There is a fabulous full moon illuminating the countryside tonight, with Mars nearby and clearly visible to the eye. I love the way you can see all the markings, especially Tycho the large crater near the bottom. But I think of friends and wonder if they are looking at the moon right now.

On a bitter cold friday afternoon, I joined a group of photographers and the editor of DSLR User magazine at the Ribblehead Viaduct in an attempt to see if we could light it with torches. Great fun despite having frozen feet from standing in 3 inches of icy water for several hours. The viaduct shot (above) was taken in complete darkness with a 10 minute exposure at f8.

I have always loved pigeons (the street kind) and consider them an integral part of modern city life, busily pecking away at the remains of thrown away food and human garbage. Anyway I couldn’t resist a quick shot on my iPhone!

Garden birds are incredibly difficult to photograph and they frequently fly off before you have time to press the shutter button. Much of saturday was spent trying to take some decent wildlife shots. I use the Canon 55-200mm lens rather than the Sigma 150-400mm lens as it’s sharper. The shots are ok but not great and lack any real excitement. If the snow stays a little longer I might have another go.

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.