A year ago I built a photo website for myself using SimpleViewer. However, I had failed to recognise that it was Flash based and as such would not show on computers that did not have Flash installed and on iPhones/iPads. So here is photo website 2, built in WordPress with Lightbox and incorporating a Blog. It’s only taken a couple of weekends (when I do my own projects) and there are still a few bits to add. I expect it will perform better in Google as well.

I will post articles about photography on the new site and not on this blog, which will concentrate on design. UPDATE: At the end of the first month visitor figures more than trebled. In the long term, as more posting are made, I expect the numbers to increase tenfold.

Another grey saturday. Using slow relatively shutter speeds (mostly 1/60th sec) and a wide lens aperture, I photograph the blue tits in flight. I have no chance of catching detail or freezing the wings sharply – it’s more about the sensation of flight.

After visiting a photography exhibition at the Sutton Bank Visitor Centre in North Yorkshire at lunchtime, I drove down the coast to one of my favourite places, Spurn Head near Hull. It was getting dark and I took a few photos of the Pier. However, I know I can do better and want to go back and have another go using longer exposures.

On a grey, bleak saturday afternoon, I scour the local woodland down by the river. Among the black, rotting vegetation I find are a few mushrooms, but they are beautiful and resemble parachutes falling to the soft verdant moss below.

Happy New Year! Apologies for not making any posts in December but it was the usual pre-Christmas rush of work. The Christmas period was spent installing and getting to grips with the latest versions of Dreamweaver and PhotoShop.

2010 promises to be a really exciting year with the launch of Apple’s much rumoured iSlate (but the name doesn’t sound like an Apple branding), a general election, hopefully the end of the recession, Michael Schumacher’s return to Formula 1 and Burnley FC surviving their first year in the Premiership (fingers crossed).

I have a number of new websites to launch throughout January, and am eager to take on new projects/clients for a year of change and challenge. I hope to continue developing my photography and hence the shots here.

I have finally created a website to put my own photos on – instead of using this ‘design’ blog. It’s very simple and it had to be quick to make as the only time I get to work on my own projects is late into the night.

I have just returned from Norwich after a couple of days photographing Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, but it also gave me time to explore Norfolk. The weather on friday lunchtime produced some of the darkest, most dramatic clouds that I have ever seen – fantastic! The lighthouse is at Happisburgh (apparently pronounced Haisborough) and is set back 400 yards from the cliff top, so no chance of the sea in the shot. The sky was unreal and I would not have been surprised if spaceships had descended through the clouds. It was lightning in all directions but if you think I am going to stand in a field with a camera and tripod…

I spent last night photographing A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Gawsworth Hall near Macclesfield. Technically it was quite difficult in the fading evening light and unable to use flash as this was a live show. A long drive back before processing 120 images and adding them to the British Shakespeare Company website at 2am this morning. See Photo Gallery for more shots.

For the fourth day in a row I have a 5am start and at 9pm I finally step outside for a short walk, catching the last of the sunlight. Click image for a larger version.

You can’t fail to notice the fields of yellow rape seed if you drive through the countryside at the moment. Yellow is the brightest colour and can be difficult to use, often overpowering other colours. It’s why car number plates are yellow. It’s also a colour that nature uses to warn animals that yellow tree frogs and snakes are poisonous and best left alone. But yellow is also the colour of the Chinese Emporer, a symbol of cowardice and more importantly, our Sun. Click image for a larger version.