I was lucky enough to receive a Diana Mini for Christmas and it’s reinvigorated my photography some what.

After the clean and crisp world of digital photography, lomography (or lomo for short) has been a breath of fresh air.  I can’t say I’m great with the lomo (I’d struggle to go so far as to say some of my shots so far have even been good) but even from my first roll of actual analogue film I’ve learnt a load and had a whole bunch of fun.

The whole idea around lomography is that it’s back to basics, back to manual focusing, choosing your aperture, selecting the most appropriate film, and ensuring your framing is good.

So… without further ado, here’s a few lessons I’ve learnt from my first roll of film!

Snub Robot, originally uploaded by smileham.

Nicky – It’s dark without a flash, originally uploaded by smileham.

Shoot from the hip, originally uploaded by smileham.

Preston Park – Clock Tower, originally uploaded by smileham.

Colour is your friend, originally uploaded by smileham.

An interesting character, originally uploaded by smileham.

Composition Counts, originally uploaded by smileham.

The Orchestra, originally uploaded by smileham.

Graffiti, originally uploaded by smileham.

Anyways, there’s my run down of what I’ve found so far with the Diana Mini. If you’ve managed to nab yourself an old school toy camera, I hope you’re having fun with it too! Good luck, have fun and don’t take it so seriously.

I could go back to the numerous “draft” posts to knock them in to some semblance of shape, or I could blitz through some highlights here.

New Zealand

Queensland New Zealand, originally uploaded by smileham.

Back in January of last year Nicky and I spent some time in New Zealand for a friends wedding. The country is amazing, everything that Lord of the Rings promised it would be. We travelled round the two islands in a “spaceship” called Uranus for 3 weeks, during which time I proposed to Nicky.

New York

The Statue of Liberty, originally uploaded by smileham.

For my 30th Nicky surprised me with a trip to New York, another fantastic destination that was every bit as awesome as it should have been. We were only there for a long weekend, so we blitzed the highlights.

• Statue of Liberty
• Central Park
• Rockerfeller Centre
• Apple Store… What! It was my birthday!

Angie’s Wedding

My first big wedding shoot, all the way from ceremony, group/family pics to reception photos. A fantastic day, with some great people and some great pictures.

My Wedding

Nicky and Steve, by Graham Laurence.

More weddings! As if they were going out of style! Rather than shoot my own, Graham Laurence helped me out with the photographic talent. I’ve recently sorted out the photo book from Blurb, which took long enough but looks great.

Malta

The Blue Lagoon, originally uploaded by smileham.

A week long break in Malta for our honeymoon. Mostly an opportunity for Nicky to get a way from it all after the stress of organising most of the wedding by herself. Malta is a beautiful country, very much the Mediterranean paradise!

2012?

Well that was 2011! It certainly goes down with a “Best Year Ever” badge, and 2012 is shaping up to be a good contender for the title (even if it will be a little more on the frugal side). I will attempt a slightly more regular schedule for updating this thing, although chances are I’ll be writing the next update in around 12 months!

I finally succumbed and decided to upgrade!

I’ve had a Canon 400d for a couple of years now, and the old girl has done me proud, but I now find that it’s time to move on. Next year I’m off to New Zealand for three weeks, and I decided that this was the perfect opportunity (read excuse) to upgrade.

The 400d has been a fine entry level camera, but I found myself being frustrated by it’s low light performance, both the high level of noise and limited range of ISO levels. I have also been eyeing the new generation of SLR cameras with video abilities with interest.

Looking around, I was very tempted by the 5d mark II, but with the extra cost, and then having to buy a couple of new lenses, I looked at other 1.6 factor bases. A friend of mine has the 50d, so I was looking for a similar level camera. Reading reviews of the 60d, it seemed that it wasn’t so much an upgrade of the 50d, but more a sideways step. I figured that I’d rather spend that little bit more and many reviews pegged the 7d as the natural successor of the 50d.

So far, I’ve been very impressed with the 7d. It has really rejuvenated my love of photography, so much so that I soon went out and spent another £300 on a lens of equal quality.

The 7d has travelled with me to a few events so far, a wedding, a gig and just some general walk abouts. Every time I’ve been impressed with the results. The images are sharp, rich and (more importantly for me) noise free and crisp. This all may have something to do with a recent upgrade to Lightroom 3 and the aforementioned new lens (Sigma 30mm 1.4) but I could not be happier with my purchase!

