367-50 A Reflection

367 shots. One a day for just over a year. This project just became part of my life. It slipped in there, became part of the daily routine, without actually taking over my life. As I reached the end of this I spent a fair amount of time thinking about the project and the photos I've taken over the last year. Here's what I came up with.

My photography has improved. Overall, there's good shots, average shots and poor shots but the ratio of good to bad has improved over the year. I'm shooting in raw nearly all the time and my preference has become to shoot on manual much more often than I ever would have.

There were big changes in my life across the period of time of this project. My marriage breaking up was the biggest by a long way and keeping on taking photos helped me through. Having something to concentrate on each day, even if it was only for a short time, was useful for me. I want to keep this post about the photography; the relationship stuff would need a blog of it's own.

I changed my camera. Out went the old reliable D90 and in came the kick-ass D800. I miss the D90 but the capability of the D800 is incredible. I'm still coming to terms with it and it could be a little better for sports and live music stuff, but it simply is an amazing piece of kit.

I was bemoaning the fact that I've never developed a "style" in terms of photography. My eldest daughter described my approach to photography as being like Pokemon - I collect style and techniques and then move on to something different and it can seem like I'm trying to bag as many techniques as I can. That is true - I see something I like and I want to try it/replicate it/ find out how it was done. But I also run with it too, I push the techniques when and where I can and see what else is possible. It was also pointed out to me that constantly changing and experimenting may actually be my style. Trying different styles and approaches has been great fun. I think I had been getting into a bland rut and was relying too much on the views and opinions of a small number of people.

For a while I forgot about what other people thought and just did what I wanted to do, exposed myself to areas of photography I'd never tried (landscapes, long exposure, light painting, boudoir) and generally tried to branch out. I also made the effort to express myself through my photography on at least a couple of occasions - I actually tried to use pictures to communicate how I was feeling at a particular time.

Leaving the camera club I had been in and not joining another was also the correct move for me. I feel that there's a certain narrow view of photography that exists within the camera club setup here in Northern Ireland and I think I had become too tuned into that rather than focusing on what I what I wanted to do. Seeing pictures that do well in competitions made me feel two things; firstly, they were generally all great shots if a bit over-processed. Secondly they just weren't the sort of shots I wanted to take.

I think, looking back, that I've also been forced to push myself more in terms of getting to grips with the technical aspects of shooting. I've also had the opportunity to do some "semi-pro" shoots where someone has been relying on me to produce the goods. I guess this started with Belfast Roller Derby who adopted me as their official photographer but there have been plenty of others, and the opportunities have increased across the year, mainly due to positive word of mouth and also simply getting in touch with people and asking if they needed a photographer. Some say yes, some say no, but there's no point in getting put off by the odd knock-back. If you're serious, you keep asking. Eventually people will ask you.

Keeping the blog has been a positive experience for me as well. Posting weekly rather than daily updates worked well for me and pulling in anything up to 1300 views a month meant that people were at least having a look. I'd have liked to have generated more comments on the blog about the photos I was posting. There were a few good ones, a few bad ones and a couple of quite nasty and hurtful ones. I have to admit that the nastier ones hurt when I read them, and I did have a wee rant about one in particular but it never stopped me pushing forward and keeping going. I guess you don't write a blog and put yourself "out there" unless you can't put up with someone having a go at you or your content.

There were a couple of comments I decided not to publish that were spiteful, and were either left as "anonymous" or (I'm pretty cure) were left under a false name. I was fairly sure I knew where they had come from and as such, hoped that I was able to see them for what they were. It certainly wasn't about the photography. There were times over the last year when I was less robust mentally and emotionally than I wanted to be but again, having a purpose and a direction kept me on track.

Anyhow, I'm taking a break from the picture-a-day thing for a while. I may kick off again in the new year with something a bit more focussed on some of the areas of photography I want to develop a bit more. I'm going to keep on burning stuff and the orbs will still be spinning. Here's one from the weekend, just in case you've read this far and wondered where the photos on a photoblog were.

Uncle Colin burns some wire wool. Marble Hill, November 2012

367-50 The Final Round Up

Only four shots left to see me through to the end of this year long project, finishing with my 50th birthday on the 15th of November.

12/11/12

Don't mess with me when I'm doing the washing up. That's all. I'll cook all day and all night but I really hate doing the feckin' dishes.

13/11/12

Old-looking hands. These hands have now taken 365 shots for this project, plus a few thousand others across the last year. This is my hand doing something it does too often. I had thought of having my other hand holding a glass of wine.

