Three horses grazing peacefully outside the window of my home office on a foggy morning.

You know that feeling when you're trying to capture the glorious pastoral landscape which you are privileged to view every day, and then you download the photos and discover that one of the animals involved has done something disgraceful?

( Yes. That. )

The 15-year anniversary of my LJ passed quietly by on Saturday, 11 July. I rarely post on Saturdays, being fully occupied with family at the weekends. Still, I see no reason why the celebrations can't continue, given that I started a month in advance. I'll finish off my projects, and after all, I still have to make a drunken post from the bath about SCIENCE. Don't want to miss out on that opportunity.

The photo above is the corridor outside my office at work, which is having its overhead lighting refurbished. It's also doing an excellent job of convincing us we're all trapped in a post-apocalyptic dystopian nightmare. Given the state of the nation, and particularly the omnishambles of the last few weeks in UK politics, I'm not certain the corridor has got it wrong.

HRH Telstar presiding over the picnic table.

Humuhumu snuggled down in a sleeping bag in the tent, gazing up adoringly at Telstar, who is lording it over the pillow.

I've set myself a little photography challenge, and completed the first three days of it.


Day 1: Ohana. Me with Keiki and Humuhumu on my lap, smiling at the camera. (Photo taken by the bloke and processed by me.)

( +2 )

I visited the Zentralfriedhof last year, but never got round to uploading the photos. The Zentralfriedhof is Vienna's cemetery, and its 3 million inhabitants make the vast grounds more populous than the city it serves. Today, May Day, is a public holiday in Austria and so there were many visitors, freshening up the family plots and laying flowers everywhere.

Humuhumu was just five months old during our last visit, and I carried her around the cemetery in her sling. I fed her near the Sisters' graves (I like to think they would not have minded) and then she went to sleep. This time we went with Granny and the pushchair. Humuhumu was awake throughout until we got back on the 71 tram to take us home.

The church dominates the grounds, its oxidized copper dome visible from just about everywhere. It would take hours simply to walk all the paths, let alone explore the graves, so even after two visits I've only seen a fraction of what is here.


Dr. Karl Lueger-Gedächtniskirche

( Mausoleums, headstones and cenotaphs - oh my )


This one was with the upmarket lot, but was unusually unkempt. Outside the cut because I absolutely loved how this came out in black and white.

I am aware that if I don't start posting photos in larger quantities soon, I shall end up with a backlog the length of the Nile. With that in mind, here are the photos from the weekend before last.

We spent it, as mentioned in the Humuhumu + graveyard cat post, in a village in the Peak District. The bloke and friends went and walked up Kinder Scout in gale-force winds on the Saturday. They saw very few other walkers. This is presumably because most people checked the weather forecast beforehand and concluded that it was too dangerous.

I'm therefore grateful that they returned unscathed.

While they were out, I baked cakes and took self-portraits in the refurbished Grade-II listed cottage.

( Lalala, self-indulgence beneath )

After her nap, Humuhumu and I went to explore the "Cathedral" for which the village (Tideswell) is famous. I took lots of photos of her, and many little old ladies popping in and out of the church stopped to adore her.


Toddling down the aisle.

( Baby + cathedral = joy )

I didn't want to say anything about it lest I jinx it before I got too far into it. Now that I've reached Week 6 (and planned Weeks 7 and 8) I feel comfortable announcing that I have started a 52 project. My approach this time will be to select what I think is my best photograph of the week. I started out free-form, but at the moment I'm using reading material for inspiration. At the moment it's The Horologicon by Mark Forsyth, in which the author indulges his passion for reviving obscure and under-utilised words by sorting them according to the hours of the day and their associated "typical" activities.

