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.

A tough life

Today was the first proper day of my career hiatus. Since I left my job at the end of July I've been surrounded by family, kids, holidays, festival and a lot of noise. Although the kids went back to school yesterday Rach was here for half of the day - most of which I spent on a huge bike ride in any case, so it really didn't feel any different to the holiday days that preceded it. But today was different - the family were all otherwise engaged and I had the whole day to do whatever I wanted with. So what did I do? Filing, laundry, grass-cutting and bike-fettling. It was a day of blissful mundanity. To celebrate the glorious hum drumness of it all I went for a swim in the sea before picking up the kids from school. The water's still warm enough for it not to be a balls-out masculinity test every time you jump in and the sun was beating down when I got out, so I dried myself on the beach and took photos that made my feet look odd. It's official: I'm happy.

Kitesurfer

In haste tonight, because it's late but I don't want to miss two days on the trot. Here's one of several kitesurfing shots I grabbed after work tonight. There was one guy who was head and shoulders above the rest - epic jumps more than 20 feet into the air and perfect landings - but the swine never did it when I was watching. I'd track him carefully whenever he came anywhere near the shore but he'd never deliver until about two seconds after I lowered my camera. Time and again I'd look away in frustration, knowing he was just about to do something spectacular, but also that he was now too far away to capture it properly. Sure enough, a few seconds later I'd look out to sea and there he would be, flying over the waves at ridiculous heights and with absurd grace. Pah!

Anyway, it was nice to hang out with NigeyB and drink some of his beer while the kitesurfers kitesurfed and my fingers slowly went white thanks to my corporate boy circulation issues. I may post more of these - I was reasonably pleased with them.

PS - do us both a favour - click on this one and view the large version.

Pebble gull

So, day two and I'm already cheating. I took this one yesterday, not today, but life was easier yesterday, the weather was better, work less demanding. So I'm forgiving myself. This pebble sculpture was made by a homeless Irish guy on Brighton seafront as a way of earning himself a bit of beer money and some self-respect. He said it took him days - I'm guessing hours actually, but I don't want to take anything away from his achievement. He reckons he's the only pebble sculptor in the country and it seems churlish to argue with that. We spoke for 10-15 minutes and he was very happy for me to take pictures of his work. I'm slightly irritated with myself that I didn't take his picture too - rapport was definitely established and I don't think he'd have minded - but it never occurred to me to ask. Perhaps a proper photographer would be staight back the next day to ask...perhaps I'm not a proper photographer.