14/11/12

A final light trails shot, taken with the assistance of my daughter Sarah. Set the camera and tripod up in the back of my car and set the camera for a series of self-timed 8" exposures as I drove along a busy road. This was the best of the batch, although I'm not totally happy with it and might give this another go at some stage soon.

15/11/12

And there it is - the last of 367 shots. That's me, on my 50th birthday. The beard is back and the hair needs a trim, but I'm saving my next haircut for a special, photographic purpose. I'm taking a bit of a risk wearing a white shirt to go out tonight as there's a pretty good chance that things will get messy. Very messy.

Thanks for taking the time to have a look at the blog and thanks to everyone who got their picture taken at some time over the last year. To quote the Beatles, "some are gone, but some remain."

367-50 Week 52

Technically, the last full week of my 365 project. There's a lump in my throat right now, I can tell you.

5/11/12

So Monday opens with my big girl Siobhan exhibiting her cross stitch at the Oh Yeah centre in Belfast. No free drink, no nibbles and the exhibits were hung in the hallway outside the toilets. No-one was there which was a pity since much of the work on show was really very impressive. Vonnie's stuff was (as always) top notch and I was well impressed with the pictures submitted by Mark Reihill.

6/11/12

Almost forgot to take a shot today. Maybe this should be a competition - identify what this household object is and you can win a prize. It's a macro shot, taken with a Nikor 60mm and the object was found in my kitchen. Rude answers will be ignored.

7/11/12

Been a while since I went orbing. Had a spectacular shot planned but due to rain Sarah and I headed off to the tunnels which run under the railway tracks at Holywood. We both got a few half-decent shots and Sarah even managed to make her first ever circular orb, using her own camera on self-timer, tripod and using a long exposure.

8/11/12

Larne today again, but I think someone might have been trying to send me a message. This was the sight that greeted me as I walked out to my car at lunchtime.

9/11/12

I'm tempted to make this another "what is this" question. This is the contents of my daughter's coat pockets, emptied before I put it in the washing machine. There are: 12 assorted sweet wrappers, six doggy poo bags, one empty tub of sweets, three christmas crackers, 27p in small change, 5 used tissues, 2 hair bands and one elastic band. There was also some other stuff that can only be described as "unidentified."

10/11/12

The wee  men have been absent for a while. Today they came out to do some mountaineering in the kitchen. At one stage I managed to superglue my hands to the kitchen worktop and also glue lengths of thread to my hands.

11/11/12

Last batch of head shots for Belfast Roller Derby this afternoon, and this is the wonderful Trixie Toxin. All shots are now processed and available on dropbox for use on the BRD website and in the programme for the next bout at the end of the month. This was a big job. Hopefully within the next couple of weeks there will be a feature in the Belfast Telegraph on the team and it looks like they will be using my shots for the article.

So there goes the last full week of the 367-50 project. Four days left to do, so the next and last update from the project won't be that hard to do.

267-50 Week 51

Penultimate week of the project and Monday ended up being one of those last-minute "shit I have to take a shot" days. More Roller Derby head shots to do this week on Thursday; already pretty pleased with Sunday's set of shots and the high key approach seemed to have worked well. Anyhow, on with this week's update.

29/10/12

Peas. Hand-shelled garden peas to be precise that were on their way into a pea and porcini mushroom risotto I was concocting for dinner with my eldest daughter. As always, I had to buy a bottle of white wine for cooking risotto. Half a glass into the dinner, the rest into Vonnie and me.

30/10/12

Time to use that word "autumnal" again. Dog walking in Stormont again and took the Lensbaby with me. Completely the wrong lens when I was confronted with a huge leaf blower in the estate and children running through the clouds of leaves. The shots were crap. Got this though, which is a typical Lensbaby shot - sharp point of interest, lots of blurring. I had the f8 aperture disc in and found that I had to crank the ISO up to around 800 in the poor afternoon light.

31/10/12

Hallowe'en night and it was off with the girls to Mount Stewart for their Enchanted Garden and other stuff. Tour of the house, walk round the lake. Performers were in abundance, plenty of food stalls. It was a nice evening, if a little cold. Parking was in a muddy field a couple of miles away, and I guess that would be my only gripe. That and a lack of fireworks.

1/11/12

One thing begats another and my Roller Derby stuff led to me being asked to do a shoot for a local charity. The NI Cancer Fund for Children were launching their magic reindeer dust appeal and I had the honour of getting to take the pics. This involved some formal shots of the sponsors and some rather fun shots with this delightful young lady, Ellie. Much reindeer dust was thrown and blown around W5 and even after two changes of clothes and two showers, I'm still finding bits of glitter stuck to me. I have to say, I really enjoyed this shoot.