I've also decided to work in black and white for a while, because I've acquired a new dSLR. It's a significant step for me since I had the same entry-level consumer dSLR for seven years, and now I'm using a camera that, while not full-frame because I don't fancy lugging that kind of weight or responsibility around, is still a big step up from my previous bit of kit. Using black and white forces me to see where I'm making mistakes in focus, exposure and depth of field. I find colour can distract from recognising those errors. Often a photograph that looks interesting in colour becomes extremely dull when the colour is removed, because from a technical perspective it has not been well executed. This isn't always true, of course - the whole appeal of some photographs is in the colour. But with the types of photography that I like to do, portrait and macro, the previously mentioned items are of paramount importance in creating a memorable, striking image.

So, starting with week six, here's what I've done so far. I won't post an update here every week (although I probably will in my favourite DW and LJ communities) - instead I'll do periodic updates like this one.

Week 6

(The word that inspired this is agastopia, defined in the Descriptive Dictionary and Atlas of Sexology as, "a rarely used term for admiration of any particular part of the body.")

( Weeks 1 through 5 - TW for dead things in jars )

Nunhead is one of the more far-flung of the Magnificent Seven, requiring a Tube plus overground train journey to reach. The wide drive leading from the entrance provides a wonderful view of the destroyed Anglican chapel at its heart. An arsonist made short work of the interior and the roof in the 1970s. The Friends of Nunhead Cemetery have determined to make it a showcase for art installations like the one below.



At first I thought a living person had managed to sneak inside and play at being a statue, rather like those silver people you see on the South Bank in the summer. What a cunning stunt, I thought. As I approached, I got out my camera. A group of dog walkers promptly accosted me.

"Are you with that person?" one of them demanded in an accusatory tone.

"Er, no," I replied, surprised.

"Oh, I thought because you have that fancy camera, you might be participating in this," said Dog Walker #1 with a disgusted gesture at the scary black-clad figure on the bench behind the heavily padlocked chapel gates. Clearly her reaction to the installation was an anagram of mine.

"Isn't it clever?" I said wickedly.

"No, it's horrible!" she replied. "They show artwork here all the time and they're usually nice, but this is terrifying. I got the fright of my life coming up the walk."

"How funny we should have such different reactions," I smiled, and turned away to take photos of it.

(Curiously, Dog Walker #2 who had heretofore seemed inclined to agree with Dog Walker #1, now stepped forward with her phone to take pictures.)

Dog Walker #3, a middle-aged man, said, "Imagine seeing it at twilight. The crows settle on this chapel at night and they always turn up making the creepiest noise with their cawing."

Dog Walker #1 threw up her hands, harrumphed and left us to our contemplation of this ghoulish vision.

Nunhead was a refreshingly chaotic change after the strict order of Kensal Green. Signs everywhere warned visitors to keep to the paths as the grounds outside of them were treacherously unstable. There weren't all that many outstanding grave markers and the sections of the cemetery that are currently in use lack the romance of the old ivy-choked bits of it. But the atmosphere was excellent, enhanced by the incessant cawing of the crows. If you decide to visit Nunhead after it's been raining, I recommend sturdy walking boots or wellies, as my smart boots were completely filthy when I left.

( +++++ )

To reach the Egyptian Revivalist entrance to Abney Park, exit Stoke Newington overground station, turn right and walk 200 metres. Then brace yourself, because the inside's an absolute stunner. You'll have the choice of two paths. Pick the left if you want to withhold yourself from the immediate pleasure of discovering its centrepiece: the disused nonconformist gothic chapel designed by William Hosking. It fully compensates for the rather unattractive entrance, which he also designed. All the windows are shattered, with little fragments of coloured glass clinging to the frames, but otherwise it's in remarkably good condition.

Certain of my friends will be interested to learn that Abney Park was Europe's first fully nondenominational cemetery, which goes some way to explain the wildly divergent styles of grave markers evidenced here. Certain other friends will be interested to know that parts of Amy Winehouse's Back to Black video were filmed in the park. You can see the chapel behind her repeatedly in the burial scene.



( More, with a full shot of the chapel )