-1 continues to function perfectly well despite being chucked in a cupboard for the past decade, a victim of my infatuation with digital photography. I wonder if any of the fancy-arsed digital cameras I've owned and plan to own in the future would be so forgiving.

Glass filler

No time for snapping for three days and counting now - not good enough really. So here's another oldie to fill the gaping hole in cyberspace until I get my act together. It was taken a few months ago on another desperate day when I thought there'd be no photographic fruit. On that occasion I had the gumption to pick up the camera and wander around the house for a bit until inspiration struck - and I have to say I quite like the result. It's not an amazing shot but it's certainly interesting, which was a bonus on such an unpromising day.

Today I actually have a pretty good excuse for not getting out there snapping. I was taking my daughter to her very first fracture clinic, where she was pumped full of entonox and had her broken arm manipulated back into some sort of semblance of straightness. The radius just above her wrist was at a 25 degree angle (should have been straight) so it seemed like a good idea at the time but it was a difficult thing to be all solid and paternal about - seeing a five year old giggling on N2O one minute and then howling in pain as a burly orthopaedic surgeon presses hard right on the point where you know her arm's broken is a tough one. Still, it's only bent by 15 degrees now, so I think we'd all agree it was worth it (specially Marni, who got a bag of sweets out of the deal).

Drummer from above

This turned out a little better than expected. I think I have the cymbals to thank. It's truly amazing how much there is to photograph on the seafront. However grey the day, however sparse the crowds, however devoid ones head is of inspiration, nine times out of ten something turns up. Today the weather's not that great, I'm feeling slightly below par (as you may be able to tell due to this scintillating prose), the crowds have stayed away and I hadn't a clue what I was going to come home with. Then I walked along the path above the Gemini and heard this band playing - they weren't bad either...

We also joined the library today. I'm slightly embarrassed and ashamed to say it hadn't occurred to us before now - eight years after moving down to Brighton. We've been shelling out on books that get read once and then effectively discarded, but something had to give because Osk is now reading at a fairly scary rate - he got through four thick junior James Bond books inside the last month - so we had to find a way to stop the growing cost of feeding his habit. It's a very photogenic building once you're inside so I think I'll try to get permission to take some shots there. It may not be possible but it's certainly worth asking.

Seagull

Well, you know. If you live in Brighton you've got to take the odd shot of seagulls. I think everyone starts off hating them, then moves towards accepting them, then kind of admires them, before finally loving the ornery fekkers. If you need any help moving on from the hate phase, just pop down to the seafront on a stormy day. As you snuggle into your waterproofs and bow into the wind, seeking out places to shelter from the weather, you may just spot the gulls dipping and diving and skimming the thrashing water with their wingtips. And if you didn't know better you'd swear they were laughing with the sheer visceral joy of it all. There's no way they're just surviving out there - they're playing, damn it. That's when the respect starts to kick in. We're visitors here; they own the gaff. All power to them.

Sunset bikes

Back on that shadow theme again. It would have been good to capture the full bike shadow image on the ramp in the foreground and maybe have slightly less clutter in the image as a whole but I do like the setting sunlight on the huts and the graffiti wall below them. I think this one would have been improved if I'd stuck around a little longer too - both to get a richer, redder, sunlight and to catch some gnarlier jumping. But hey ho, I was on my way to a bowl of chilli and a subtitled movie and missions don't get much more serious than that.

I really feel lucky about the number of opportunities there are for photography around my way - you could really go in any direction around dusk at this time of year and find something amazing within a 10-minute cycle.

Flying parrot

A photo-free day today, more's the pity, so here's one I made earlier. It was taken after the children's parade at the start of last month as we walked wearily towards our lunch after traipsing around the streets of Brighton for a couple of hours - in Madge and Marni's case dressed as zebras, if memory serves. There was so much colour and noise and childish excitement around that it would have been easy to miss this parrot and I reckon I might well have done so if she hadn't been screaming quite so loud as she flew higher and higher. It would be better if you could see a bit more detail on her costume, I suppose, but I quite like the shapes created by the ropes, struts and vapour trails.

Rusty rack of ruin

This must surely be the saddest clothes drying rack in Christendom. We've had it for at least a decade and it seems we're incapable of getting rid of the blessed thing. Because it is such a sad object it now lives in the garden - where, of course, the pace of its deterioration has picked up considerably. But for some reason when I'm doing one of my regular eagle-eyed scans of the garden to identify things to go to the dump (woe betide any toy left outside when I'm on a dump scan) it always escapes. I fear there may be some sort of emotional attachment I'm reluctant to acknowledge for some deep-seated reason.