2/11/12

And speaking of Roller Derby, I did the second big batch of head shots last night. This is the wonderful Pusicfer who insisted on pumping iron. This shot probably won't make the final selection for the website but I like it and wouldn't want to leave it sitting on a hard drive somewhere. Sad to report that after this shot was taken, Pus managed to break her collarbone during evening practice. I'm sure she'll be back on skates soon.

3/11/12

When was the last time I posted something from the iphone? Was in Belfast city centre this afternoon - I must learn to stay out of the photography section at Waterstones bookshop. I went in looking for a book on a particular photographer and ended up with three books, none of which were what I'd gone in for. On the way back to the car I bumped into the Master Chief from the Halo computer games. Very convincing suit/uniform and he was quick to stop handing out promo leaflets and strike a pose.

4/11/12

My visit to Waterstones yielded two rather excellent books on lighting for portraits. I was itching to try some out and got stuck into them this morning with my ever willing model Sarah. The outfit was her choice. This is a shot straight out of the camera with no adjustments made to it other than a slight crop and a white balance tweak to the background. I have a bucket-load to process using a basic clam-shell lighting set up and some more like this with a ring flash. Felt like I was getting somewhere with this - now for the step by step processing advice. Lets see what that brings.

367-50 Week 49

Returned from a fantastic trip to Venice on Saturday to find that my internet had given up the ghost so I was unable to post any update for last week. Thanks to O2 customer services, I had a new wireless router delivered toady an I'm back up and running. Here's some holiday snaps to bore the knickers off you all.

15/10/12

So, a whole day of travelling via car to Dublin, plane to Treviso Airport, bus to Treviso town and then train to the town of Mogliano Venito outside Venice. Arrived just in time for a storm featuring thunder, lightening and very heavy rain which put the brakes on getting into Venice. I did get this shot on the hotel room balcony. It was wetter outside than it looks.

16/10/12

Armed with a paper map (the iphone Venice Guide app was truly crap and useless) it was off around Venice. Thankfully the storm seemed to have cleared the air and the skies were blue with temperatures around 19 degrees. Walked around the centre of the city, stopping for coffee, wine, food etc. Took a detour to see this rather gorgeous building called the Snailshell - an external staircase with some truly beautiful north african features. Being a wee bit cheeky, I did climb on the fence surrounding it to get a better perspective.

17/10/12

Wednesday was a day for waterbuses and travelling to some of the islands that surround Venice. The first of these was San Michelle, the communal cemetery for the city. Due to space restrictions, catholics can only be buried here for ten years before their bones are disinterred and placed in a ossuary. No such pressure exists in the protestant section, and they can lie as long as they want. Fact. No photography within the cemetery, but I couldn't resist taking a few sneaky shots shooting from the hip with my wide angle. Also got shots of the graves of Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Diaghilev (buried in the uncrowded Russian Orthodox plot) but couldn't find the grave of the poet Ezra Pound.

18/10/12

Day three and it was off on the hoof again by foot and waterbus. Planned out a day of "lesser seen Venice" and stayed well away from the tourist areas. The day involved an enormous circle around the outskirts of the city, taking in the most far-flung parts of Venice. There are cracking shots to be had everywhere, especially when the light was as good as this. Reflections abound - here's a fairly nice one.

19/10/12

Although today was spent travelling home, I couldn't ignore the island of Burano. Home of lace making, the houses are all painted in bright primary colours and are a dream for photographers and painters. The shot above hasn't been processed at all (apart from a wee crop) and gives a real sense of what this island town looks like.

20/10/12

Having no internet meant I had the chance to get to work processing my pics from the trip on Saturday. I ran a few through the HDR processing and this was my favourite. It's a view of St Mark's from the church at St Georgio Maggiore. Had to wait half and hour before I could get a shot with no people. After this, it was trip up the bell tower of the church for the best view over Venice anywhere. Five euro well spent, although you should avoid it if you're not a fan of either heights or enclosed spaces - the lift to the top is tiny. Also avoid being up there on the hour as the bells still ring and they are deafening.

21/10/12

"Daddy Daddy can we walk up Black Mountain?" I gave in. It was wet, cold and the cloud had closed in really badly by the time we started our walk. I foolishly had taken just my lensbaby with me. This was a bad decision. However, I did come up with this shot of Sarah as she played with some of the local horses.

