There comes a time in a man’s life when he must tread unknown, potentially dangerous waters, just to save a couple hundred quid on a proper web designer. That’s how I roll. For the last month or more, this intrepid lensman has waded knee-deep in the murky slurry of web design and has emerged weary, skin flaking, weather-beaten, and infested with those apocryphal creatures that swim up your urine stream and attach themselves to the inside of your urethra. An expedition of a calibre that makes a barefoot trek across the Copper Canyons look like bank holiday in Brighton. I speak of course, of SEO. SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation is the art–in my case, at least–of attracting you to my site, even if you don’t give a shit about my photography or the drivel I write on here that I mockingly pass off as an update. The concept is very simple: You search; I appear. Optimising my site to work with Google also led to an unintended redesign of the entire blog and the addition of several other features. Most of these features are server-side, but a few are visible. I’ve now added tags that you can click that Read the Rest…

Adding new features to this blog at the moment. Expect it to be a bit weird for a couple of days. If you’re really lucky, expect it to be broken and completely unvisitable. I’ll be back shortly with an in-depth review of the new 27″ iMac, just purchased by yours truly. Goodbye for now.

Let’s be honest. The world just isn’t a very nice place anymore, is it? I know that’s a common proposition, but I feel my cliché is slightly less obvious. I’m not talking about international relations, or foreign policy, the war on Darwin, Islamic cavemen cutting off the clitorides of young girls and then sewing up their labia so that the grown men they are gifted to in wedlock may forcefully break them during the consummation of their marriage. I’m not talking about any of that. I’m talking about something far worse, in fact. Have you ever considered the amount of stress you go through in one day in order to complete what should be the simplest of tasks? Take this example from my life, for instance. Recently, I noticed that my Internet wasn’t working as expected. This being Britain, I obviously expected the usual dog shit Internet service we are forced to put up with, but recently standards were slipping, and the faecal tang of my current Internet experience was from a far less handsome creature.

In 2005, my at-the-time girlfriend used to live at the top of a long, steep, main road. It was a conduit between areas, and as such, attracted a lot of traffic. One particular road-goer at the time would catch my eye, and has, subsequently, changed my life in a way that affects how I interact with and view the world to this day. He was an old man, no younger than 80, and he used to cycle up the road most days. It was the kind of sight most people take no notice of, but there was a life message contained in this geriatric pedalist, and I spotted it straight away. To say the old man struggled up that hill is an understatement. He was about the same age as Noah, and looked in about the same physical condition as a first edition Bible. Hunched over the bike at such an extremity, he could practically see underneath the saddle. He used to meander left and right on account of it being impossible to stay in a straight line at such a slow speed. His face was always contorted and locked in a permanent painful grimace as he made the climb Read the Rest…

I get irritated quite a lot in life. The tiniest things really send me over the edge. Take headphone chords for instance. If anything catches them and pops the buds from my ears, I can, for a split second, become irrationally mad. Some might say slightly psychotic. It’s an inward manifestation that lasts only a few seconds, but that few seconds contains the anger of twenty illegal wars. Few are privy to that information. Few things, though, I’ve realised, irritate me quite as much as motivational slogans. You know the ones: “greatness is within”, “to believe is to achieve”, “overcome the obstacles before they overcome you” etc.. You can pretty much make them up. All of them are meaningless, all of them are stupid, and some are even potentially dangerous.. The first slogan is what actually inspired this blog update. I’ve suffered from a bad back of late, my nocturnal photoshop activities combined with a woeful piece of shit folding computer chair have led to me developing a posture akin to what can only be imagined as a 90 year old man indiscreetly thumbing through newsagent pornography (just to clarify, I’ve undertaken only the posture and appearance of this apocryphal Read the Rest…

This is Lillesden School for Girls in Kent. Originally a private residence built in 1855 by the banker Edward Lloyd, it was sold after The Great War and turned into Bedgebury Girls Public School where it played host to myriad games of pattycake and hopscotch until finally closing in 1999 and reopening seconds later as a joyous little deathtrap for explorers like me. This building nearly took my life, were it not for the steely British pluck I have alluded to in previous updates, I may very well have not been here to write this today.

That is a picture of a moo cow. You can tell it’s a cow by the way it looks. Just got back from a two day getaway to Dorset. Weather was lovely, did lots of walking, etc.. We stayed in a small town called Lulworth which is just on the coast near Durdle Door. I took quite a few shots from the trip, but unfortunately, most of the landscape shots occured during midday, which anyone will tell you is a bit crap for landscaping, on account of the sun being directly overhead. Dorset has some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve ever seen in my life. Spectacular rolling hills that give way to endless crystal clear blue water. In the height of summer, it must be an amazing place for a getaway. I’ll definitely go back at some point. Dorset also, rather inexplicably, has Hoodies. I saw groups of roaming youths dressed like Moss Side truants randomly wandering this otherwise idyllic town. It looked a bit out of place amongst the infinite amount of old people and never ending lines of children exiting coaches on School trips. It was a bit odd. There can’t have been anywhere selling Adidas for Read the Rest…

I shot a wedding recently, my last one, as a matter of fact. I don’t need the money anymore, and to be honest, I find them way too stressful. I don’t mind pressure, but weddings cause emotional pressure, which isn’t very conducive to a normal sleeping pattern in the run up to the big day. And so I dedicate this blog post to anyone who shoots weddings for a living–you are a better man or woman than I (Definitely a better man, though I do look great in a dress). Wedding photography, is, pressure wise, the photographic equivalent of invasive surgery. Were it not for my steely spirit and stalwart British resolve, I very well may have floundered during this most recent yomp through the salt mines.

I can’t think of a blog update; my creative juices have been subdued of late. I’m not saying previous blog updates were great or anything, only that normally I have no problem talking utter nonense on this page. But, I had to post these pictures, because I haven’t updated in a while. So yeah.

A few weeks past, one early Monday morning, an ear-splitting baritone wrenched me from my stupefied moonshine slumber. Like Jesus through the streets of Golgotha, I clawed my way out of bed with a feral hangover. The banging on the door thumped my delicate eardrums like a 2nd crack at Omaha Beach. In a move borne of desperation, I clawed at the lock like an Alsatian trapped in a house fire; my conscious mind had yet to switch on, and so it was left to my smaller, but only slightly less primitive animal brain to navigate the intricate technicalities of my Banham. Succeeding in opening the storage cupboard, I decided it was now best to turn my attention to the front door. Further clawing ensued before the light poured in, searing my eyeballs medium-rare. Squinting into the divine light, which, in my state of post-inebriation, seemed hot enough to sunburn Satan, there stood before me the silhouette of what was, unmistakably, a man. Fuck-ing Citilink. With neither the strength nor willpower to end his life, I accepted the 8am wake up call and with the pen clamped in my fist like an icepick, I stabbed an inept signature into the Read the Rest…