Going waaaay back into the archives for this one of Canary Wharf, which I took on an evening out with Pip. The title's terribly unoriginal, but it's a pretty accurate summary of my life now: I was fortunate to land a job in London within 10 days of putting my CV online, and started my second week there today (not at Canary Wharf!).

Currently it's a real case of "in at the deep end" but it promises to be a very stimulating environment, which is a good thing for me. It does mean almost no free time for photography, but I'm OK with that for now. Perhaps it'll mean shooting more cityscapes than landscapes, but again, I'm OK with that too...

Tags:   Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM Canon EOS 5D Mark II

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I'm still alive! I just haven't really shot anything flickr-worthy in the last few months.

We've just got back from a couple of weeks in Greece and I certainly had a variety of shoots (landscapes, wildlife, urbex, commercial, a baptism and a wedding!). Hopefully one or two of the landscapes are worth putting on here but that remains to be seen.

This is a shot of the Inglis Memorial - originally a drinking fountain for horses - on Colley Hill near Reigate, Surrey, just over a year ago, on a beautiful "summer" day in July. It suits my mood perfectly after coming back to the UK to hunt for jobs on a miserable, cold, windy and rainy day after being in 36° heat just a couple of days ago ;-) The dip in the background is a crater left from a Luftwaffe bomb in World War Two; the cows beyond are a more recent addition, and had been kind enough to leave "gifts" in the monument.

Canon 5DMkII, 24-70mm, manual blend of two exposures; it was raining so grad filters were out of the question, and the hood of the 24-70 is quite good at keeping rain off the front element...

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First up, apologies for being a rubbish flickr contact. I've had no real urge to be on here since my last upload. I've been busy with wedding and portrait work, and also had my PhD viva (which I passed, so nearly finished now!), so I haven't kept up with your streams or my one-a-week resolution. I probably still won't be very active as I'm not really feeling it, and have numerous other things to do as well, but thought I'd put something up here anyway just to prove I'm still alive!

I haven't posted anything from this close to home for over three years - I usually find excuses to not go shooting in the local area because I'm either bored of it or because it doesn't offer the "immediateness" or obvious scenes that the places I visit on holiday tend to. So it was refreshing when Johann suggested an outing to a hill I've had in mind for a while, which we dragged Louis along to as well despite his whining about sore legs from a walk earlier that day :P It was refreshing to visit somewhere with no preconceived image in mind, no pressure on myself to come back with anything or to even take the camera out of the bag. When I saw this path and the beautiful tree I knew it was worth a shot so after looking around for a while we returned here for the sunset.

5DII, 17-40mm @ 22mm, Hitech 0.6 reverse and Lee 0.6H grads. A single shot of 1/30th @ f/11, ISO 200, did most of the work here, with shots of 1/8th and 1/30th @ f/22 blended in manually for the sunburst (the EXIF gives the info for the darker exposure rather than the overall exposure).

Tags:   Landscape Black Down BlackDown West Sussex England UK

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More from Greece, this time Theogefyro (θεογέφυρο, meaning "God's bridge") near Lithino, Zitsa, Epirus (Λίθινο, Ζίτσα, Ήπειρος). A small chapel sits atop the natural stone arch and can just be made out in this shot. You could easily miss the arch unless you were looking for it as it's quite invisible from the road (which goes over a metal bridge above the stone arch).

5DII, 17-40mm, B+W polariser. Manual blend of 3 exposures, though I chose to leave the sky through the arch close to blowing out otherwise it looked too unnatural.

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The church of the Panagia (Mother Mary), by the springs of the Voidomatis river, Vikos. Open shade and a polariser help bring out the incredible colour of the ice-cold water and the Autumn leaves.

Canon 5DII, 100-400mm @ 100mm, B+W CPL.

Tags:   Greece Landscape εκκλησία παναγία ποταμός ποτάμι πήγες Βίκος Βοϊδομάτης Ζαγόρι Ζαγοροχώρια

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