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!

Last weekend I attended a photography course hosted and run at the Garage Studios by Lou O’Bedlam.

We started with brief introductions round the group, why we were there, what we were hoping from the class. For myself I was looking for more experience with models, what to look for in a portrait shot, and how to get the best results from the camera

Lou then introduced himself and gave a brief overview of his style and why he takes photos. He had a selection of some of his Polaroid shots hanging from a clothes line at the back of the studio, most of which were stunning.

Rosy

Once the talking was done we split into two groups and headed outside the studio with a model each, Rosy and Sally. We had Rosy first and as my group stood around chatting, the other group swarmed their model. I was frustrated that we weren’t a whole lot more engaging. Whilst I felt a little awkward directing Sally to pose how and where I wanted I managed to get at least a couple of shots.

Back in the studio we each uploaded a selection of our shots to the computer to go through with Lou and critique. The feedback we were each given was constructive, looking at each of the elements of our pictures and what could have been done to improve them. Mostly we discovered that Lou’s least favourite colour just so happens to be the yellow of the doors to the studios!

Sally

After checking out the photos we got the opportunity to head out again with the models. I made a bee-line for Sally but was intercepted at the last moment. I hung around till she was free and whisked her away to a red door to use as a background and then a couple of other shots. Sally seemed a more engaging model than Rosy, we ended up having a quick chat and I feel I managed to get some more natural looking pictures.

All in all it was a fantastic course and I’m really looking forward to the next one that the Garage Studios guys organise!

Childrens Parade (19 of 30), originally uploaded by smileham.

An ecological theme to this years parade, The Planet. Each school was split into different sub themes, the Arctic, deserts, forests, seas and the jungle. As always, it was a fantastic event and I ended up taking hundreds of photo’s of other peoples’ children…

It sounds a little odd when you put it like that.

The Marathon – Brighton Marathon (2 of 9), originally uploaded by smileham.

The first (hopefully) annual Brighton Marathon seemed to go without a hitch. I took some time out in the morning to wander round and take some snaps of the participants.

Well done to everyone who took part in the event… I’m tempted to join you next year!

Tazamerati is a stupid name for a cat, but unfortunately it’s the name he’s stuck with.

I’ve said that when we get another one (in a long time) that we can either get a black cat called Sputnik or a ginger one called “The Archduke Franz Ferdinand”, both seem appropriate names for cats.

“Taz” has gone from a massive four bedroom house with access to outside space, to a small pokey one bedroom flat where he can watch the world go by past the windows and that’s about it. So far he’s actually better behaved in his new house than his old, although he’s having far too much fun terrorising my fish…