A few days ago, a friend made me aware of a burned-out van out in the wilds of Norfolk (and fortuitously close to where I’m currently working) which was of interest to me for some photo ideas.

I was going to go over there this weekend, but changed plans this morning, loaded the camera into the car along with the satnav (in order to find the bloody place at all) and took the opportunity while it was there – the local council usually being vaguely efficient when it comes to vehicle removal.

The road that it’s on is – interesting, I think it’s fair to say. Distinctly rural, single-track, and covered in mud for the first mile, deep ditches on either side – I’m just glad I wasn’t going with the initial evening/night-shots plan. (Now I know where it is, I might give that a go next week if it’s still there)

All told, I’m quite pleased with the photos I’ve managed to get – or at least, I’m pleased with how they looked through the lens, and on the screen on the back of the camera. I’ll only get the chance to see them on the big monitor tonight, and see what I think then.

I’ll post some of them up here when I’ve checked them out, always assuming they’ve worked at all.

Over the christmas break, I dicovered that my old tripod had finally bitten the dust. It was about four years old, but having been left in the car boot during the recent cold snap, it looked like the plastic around the centre shaft had perished and then snapped. In short, knackered – and not worth repairing.

So I’ve now invested in a newer/better tripod – a Manfrotto MN055XD tripod with an 804RC2 head, from Warehouse Express in Norwich.

I’m looking forward to getting used to the damn thing now, and hope to be able to post up some tripod-based photos on the “Weekly Photo” section in the next few weeks.

As we come into 2009, I’m planning to make a change to this site, by adding a new section for my 2009 project – to have one new photo per week up here at the Weekly Photo section.

With the NCFE course, I’ve started taking more photos – which was one of the main goals of starting the course – and it’s provided me with some motivation. While the course is still ongoing, I want to give myself some extra motivation to keep on doing the same kind of thing.

Now I know that “one photo per week” doesn’t sound like much – but right now I’d rather have quality than quantity, and have one decent photo per week than five or six ropy ones I’m not entirely happy with if I were doing a “one photo per day” project.  I’ve got the greatest respect for the Project365 people who do undertake that challenge, but with the amount of things I’m currently doing, for me it just wouldn’t be practical. Besides, I know that as I got further behind on a “photo per day” project, I’d get more and more demotivated. (which may or may not be grammatical, but you get the idea)

The aim with a “photo per week” is just to keep on going, keep on going out and taking photos, with the aim of putting them up on the site. It might end up as being more than one photo per week, but the primary aim is to have at least one new photo each week of 2009.

Of course, it also meant I had to add in some new code, but that’s what Christmas was for…