Don’t you love the way the light caught the carving on this headstone in Sandon Churchyard [left] on Day #275? This bright red Acer leaf [right] was a strong contender on Day #288 as I pottered around in my garden.

I’ve also been doing a lot of Geocaching during October, which gives me the perfect excuse to visit locations nearby. I always take the camera with me and have often got a great photo of the day out of the expedition. I’ve been back to some places I know well, and visited others which otherwise, I would not have bothered with.

This lovely image of a wooden viaduct over the Blackwater [left], just south of Witham is a case in point. Sure, if you look on a map, it says there’s a viaduct there. But it gives no clue what a great location it is until you visit. Apparently, the viaduct is of national importance and is one of only a few wooden ones left in the country.

I found these thirsty cows [right] lurking by the Chelmer & Blackwater Navigation during a caching trip. They looked at me. I looked at them. Then we both minded our own business!

I’m always a sucker for a bit of red, so when I came across a lovely pillar box [right] one day whilst out walking, I was tempted to take its picture.

One Sunday morning (Day #264), I found myself walking through the City on my way to an Accessibility conference in Shoreditch. The light catching the sides of the building in this courtyard near Liverpool Street [left] caught my eye, and was only just beaten to Picture of the Day by the wonderful Snail I found on the pavement a few yards further up the road!

I like Sundays in the City, as you can often wander round freely without over-zealous security guards fobbing you off if you have a large camera round your neck. And there’s plenty of time to compose your pictures without unwanted people wandering around getting in the way!

I didn’t do a lot of walking locally during the “summer”, such as it was, but have started to get out and about again a bit more with the approach of autumn. This massive fungus [right] was one I found on the side of a tree in Galleywood. It was quite spectacular.

The month ended as it had begun, with another BarCamp. This time in Richmond at the swanky offices of eBay. I went for a walk as dusk was falling by the Thames and caught this group of boats and ducks [left]  in the warm evening light.

Here are some near misses from Augusts’ 366 project photos:

This marvellous field of poppies was one I spotted near Royston on Day #214 as I drove back from a meeting near Cambridge. The A10 is a busy road, and I just spotted the field of red before being able to stop in a layby to get out of the car and walk back to the field for some photos. The wide shot made it as shot of the day in the end, but I also liked this one of a few blooms, isolated against the greenery.

More flowers followed on Day #217 when I finally managed to photograph the wonderful field of Sunflowers which grow every summer beside the A1060, just west of Chelmsford. I’d been meaning to take them for a few weeks, and the sun came out for me just at the right time. You can pick them and take them home (for a small fee), but I was able to take the photos without having to pay.

On Day #226, my photographic club had a photoshoot organised in the Catholic Cathedral in Brentwood. The lighting wasn’t great, and I was coming down with a cold, so I didn’t stay as long as some people. This shot of votive candles and an altar railing, was one which almost made the cut as Pic of the Day:

The next day, I was in London for a meeting in the afternoon, and a developer event in the evening at the University of Westminster. The shot on the right was taken at the university, showing a nice contrast between old and new buildings in the area.

Coming back from a meeting near Colchester on Day #241, I took a quick detour to Little Braxted for some photos. I was rewarded with the most amazing little church in the village (above left), which is highly decorated with frescos inside. It’s a real gem.

I was at the South Bank for my 366 Flickr Group’s meeting. We had spent a pleasant couple of hours at the pub enjoying a pint and watching the world go by, then we took a stroll towards the QEII hall. There’s a section under the concrete walkway which is popular with skateboarders and roller blade fans, and their antics always draw a crowd.

The weekly theme was “motion”, so I decided to switch to motordrive for a sequence of the skateboarders riding a block of concrete. This was what I ended up with:

Having loaded all four images into Photoshop, I copied the last three images as new layers into the first. Then, selecting all 4 layers, I used the Edit -> Auto Align Layers option and Photoshop tweaked them all so that the concrete block and background appeared in the same place in each. Then, it was a case of using Layer Masking for each of the top layers, so as just to show the skater and board from each, while the background remained from the original image.

The main background picture (below) gives us the first skater and most of the background:

The next frame moved the skater and board along a bit, with the rest of the background masked off:

Then frame 3 shows us another view as he’s running off to the right:

Finally, the skater disappears out of the frame.

With all four layers turned on, the final montage is quite effective. All hand-held, with not a tripod in sight!

July was a very mixed month, weather wise. It seemed to veer between heavy rain and too hot to move, all within a couple of days! Anyway, here are a selection of “nearly made it” images from the month:

This was from a series of images I took in Mountnessing on Day #187. I had originally gone there to photograph the windmill against a deep blue sky with fluffy white clouds. And when I got there, I found they were gearing up for a cricket match in front of the windmill, so I stayed around for a while and took some action shots too. Not sure who Mountnessing were playing, or who won - but there’s nothing to evoke a sense of an English summer like the sight of cricket on the village green!

Next up was the façade of a lovely Art Deco building I found in Soho on Day #206. I’ve been down the road a few times, but never took the time to look up before. Just shows what you miss if you don’t walk around with your seeing eye in gear!