Another year rolls by and it’s the Brighton Zombie Walk again!

Zombie

Hundreds must’ve shown up for the shamble down from Brighton station to the sea front. From the truly terrifying to the… well, less than terrifying! From the looks on faces of the Zombies, it seems like it was just another day for the undead, but the crowd watching the display certainly appeared to be loving it!

Zombie

Brighton seems one of the cities that can get away with awesome events like this! I’ve uploaded some choice shots from running up and down Queens Road with the camera, so head over to Flickr to check them out!

Brighton Zombie Walk 2010 – Beach of the Dead

I recently stumbled upon tumblr. I’ve known of it’s existence for ages, but couldn’t really find a use for it. I’ve now set it up as a “photo blog” with the aim of posting a photo a day from my iPhone to it.

If you want to check it out, head to;

http://tumblr.smileham.co.uk

It was Paddle Round the Pier last weekend. You’ve gotta love Brighton for making a mini festival out of something that probably started with students paddling on a kitchen sink.

I headed down for the afternoon on Sunday, so I missed the Paddle Something Unusual but caught the final race of paddlers coming in to victory. It was great to see so many wet, bedraggled Brightonians dragging themselves up the beach.

Animal Bike Team

Hove Lawns

Down at Hove Lawns, they had taken over. Loads of different sport demonstrations, climbing, skateboarding, zorbing and biking, as well as a tonne of live music.

We stuck around for the Animal – Relentless bike display guys, doing backflips over ramps and bunny hops off 8 foot walls, it was an absolutely awesome display.

The Carousel, originally uploaded by smileham.

The Carousel – Original.

I’ve been playing with Lightroom 3, some of the functionality it gives you is fantastic. This is a picture that I took out with Nicky on the beach a couple of weeks ago, putting it into Lightroom, I’ve highlighted the eyes, whitened the teeth and smoothed the skin a little, along with the usual saturation and contrast bumps.

The last of the poppies this year. Graham and I had wanted to find a fuller field, but it looks like we may have left it a little late. There were only a few clusters left by the time we got a chance to drive up Ditchling Beacon way.

A four day break away in the middle of France, fantastic. The trip out there on National Express and Ryan Air, less so.

Farm House

It was great to get out into the countryside, get some fresh air and take some shots. We were staying with Nicky’s parents. They own a farm house near Poitiers, but when I say farm house, it’s more, manor house, with adjoining servant’s house, old blacksmiths forge, and numerous dilapidated barns.

Danni

Mostly it was nice to wander round the country side with the dogs, but we had a trip over to La Rochelle, and a wander though the aquarium there. They even had an equivalent of Lewes, sort of, with the village of Parthenay.

Pixies Gig (3 of 6), originally uploaded by smileham.

It was a fairly random e-mail in April that kicked all this off, at first I thought it was just a weird bit of Spam, but no, The Pixies (via their fan mailing list) had invited me to gig at the Troxy in London.

An exclusive(ish) gig, in a small venue for only two nights, Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th of June. I checked out the site, paid my money and got my e-ticket for the Friday night! Thrilled that I was going to see one of my favourite bands.

Fast forward a couple of months, and I’ve checked the train times, printed the tickets and booked the time off work. The train journey itself was enough of a battle, getting to London is always a hassle, and the afternoon trains going in the opposite direction of rush hour where no different. I managed to meet my girlfriend and get to the Troxy, everything was good… till we got to the front of the queue.

Frank Black

The ticket guys on the door were using iPhones to scan each of the tickets, I handed mine over and “Beep” *Bzzzzt*, strange, try it again “Beep” *Bzzzzt*, thats odd, this ticket’s not working, neither was my girlfriends ticket. Cut to a slow zoom to the date at the top of the printed ticket, then a fast pan to my face, somehow.. somehow I had gotten tickets for the Thursday night, we were a day late!

We went and stood at the front desk of the Troxy, I made pleading eyes with the manager looking at my tickets, an honest mistake I told him, just my own stupidity, I pleaded, we’re up from Brighton for the gig, this was supposed to be awesome… He went away, checked the tickets… checked them again, had a chat with someone else, and then came over looking stern… Have a great time… you can’t go in the balcony, but we’ll let you in the standing area!

AWESOME, best gig ever, mainly from the fear of not getting in at all! We were right up front, just above the mosh pit. Great to see the Pixies are still rocking 20 years after Doolittle!