'Garden pond waterfall', by me on Flickr

Today is the thirtieth day of the 365 Days of Photography challenge I am currently undertaking. It is amazing to think that a month has passed already. I don’t know where it went.

Although it is amazing how quickly time flies, it is also infuriating because it reminds me that when I have a day like today, where I am having a really hard time getting motivated, I am losing precious time. I had a couple of setbacks earlier in the week that mean I haven’t reached my target for writing yet. As a result, I have to work today; which is not my preferred option.

I need the time to work on my comics and also on my law course. The first assignment is due in two-and-a-half weeks. I can’t afford low motivation days!

Still, fretting over it won’t help. I’ll just have to knuckle down and get the work done. If I work really hard I can probably get caught up in four or five hours but if I can’t it will take longer. I don’t want it to take longer, I want it done!

That’s the problem with being self-employed, I suppose. There is only me here to kick me up the backside when I need to get moving. Still, it beats walking the streets in the rain like I used to when I did door-to-door sales. Thank goodness for small mercies.

Oh, as a final thing, if you are wondering where that photo was taken I can tell you: it is the waterfall in my parent’s garden. I took it when I last visited them and enhanced the colour to give it a more tropical feel.

So I’ve installed Linux on my desktop PC once again. I used to use Linux in preference to any other operating system once upon a time but when I started doing more video editing and using Photoshop more heavily, I found I needed to be able to use the software I’d learned on. It was a lot quicker to get things done that way and my time was limited, so learning new systems as I go wasn’t exactly the best way.

Yes, I know the search button is on the wrong end of the top bar

As a way of keeping things looking similar enough that I can move from one system to the other almost seamlessly, I decided to install a few modifications to Ubuntu so it looks and acts more like Mac OS X. This is because I do a large amount of my work on the 13″ Macbook I bought back in 2008 and I prefer to keep things similar if I can.

Also, the Mac interface feels more natural to me than the Windows or standard GNOME environments ever did (although I’ll admit the Windows interface from 95 to XP was much better than that of Windows 3.1!).

So, aside from engaging in epic geekery, what have I been up to this last few days? Not a lot, if I’m brutally honest. I did pop ’round to my in-laws’ house last night for a takeaway night; which was a lot of fun. It’s always nice to see them. We all get along very well and it gave me the opportunity to take some lovely photographs of their cats sleeping by the fire.

I’ve uploaded some of those photos to my Flickr account so you can have a look at them here, if you so desire.

On a more work-oriented front, I will be starting to add articles to How ‘N About once I get through the workload I have set myself. Jennifer and I are in the process of negotiating a mortgage and part of the process for increasing the chances of getting that approved is getting rid of the balance on my credit card. I used it to pay for the final year of my law degree and there is still half of the course fee on it, so clearing that is top priority right now.

Speaking of which, I had better get back to work.

'Purple mesh' by Zoë Kirk-Robinson

So I have been undertaking a photography challenge for the last ten days now, taking at least one photograph a day and uploading it to my Flickr account. The uploading part is not actually part of the challenge but I do it in order to keep track of the images I produce.

The challenge is to take one photograph per day for an entire year, with the prize being more experience at photography. I want to produce better photographs and the best way to do it is through practice, so this challenge is perfect.

Kettle Cup and Caramel by Zoë Kirk-Robinson

However, if I’m going to take a photograph a day I want it to be something other than a simple snapshot. I want it to look good and be interesting in and of itself. This is the reason that my images are not all simply “look at this nice building” or a snapshot of Jennifer that would not look out of place amongst our holiday photos. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that sort of photograph, it’s just that I want to make this collection of images to be a little bit different, if I can.

I’m trying to challenge myself to look at things in a new light, because it will help me as an artist as well as in photography. So far it is working out reasonably well and I hope that will continue.

The majority of the photographs are either taken through the Camera+ application on the iPhone 4, or processed in that application. This is because I can apply a range of colour filters and other processing niceties to the pictures right away. The range is limited, of course, but so far it is working out well. I may have to head back to Photoshop later on for more touching-up of the images to get them exactly as I want them but for an on-the-fly edit, Camera+ is excellent.

You may have noticed that the image along the top of the website, and also many other images on the site, have been similarly processed using this application. That’s because I’m currently enamoured by its border functions, which give pictures a weathered edge look amongst other things. No doubt I’ll get bored and move on eventually but for now I think these pictures rock somewhat.

Yes, I am easily pleased; especially when it comes to gadgets.