When is brunch brunch? Not sure but I went out for brunch this morning. It was one of those wonderfully dull days you get in February. It lacked the dark intensity of January and was… well February. Does this make sense? No. But brunch did. So that was fine.
Frost and fog. A cold morning in the park. However, it does feel just a little different. Maybe wishful thinking on my part but there was a slight feel of the seasons turning.
Expect blizzards. Make for interesting photographs. Ummm not sure.
Whenever I hear or read the word ‘Trainspotting”, I always hear the opening ‘Choose Life‘ monologue from the film of the same name. (BTW I don’t choose Heroin!). When I started to edit the image of the train I noticed Croft Hill dominating the background. Now this is not actually in Harborough District council area but it appears again and again in image after image. So I have decided to include it in the images I am creating for the Harborough project.
Sitting in a hide for an hour or so allows time to contemplate many things. How comfortable the bench starts to rise up the list of things that are important the longer you stay there. Today I spent sometime in a hide at Calke Abbey and apart from the bench becoming more uncomfortable I had an enjoyable time.
If its Sunday then it must be time to visit villages in Harborough that I have missed. Today it was Newton Harcourt. For anyone unfamiliar with Newton Harcourt it is a small village around 10 miles outside of central Leicester. Its only real claim to fame is you have to rich to live there. However, on nice, crisp winter Sunday afternoons it is also where a lot of people come to walk in the countryside. I did not know this and it came as something of a shock. No matter the light was worth all the frustrations caused by the people and especially their cars.
Walking through the centre of Leicester.
I have started to work on my third iPhone book. It would be nice to pretend that I intended this as a series of books but that wasn’t the case. Last year, I made two books: Mono (see above) and Chroma. They were meant to be a complementary, stand-alone series. That was the plan. However, two new book projects have suggested themselves: Squared and Street. More on Street in a later post. For the moment I’m working on Squared.
Whilst editing the images I noticed that many of the very early images were created using the venerable Hipstamatic app. I have not used this app in years. Did it still work in 2025? Well the answer is yes. So this morning, whilst visiting one of my local coffee houses I grabbed a few images.
It did bring back some memories. Perhaps the best memory was that in the past. I used to be far more freewheeling with the images I captured with my iPhone. I am not like that now. Also I was not that bothered about image size. Today I tend to capture RAW images with my iPhone as opposed to the JPEG’s that Hipsta produced. (Which are tiny compared to the RAW files). Yet I find the Hipsta images more immediate which is very rewarding. So maybe I should go back to the future with my iPhone and see what happens. The only problem is that if I keep making square-shaped images with my iPhone, I’ll not finish the project. Thank goodness it is a vanity project. It has an audience of one. I can make up the rules as I go along.
Cold, damp and grey. The perfect conditions to capture some images. As it happens it was. For five years, my good friend and I have visited all the villages in Harborough District council. We create images that reflect what we have seen. Of course that has required some solo visits. Today was one of those days. My mission was to capture the edges of the district. The first was at Highcross on the Fosse Way. Here two counties, three district councils and two Roman roads meet.
I could complain about the bitter wind, which it was. However, the reason I was feeling the cold was because I had not put my glove on my camera hand. So perhaps I shouldn’t complain too much.
The second location was a few Km’s away at the southernmost point of Leicestershire: Crossing the River Avon between Catthorpe and Lilbourne. It is a very strange place. It is located deep in rural England. However, the roar of the traffic using the M1/M6 junction constantly reminds you that modernity is just a moment away.
At one level I’ll be sad to see the end of this project. It wasn”t suppose to take five years but a certain unknown unknown got in the way. If you don’t know what that might be, the first images were captured in early spring. This was in February 2020. Can’t think what might have happened soon after that?
I’ve got a cold. Boo Hoo. I felt a bit under the weather for a couple of days. Now I am starting to feel a whole lot better. Maybe that is why the two drawings I made this morning are looking so bilious! They don’t in real life.
This morning I was feeling well enough for some of lunar watching. Let’s hope that tomorrow I’ll feel better still to maybe venture further a field.
As anyone who is following this blog will know. I have got a thing at the moment about ‘widescreen‘ ‘cinematic‘ crops for my images. The other day I watched a video from Chris Brockhurst. It was about setting your Sony A7CR or C2 to frame images to be ‘cinematic‘.
After a bit of huffing and puffing on my part I set my camera up. Next step: off to my local shopping centre/mall to test things out.
It is too early to say whether this is useful after just one session. It certainly adds to the interest.
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