Ah - only three weeks of this project to go after this one. While I'm looking forward to not being under pressure to take and post a picture every day, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Put the camera away for a week? A month? Carry on? Decisions, decisions.

367-50 Week 48

Week 48 and heading inexorably towards the end of the 367 project. I have something extra special planned for next week - a bit of a photo trip to somewhere I've always wanted to visit but that will need to wait.

8/10/12

Re-visited the same spot as last week to try some test shots for a possible poster photo shoot for the next Roller Derby bout at the end of November. This was the shot I was thinking of as the backdrop, then adding in some fire-spinning (which I did and which worked reasonably well). The next trick is to develop the suggestion of a Star Wars theme by putting two skaters in front of the fire spinning with light-up light sabres and pick them out with some rear curtain flash. It's shaping up to be the most difficult and intricate shot I've ever attempted and will involve a small crew of people and some willing volunteers. I wasn't too happy about the complete arse in the block of flats overlooking this piece of waste ground deciding to shine a green laser on proceedings once I got started with the fire spinning but I've realised that my photo antics are starting to draw a little attention now and again. If that was you with the green laser - you're an arse my friend.

9/10/12

I went down to the Lagan this evening with the intention of doing some light orbs around the river. Got some good shots; don't know specifically why I chose this one to post, other than it was one of the last I took before heading home. I'm having problems making my orbs perfectly circular - this might be a matter of practice. There was also a train going across the bridge behind me - it's the streak of light above the bridge.

10/10/12

Here's a learning point. When your youngest daughter is doing a viking project and needs to make a helmet and shield, don't let her and her big brother loose on the project. I don't recall pictures of vikings with mutli-coloured/striped hats and shields. This cost me four rolls of electrical tape. The helment looked like something that an american football player would wear. Don't get me wrong - it looked spectacular. Just not like something a viking would wear. I thought sepia-toning might make the photo look more.....historical. And less like the Minnesota Vikings.

11/10/12

10.30 and no shot for the day. These were heading for the bin as I has no excuse for using them. Lovely red and green chilli peppers. At least they weren't purchased in vain.

12/10/12

I can't remember the last time I felt so desperately in need of a glass of wine. It was a long day with way too much driving between meetings in work and several long and difficult telephone calls once I'd got home. My plans of an afternoon nap and something dull on Film4 were well and truly scuppered by work. It was 7 o'clock by the time the wine got poured and I drank it like man who had been lost in the Gobi desert for a month. And then fell asleep on the settee at around 9.

13/10/12

Had a lovely autumnal walk round Castlewellan this morning. I don't think I have been there since I was about 12 years old and my parents used to take us for family picnics. Instead of walking round the lake, we walked to the Annesley Gardens and walked through these and up to the old greenhouse at the far end. This is over-grown and dilapidated - a real waste of a fantastic glass house. Spotted these drops falling off a stem while trying to get some shots through a broken window of the inside. Fired off a few - this is maybe the best but even it isn't totally sharp. A macro lens, a tripod and some patience may have made for a better shot. Unfortunately, I had none of those at the time.

14/10/12

So, a damp Sunday. What to do? Why not go the the pumpkin festival at Castleward? I'll tell you why not. Parking in muddy fields miles away from where things were happening. Having to walk too far to see too little. Trying to get the free shuttle bus back to the muddy field only to find that some coach driver had parked his bloody coach on the road, blocking the traffic and guess what - had to walk back to the car. Mind you, I do have to point out that I ate amazing pizza (goats cheese and olives) and had a decent cup of coffee. And had nice company while I stomped around complaining. Here's some people carving pumpkins for small children. Bah Humbug.

On a more positive note, I am happy to announce that I will be going on a much anticipated photo expedition next week to somewhere I've always wanted to visit, and even visit more since picking up a camera. This time next week, I'll be boring you with holiday snaps.

367-50 Week 47

The weather was definitely starting to turn. Lots of rain and few opportunities to get out and about, but it is the start of October I suppose. Lets see what we can come up with this week, dodging the showers.

1/10/12

So the mystery plants in the garden finally flowered today - at the start of October? What self-respecting flower comes out in October? I had thought that I'd killed this plant when it suddenly died back and vanished but then it put out a dozen of these remarkable pods which today began to open and produce long purple flowers this morning. Hurrah! It's not dead and I didn't kill it. At least not yet.

