Low tide sunset

Another shameful delay between postings, for which I can only apologise to you, my imaginary reader. By way of making amends, here's a photo I took the other day while out walking my new lens, a Nikkor 50mm f1.4. It was the wrong lens for the job really - something wider would have resulted in images with a bit more scale I think - but hey, I'm not complaining. I really like the results.

New year's day on the pier

I've just realised I've not posted here this year! Shockingly bad form. There's another blog taking my attention at the moment (on road.cc, about my big bike ride) but that's no excuse. I might find a few more photos to add today to make up for it.

In any case, this was taken on the pier on new year's day. We have a tradition of meeting up with friends and drinking beer on that day each year. We're usually nursing thunderous hangovers but this year was different. This year Madge and I spent new year's eve together on our own, just watching telly and eating rather indulgent party food from M&S - it felt right to do that for a change. The usual model of trudging off to some party or other just didn't appeal. For a few years now new year's eve has been a disappointment - there's too much partying in December to go for a big blow-out right at the end of the month. Perhaps we're getting old - perhaps we're growing up.

It was a beautiful day this year - as it often is. We walked to the pier, drank a few pints of Guinness in the pub whose name I always forget, ate fish and chips, then walked home again, ready and eager to begin January's healthier regime. No booze, healthy food and more exercise: the degree to which this appealed speaks volumes about how overdue it was.

Not a picture of thousands of starlings

Confession time: I took this shot in March, not today. In my defence, today's photographic efforts were restricted to a few old 'uns playing bowls in the park and try as I might I couldn't get myself sufficiently worked up about it to capture anything exciting. And anyway I like this shot so why shouldn't I give it a plug here? Whose rules are we following anyway?

There was a pretty spectacular sunset going on the night I captured this one. I was on the pier trying to avoid photographic clichés (which is really quite hard when you're on Brighton pier and there's a great sunset going on I can tell you). It was also roosting time for the starlings, and for a few glorious moments they were swarming around me like bees - I could hear thousands of individual wing beats as they flew over my head and beneath my feet. It was truly exhilarating. But this isn't a picture of that...