....optics ground with cotton wool soaked in babies tears and love....

I am back and you would not believe how happy and relieved I am about that, yep, today I managed my first run since my sprain. I did try a run mid last week but had to hobble home after a few hundred yards but this morning I managed a gentle mile and my ankle, whilst feeling very vulnerable and sensitive held out very well and actually felt better at the end of the run. It has been fine all today so I am hoping for 2 miles tomorrow and I intend to run 3 miles at the weekend and build up to 5 miles late next week.
Bear in mind that I am actually meant to be running 13 miles every fortnight with a view to ramping that up before the Summer to aim for marathon distances. I am woefully behind on my schedule, partly due to the running layoff and partly due to the huge quantities of food that I have been pigging out on, part greed, part to keep me from smoking. I now have weight to contend with as well, damn!

I had last week off but didn't do much. I started the week with all good intentions but the lack of running has been difficult and I missed it so much and moped around for most of the week.
I did manage some experimental photographs. We spend most of our time saving for the perfect lense, with optics ground with cotton wool soaked in babies tears and love to ensure perfect glass and then we spend the rest of our time changing perfection for imperfection, introducing filters to subdue, bringout, reduce, increase, mask and blur every aspect of our vision.
I went a stage beyond as I had an idea. I can't remember if the original idea was actually mine or whether I saw it somewhere first. Anyway, it turns out that my original idea isn't possible as there isn't a paper that is thin enough to look through with reasonable visibility that can be torn easily by hand. I know
the effect can

probably be
mimicked using
Photoshop but
I am on a binge
to see how far
you can create
in the camera.
With that in
mind, here are
my current
experiments, the
first was taken
through a
window.
The next was a flower taken using a macro filter.

Finally, on saturday, I got to try my experiment in public and it has given me a few ideas on how I can improve and actually tailor my preparation for each specific shot. I don't want to give away more than I have to until I have tried it but whether it works or not, I will share the results.

To finish with, something more traditional. I had to take my daughter to the Roundhouse near Camden for a gig on Friday night. As I was designated driver and not welcome at the gig, I had a few hours to kill around Camden and got this one shot that I am a bit partial to.

Hopefully I can now get on with my life and not feel so in limbo, not a great start to the year but in the words of Joey Ramone, Hey ho, let's go.

Weekend update.

Damned ankle is still swollen and painful so I haven't done much. We did have a small snowfall last weekend and I couldn't help myself, I had to go out and wander in it, taking various shots of varying degrees of quality. I was out for around 2 hours and the snow was heavy for that time. As I have said many times, Aylesbury is a ruin of a town, the beauty is long gone with just the briefest of areas left and even these will go in time as local government is determined to modernise Aylesbury at the cost of any history and stuff the beauty spots. So for the brief moment that I have with the last remaining areas of beauty, let us celebrate them.

Let me just back track to the start of the day. It kicked off with a very frosty beginning. On walking out to the car, I saw this tiny yellow flower squashed under ice on the driveway. I got my camera, put on the macro filters and lying flat out, managed to capture some shots of it, not great shots but enough to be happy. The people walking past must have wondered why the funny man was lying on the ground with his head in a bush but I didn't look up, embarrassment and the thought that I might start explaining myself...I kept my head down and carried on.

On to Morden Hall Park and it was a grey day that was just waiting for the snow so I took the shots I could and was blessed with the weakest of mid winter sun peaking out so I found some gulls and spent an hour or so waiting for some of them to fly in front of it.

A very nice day and a great evening but my ankle was in a poor state by the end of it.

The snow wasn't particularly deep and thawed pretty much straight away. By mid morning the important areas were clear and by Monday it was a pretty sight across the fields with no impact on business or everyday life....shame as I love the disruption that snow brings. Some people complain but it forces people to do nothing and with this 24 hour life, snow days become important.

Anyway, I am hoping to possibly be back to running later this week but I'm not holding my breath.