2/10/12

A fairground up the road? Why not? Pity the place was empty and closed down for the night half and hour after I arrived because of the lack of trade. I got a few shots - this one taken with the Lensbaby Composer with a start-shaped aperture disc. I played around with it and got some very impressionistic shots of star-shaped bokeh. I liked this one, although it is a bit if a mess compositionally.

3/10/12

Sarah and I went to this footbridge in Dundonald over the dual carriageway to Newtownards in order to ger her taking some long exposure shots of car tail lights. It seemed a shame not to try out and orb while we were there and we got some nice shots. While working at these shots, a man appeared from no-where and asked to check out what we were doing - or more exactly he knew what we were doing and wanted to have a look. Got chatting to Andy, swapped details, ended up being ten minutes later picking my other daughter up from Guides. Whoops.

4/10/12

Got bitten by the light painting bug this week without a doubt. Wanted to try this shot, thanks to some of Denis Smith's stuff (if you want to see his shots, check last week's blog post). Taken at 8.30pm with a six minute exposure and a 30 second orb.

5/10/12

Love this shot. Took my two youngest daughters down to the Titanic building to try out some light painting and on the way back to the car saw this shot as being very possible. Tramped over some waste ground, famed it up using the same settings as we had used over at the Titanic building and (more by chance) this was the second shot out of the camera. Not much post-processing on this other that cropping in lightroom. 30 second exposure seemed to work well for both the cranes and the orb. Got a really nice glow under the orb too. This would look good printed and mounted. Any takers?

6/10/12

Two flower shots in the same week! Have I gone mad? I just couldn't resist this. When I moved into this house in May under what could best be described as difficult circumstances, there was a pot on the kitchen window sill with what looked like two dried onions in it. I watered them and they put out a couple of leaves. I kept watering them through the summer and nothing happened. Then suddenly, about two weeks ago, one of them produced a shoot which turned into this. I'm a sucker for growing stuff and seeing something like this come from what looked like a lifeless lump does cheer me up. I pulled the muslin curtain behind the flower and shot it with my 60mm macro and an f-stop of 3.5.

7/10/12

Went to the Belfast Roller Derby new skater recruitment evening today to take some shots. This isn't really a new skater, it's my derby daughter Katie. Katie has been training hard over the last number of months and is about to do her minimums and move up. She was also asked to talk to the new skaters about what it's like being "fresh meat" in the derby team. It was a brief chat, but informative. Amazing to see how much more confident she is on skates now - only a matter of time before I'm shooting her in a bout for the Banshees.

367-50 Week 46

Monday was a real wash out. Wet, dark and miserable. Autumn appears to have lasted exactly one week.

24/09/12

An on a wet day, what better than to try a bit of fooling about. It was pretty difficult taking this on a self-timer but thankfully I was able to get the camera to fire off 5 shots in a burst with 1 second between each. The lighting wasn't good as I was cramped for space and only had one working flashgun and no working wireless triggers, but you get the idea.

25/09/12

It's really great to see the massive changes in Belfast's public transport system. Since the introduction of the new bus lanes in the centre of Belfast. a;; traffic in and out in the mornings appears to have ground to a halt. I left my youngest daughter to school and then attempted to drive the 2 miles to the start of the motorway (I checked it on Google maps so it must be right). It took me 1 hour and 15 minutes before I hit the motorway to Antrim. Made some phone calls, sent some texts, read some e-mails. Can you tell how bored and frustrated I was?

26/09/12

Apologies for the watermark on this, but I've been working on adding watermarks to shots in Photoshop using the brush tool and got carried away. Had to go into town to do some birthday shopping for my daughter and I found myself able to sit outside drinking coffee with my camera. Took a few shots looking into Cornmarket and really liked this, especially with the man in the coat walking across the frame. I'm also getting a wee bit fixated with this type of HDR processing and am now processing 4 or 5 shots from each batch of photos this way to see how they look. Yep - I'm liking this.

27/09/12

Big up to my big son Conor. He arrived round last night and showed me the website and a video for an Australian photographer called Denis Smith who specialises in light orbs. Denis' website can be found here:

Denis Smith Photography

Denis' images are possibly the best light orbs I've seen and his locations are awesome. What I learned from Denis' video was that he shot at the full moon with very long exposures (up to 10 minutes) which then produces quite bright images even though they're shot at night time. We tried this out last night and this was our test run. This was taken around 9pm when it quite dark, with a bit of a moon out. The exposure was 4 minutes with the light orb produced in 30 seconds by swinging a bunch of LED lights around. I'm not sure if that was my orb or Conor's in the picture. This is looking like a promising technique, although it would take massive practice to get anywhere close to Denis Smith's shots.

