Jonathan Gazeley

Yesterday Hana and I drove to Blagdon Lake for a walk and a picnic. It seems the sat nav had a bonkers moment and insisted we should go down this road:

No matter where we went after this, it insisted on trying to send us back, so we turned it off. We didn’t have a map, but eventually we somehow managed to find our way to the lake.

Just in time for the rain to begin.

It was grey and horrible with no real opportunities for photos, so we ate our picnic in the car and went home.

I visited my parents this weekend. Both of my brothers were also at home, because their birthdays are both in May.

We were treated to beautiful, sunny weather on Friday. My brothers played hockey in the garden but I was too lazy to join in, so I broke out my telephoto lens and tried my hand at some “sports” photography in the bright sun.

You might have noticed that “sports” was in inverted commas. This is why.

We stayed in the garden until it was dark. There was a slight coolness in the air, but nothing that wasn’t fixed by a hot chocolate!

Later on, the moon was bright and clear.

For Edmund‘s birthday, I gave him a Canon SLR. “Wow!”, you think, “he’s so generous!”. But you can forget about megapixels, gigadoodles and kilowotsits. In actual fact, it was an EOS 500N – a 1996 35mm SLR. He was pleased with it, so on Saturday we loaded up with film and went for a photowalk around Ensor’s Pool, a local wildlife reserve (err.. abandoned quarry). It’s quite scenic, despite being among a load of industrial units.

And here’s the man of the occasion, playing with his new toy.

I also took a photo that I’m likely to enter into this week’s Photo Challenge. The theme is Time, and I think this photo has a double meaning. It’s a moment frozen in time, but it’s also a dandelion clock.

All this talk about the cold snap recently reminded me of my visit to Geneva in February 2003. I saw some spectacular ice around the edge of the lake that weekend.

These were scanned from 35mm negatives, taken with a disposable camera. Not bad, considering!

I’ve just got another roll of film back from the developers. This time I had it done at ASDA, where I was delighted to find that they don’t treat my films like junk.

Predictably, as it’s Autumn outside, the photos largely reflect this. Here are my favourites from the roll. Most were taken on Brandon Hill, Bristol.

For this next photo I used my macro lens, which has an extremely shallow depth of field. I think it’s an interesting effect.