Yes I know, it's been ages since I posted on here!. I've not really had much to chat about! Florida was amazing, easily the best 2 weeks of my life! I met some fantastic people, ate lots of great food, visited some of the best theme parks in the world and got a good ol suntan!

Early in the morning the day after we arrived, there was a knock on the front door, and all I could hear was lots of screaming and shouting (I was still upstairs in bed at this point). I dived out of bed and chucked some clothes on, only to find out that there was no reason for me to panic. Paul's family (who couldn't make the trip) had secretly booked flights and a villa at the last minute. I mean really last minute, 3 days before we flew out. It turns out the were in the airport at the same time as us, and the only reson we didn't bump into them is because they were flying with a different airline! In a bizarre act of coincidence, they had managed to book the villa 2 doors down from ours! After a bit of a mad panic, all of the bookings for the wedding were amended to suit an extra 5 guests.

Sarah's wedding went as smoothly as you could ever hope a wedding could go. There was almost a hiccup in the morning. We got a call from the limo hire company to say the car had broken down. However they were going to upgrade from a regular limousine to a stretch Hummer H2. The company were so apologetic (unnecessarily as the difference in hire price was astronomical and they were waiving any extra fees). Sarah was over the moon. She'd wanted the Hummer to begin with, but at nearly $2000 for the day it would have completely blown the budget!

The rest of the holiday absolutely flew by, I could have easily not come home, the only reason I did is because of Phoebe, I couldn't leave her behind!

After some problems with my printing company of choice, I switched supplier and had a gorgeous photobook printed up for Paul & Sarah, which they are overjoyed with. It makes it all worthwhile when you hear really nice feedback regarding your work! I've included the images from the photobook below.

I'm really happy with how this turned out, a little bit of tweaking in LR3 allowed me to see the beautiful colours of the sunset, and the sheep in the field in front of me.

So, what have I been up to? WORKING! Yup, that thing that we have to do so that we can afford to do the things we want to do! I know, lame excuse but it does mean that I've manage to save up significantly more money than I had expected for my trip to Florida in 27 days (it's not as if I'm counting or anything...)

It's going to be a fantastic trip, everyone else is getting really excited now too! I finally got my passport sorted, after a great deal of hassle including them rejecting my photographs because I had my glasses on (which weren't obstructing my eyes - the reason they gave for rejecting them) so I had to re-submit my application with photographs without my glasses one, where I'm squinting like crazy to read the instructions on the screen in the photo booth!

So I look like a mole on my passport. Frigging great.

Anyway, in other news I have some new Timelapse videos to upload, and some photos too, which I'll try to get sorted out this weekend!

I also have a new addition to my family, her name is Charlie and she's a Chilean Rose Tarantula. Phoebe absolutely adores her and keeps wanting me to get her out of her tank!

I guess that's all for now, going to settle down and carry on reading my book until I fall asleep!

Aaaanyway, I went up to Darwen in May to see my cousin (who's wedding I'm photographing in September) and her family. We had a really good weekend and I managed to get some lovely photos of them. Take a look below for some of my favourites!

Went down to the park with Phoebe and her cousins and had a really good laugh tearing around the park chasing after them all! Very tiring though, or maybe that's just old age creeping up on me!

Another one from the spare room (dammit I need to get a bit more adventurous with these don't I?)

I loved the way the clouds were forming so got the camera set up and rattled this video off.

Created using a Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm AF-S Lens, Nikon MC-36 Remote. I edited the frames using Adobe Photoshop CS5, compiled them into a movie using Apple Quicktime Pro and polished it all up using Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.

Music is Wake Up by Coheed & Cambria from the album Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness.

Wow, so it's been a while since I posted anything online! Today I converted the body cap of my Nikon D300 into a pinhole lens and had a quick scout about the garden to see how it worked. I'm quite pleased with the results, the only PP work on them was B&W filter on some images, and general levels adjustment.

In my defence I did spend 2 evenings trying to work out why all of my posts had Cialis ads in them, which broke all of the code in the posts... Ended up rewriting all of the posts and optimising the site at the same time, load times were excessive at best especially as I've got some cheap (and therefore slow) hosting!

Aaaanyway! Had a fantastic photoshoot with Abby today (you should definitely check out that link, she's an amazing artist).

She had this fantastic idea about butchering an old clock, covering herself in gold paint and using the clock parts for decoration! So, a quick trip to the fancy dress shop this morning for paint and glitter, and the parts from the clock she bought last week and we were ready to go!

The shoot went far better than either of us had expected, and despite being roasted alive by 2kW of lighting, we persevered and got some amazing shots! Enjoy!

Well 2010 was a pretty interesting year, 2011 is going to be even better. Expect a massively increased number of updates to this site as I ramp up my photography work, and *gasp* start getting paid for what I love doing!

My biggest plan for this year is photographing my cousins wedding. A fairly small affair, guest-wise, which will be a nice starting point as I'm rubbish at organising things, especially other people. One minor thing, it's 4,300 miles away in the Sunshine State of Florida! It'll be the trip of a lifetime, there's no denying that. 14 nights in a private villa and all I have to do is take a metric fuck-load of photo's! I can do that! I'm going to work my ass off to make sure I capture every fantastic moment of it, not only for myself but as an amazing wedding gift for a fantastic couple.

Anyway, enough ramblings from me, time for some pictures!

My Auntie Denise and Uncle Roger came down from Cheshire to visit, and seeing as they haven't seen her in nearly 2 years I thought it would be fun to bring her along... and I was right! They were over the moon to see her again, after such a long time it was basically like meeting for the first time as Phoebe didn't remember them and they'd only seen her as a toddler. Enjoy the photos!

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from Christmas Day!

Cracked a few up and cut them open in the bottom of the bath, made a good old fashioned mess and then got the camera set up!

These are my favourite shots out of all of them!

I decided to do some more time lapse photography last night, and originally intended doing this sequence just to see how the clouds move during the night.

However, when I saw how clear the stars were, I went for it, and left it running from 10pm until 6am.

I'm really happy with how this turned out I'm hopefully going to do a proper shoot next weekend, get out into the countryside where it's nice and dark and get my tent up!

Nikon D300, 18-200mm AF-S Lens (18mm, F3.5), Nikon MC-36 Remote.

Found this little explorer wandering across my hose reel!

Exposure 0.001 sec (1/1250)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 200 mm
ISO 500

Out in the garden today and I found 2 ladybugs sitting on my wall, it looks like they're having fun! Well, they would be if ladybugs weren't entirely into procreation...

I love the lighting on this! I deliberately shot into the sun as it shows how translucent the spider is!

I was out in the garden today and I found these little guys growing on our lawn!

My cousin Charmaine looking fantastic on her wedding day!

My niece Alexa giving me a wonderfully cheeky grin!

It was very misty on Friday morning so I thought I would get a few shots before I went to work, the sun was coming through the mist in the most fantastic orange colour, and I love how the photos have come out!

I went out for a nice drive last night, with the intention of doing lots of star photography, but I pretty much bailed because it got bloody cold outside and I wasn't dressed for it!!

I got out just before sunset and this is one of the first photos I took, and I love it, the smooth colour change in the sky and the sharpness of the tree all come together!