28/09/12

I finally got see one of my guitar heroes last night, courtesy of the Ards Guitar Festival. I've been a fan of Martin Simpson for many years since coming across him on television coverage of the Cambridge folk festival. Since the passing of the great Doc Watson earlier this year, I think he is now my favourite living guitarist. He played a set that was way too short (for me anyway) and he was obviously suffering from a cold, but it was worth seeing nonetheless. This guy does things with a guitar that I don't even understand. Simply magical. As was local boy Gareth Dunlop who opened the show - I think he's now on my watch list to go and see play.

29/09/30

Roller derby last night and although this might not look like a derby shot, it is. The hard core fans of the Belfast Roller Derby team are the BRD Ultras. Last bout they came along dressed in poncho's and somberos. This time, it was ninjas. There was something so off the wall about seeing half a dozen people in the crowd dressed as japanese assassins. This is Barzo, who gamely offered to perform some spin kicks for the camera.

30/09/12

And here are my favourite Roller Derby team of all time. A nail-biting bout, tied after full time and needing an overtime jam to separate the two teams. The Belfast girls came out on top, and the excitement was amazing. A well deserved win after all the hard work they've put in this year. Dedication and drive abound, and they still find the time to hug me from time to time.

Update - Vandal Lisa (front row, far right) was rushed to hospital on Sunday after suffering a blood clot on her brain. Vandal skated like a star in the bout on Saturday night and for the smallest skater on the track, she played out of her skin. Latest news is that she's out of danger and doing well; everyone's thoughts are with Vandal and for her recovery.

367-50 Week 45

No mucking about here. As Marvin Gaye said, lets get it on.

17/09/12

Monday's are not good. I'm not going to go all Boomtown Rats on you here but I really don't like them. At all. Work, counselling appointment and then having to do some shopping. I was tired and worn out by the time I got to Tesco and was carelessly throwing stuff into a trolley. As a vegetarian of some years, can you spot my mistake here? Bollocks.

18/09/12

Playing about again with multiple images. No photoshop involved here at all. Several photos taken, uploaded and set as my desktop picture and then a text window placed on my hand. Straight out of the camera. As you'll guess, I had nothing photographic planned at all and ended up pulling something quick and pretty unoriginal out of my arse.

19/09/12

Finally getting a decent harvest of tomatoes from the greenhouse in September. Really should get them started a bit earlier next year! These little chaps are delicious - sweet and tasty. Very few are making in into a salad as I've been eating them like sweets. Hopefully get a few more weeks worth of fruit and a few more peppers as well. Had my first real red pepper this week.

20/09/12

Work stuff cancelled on me, leaving me looking at a pile of paperwork. As usual in such a situation, I engaged in quite a bit of task avoidance behaviour such as learning a couple of new tricks with the diablo and the lead guitar solo from Werewolves of London. This was third on the list - play with shaped aperture discs in my Lensbaby Composer. I did hearts, starts, swirls, birds etc. Liked this one best. A string of fairy lights was used to make the bokeh behind the cup, pinned to a black sheet.

21/09/12

Culture Night and decided to skip the big do in Belfast and visit the inaugural event in Holywood instead. This may have been a mistake. Although it has to be said I was really impressed with this bunch of kids who put on a free running demo outside the town library. Energetic and risky - note the guy at the back with his arm in plaster who threw a few somersaults later. These guys were from Rathgael Gym I discovered later.

22/09/12

Cycling on the Comber Greenway this afternoon with my daughter Sarah. She had brought her bike round to me a few weeks ago because it wasn't working. By that I mean that nothing on the bike was working. I stripped and repaired the brakes and then replaced the broken gear shifters and cables to get brakes and gears working again. I added bar ends to the handlebars, a waterbottle and holder and a Hello Kitty bell. Bike was now working again, all for the princely sum of around £30 and several hours work. Not bad for someone as handless and mechanically useless as myself. Today was the first real cycle we got to go on - not bad at all. Covered around 10 miles, although Sarah appears to have only two speeds when cycling - full-out sprint and stopped.

23/09/12

Sarah and I took off this morning on a trip down to Nendrum as a result of a conversation we had yesterday about Vikings. Nendrum itself was a disappointment, but the trip was enjoyable enough with Sarah coining the the term "a slim road" for the roads we were driving down. Stopped to take a few landscape-type shots and this is one. Liked the hay bales - they remind me of Autumn/harvest time.