I’ve gone over to the dark side this week…no, not Nikon…I’m responsible for setting up a fruit fatality and this is the orange obituary (I apologise and promise you there are no more alliterative puns in this post).

I had this idea in mind pretty much as soon as the theme “Chopped” was announced, although I hoped to get the shot mid-chop with juice spray coming out. After a couple of tries I realised my reactions weren’t up to it and the oranges weren’t spraying as I’d hoped either so this is a bit of a compromise. I wasn’t trying to make any kind of statement with this photo before anyone starts getting worried about my mental health. It is what it is, but I hope a psychologist might stumble upon it one day and completely mis-interpret it.

Thanks to Paul Nightingale for being a willing model and provider of the jedi robe.

Well it’s fair to say I struggled with this. I regard poetry as something to be endured rather than enjoyed, an opinion formed in English lessons at school when we had to ‘interpret’ what the writer was trying to say. I was never good at it and mostly found it a fairly pointless exercise, and I don’t suppose my opinion has changed much since then.

As part of this challenge I wanted to take more photos in and around where I live in Harrow as I tend to head into London or further afield for photography. It just so happens that the poet Lord Byron went to Harrow School and one of his favourite spots was in St Mary’s churchyard. It was too good an opportunity to miss and all the other ideas I had (and there weren’t many to be fair) didn’t really appeal or were too contrived. I photographed this at ‘Byron’s Seat’, a highpoint where you can see out to Buckinghamshire and beyond, where he spent much of his time in his youth and where he wanted to be buried (as it turned out he was buried in Nottinghamshire). The poem below is inscribed on the plaque on the front of the grave…

Lines Written beneath an Elm in the Churchyard of Harrow

Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;
With those who, scatter’d far, perchance deplore,
Like me, the happy scenes they knew before:
Oh! as I trace again thy winding hill,
Mine eyes admire, my heart adores thee still,
Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay,
And frequent mus’d the twilight hours away;
Where, as they once were wont, my limbs recline,
But, ah! without the thoughts which then were mine:
How do thy branches, moaning to the blast,
Invite the bosom to recall the past,
And seem to whisper, as they gently swell,
“Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!”
…

If I have one regret about my photography last year it’s that I didn’t make enough time for my personal photography. Photography started for me as a hobby and grew into a passion which eventually led me into wedding photography. My personal photography is important to me as it gives me time to experiment and try new ideas and if I don’t make time for photography as a pleasure activity I don’t learn new things or improve.

So, I’ve made a resolution this year to get out more with the camera in my own time and I’m taking part in a 52 Photo Challenge with Talk Photography. A little about the challenge first – it’s a personal challenge, not a competition against others and the photos aren’t judged or scored in any formal way. There’s a new theme set every Sunday chosen randomly from a list of about 150 or so themes and I’m aiming to get my entry done by the following Sunday, but work comes first so if it’s late then so be it. I know there are going to be times when I just don’t have a good idea (or resources to do what I want) but it wouldn’t be a challenge if it was all easy.

It should be fun but it’ll also keep me disciplined to get out with the camera and think more about creating a photo, rather than just taking photos of what I see when I’m out. I hope by the end of the year I’ll be able to look back and say that I’ve improved as a photographer and that I’ve enjoyed the challenge.

So, at last, here’s the first entry of the year for the theme ‘Curved’.

I think this is one of the easier themes on the list because the interpretation can be so varied and there are curves everywhere. I’ve seen next week’s already though and it’s a stinker…”poetry”. More on that next week.

I was expecting a deluge given the build up the media but it never quite got there today. I took this outside the library at Harrow School. There’s something about the lights in those trees I’ve always liked but the snow finishes the shot off. I’m sure there’s a better photo in there somewhere though so may go back again tomorrow before the thaw.