I had a couple of enjoyable days out during the month. First was in London to meet my 366 Flickr Group mates on the South Bank on Day #195. The weather was quite kind to us, and I was intrigued by this splash of colour by the QEII hall. It’s pretty much as it was out of the camera - the grey clouds just added a sense of drama to the whole scene:

[Watch This Space - South Bank]

The local Horticultural Show took place on Day #201. It’s always a colourful affair, and this year we had a marching band from Brentwood, resplendent in their red tunics, black spikey hats and polished brass.

I also enjoyed a day trip to Norwich with a friend on Day #211, somewhere I haven’t visited for about 20 years!

There’s plenty to see in the Market, new buildings around the Forum and olde worldy streets in the Lanes to explore. All in all, rich pickings for photographers.

First off, some “near misses” from the month:

[Evening Foxglove was a close contender for Day #162, taken near Ardleigh Reservoir]

[Red Symmetry was taken in the formal gardens at Danbury Park on Day #167]

[Table Shadows was a strong scene found in Docklands on Day #160]

I also enjoyed a trip to look around the gardens at Hylands House. There was a wedding reception going on in the main house, a very grand affair. The main house is a wonderfully restored example of classic Georgian architecture. Plus the sun was out with fluffy clouds scudding about in the sky.

The wedding party was spilling out into the grounds around the house, first for photos out the front, and later enjoying cocktails with jazz on the terrace and lawn behind. All terribly civilised. Heaven knows how much it all cost!

Whilst all that was playing out at the house, I took a good look around the formal gardens. I’ve been to the park before, but not actually looked at the gardens until now.

The formally laid out beds were great for macro shots - and I found these two lovely bees buzzing gently around some of the flowers [right].

I also enjoyed the new display garden which was built to commemmorate the 2007 World Scout Jamboree which was held in the park last summer. It was in this garden’s entrance gazebo that I found my picture of the day for Day #166.

The beach is stony, and there is the odd boat pulled up on the shingle. This one looked rather sad sitting there on its own.

The tides are strong in the area, and so the groynes are substantial and held together with large bolts. You can see there is quite a difference in the level of the shingle from one side to the other.

Despite the harsh conditions, there are still splashes of colour in the front gardens facing the sea. Homeowners have troughs filled with hardy plants which don’t mind the salt atmosphere.

I liked this garden on the sea front. The yellow poppies stood out really well from the grey clapboard of the house. And the plaited rope wound around the railings.

A final walk along the prom and I found a colourful mural on the side of a beach hut:

This is another picture of the kite surfer making use of the free wind power, a slightly different than the one I used for Day #171.

At the end of June I went to visit the newly build beach huts on West Mersea. I had heard they wre worth a look, and wasn’t disappointed by their pastel shades and neat presentation. Here is a selection of those which nearly made it on Day #182.

The pear looked a bit sad and the lines on the chopping board were distracting from the main point of the picture. So I tried fiddling with some filers. I chose Photoshop CS3’s “Cutout” filter from the Filter Gallery. This gave me:

Better, although it still needed a bit of tidying up. So I set to work with the clone brush to rid the background of all the distracting bits, ending up with the final, much more pear-shaped image:

This is the one which appeared as Day #178 on my Photo-a-Day blog.

The first was after the recent @media conference, when I had the pleasure of spending some time with some of the other delegates and a couple of the speakers on the Friday evening. We enjoyed some noodles by the water, and then wandered about round Hungerford Bridge for a while as the dusk settled and the lights came on along the Thames.

[Right - Westminster Illuminations - as the light fades, the shape of the Palace of Westminster is outlined by spotlights]

I managed some other good shots along the river bank - and it was a warm, balmy evening. A great pleasure to be out and about enjoying the sights.

A week or so later, and I was back again, this time after a rather nice lunch with friends in Borough Market. Having had a generous three courses, I felt I needed a walk! So I meandered from London Bridge along to Southwark for a few more shots. The riverbank was very busy with folks out on a Sunday stroll, and the water was busy with boats of all shapes and sizes.

[Left, you can see one of the speedboats zipping about on the water near St. Paul's Cathedral]

I took the Jubilee Line to Canary Wharf for a look around on the way back. I haven’t been there for photography for a good while, and was surprised to see how it has changed in a couple of years.

The Jubilee Line station is quite interesting in itself - I love the canopy over the escalator hall, and with the right lighting, it makes an excellent silhouette image [right].

Making my way over to West India Quay, I noticed some attractive boats moored by the dockside. Together with the old cranes, they contrasted well with the modern glass and steel architecture of the new buildings surrounding them [left].

[Waving Ears - attractive low evening lighting helped to lift this scene on Day #128]

[Chiaramonti, altitude 430m, a strong contender for Day #129]

Having come home, I was just about in time to catch some bluebells in a local wood. Many of the flowers had past their best already, but I did manage to find enough for a carpet of them as a wider shot of the woodland.

[Bluebell Clump, in Swan Wood nearly made it on Day #131]

How has the month gone?

Well, aside from my holiday where I took rather a lot of images, I had a bit of a fallow period in the middle of the month - mainly due to the terrible weather we had for a few days. The I had another dip at the end of the month. Still, we all have ups and downs. A definite up came on Day #144 when I won my camera club’s Mono Print Of The Year award for a black and white version of Day #71’s picture. So I was rather pleased by that!