growing

I bought this bulb from a local garden center believing that I am buying a blue flower. I had in mind precisely what you see - a progress of flower over a few days. It turned out pink (hmmmm) but I am pleased with the results anyway. I also bought some mini-narcissi, but those proved quite tricky, they grow way too fast and increase in height about five times which makes for a difficult light in the conditions I used (single flashgun light)

orchid

this orchid suddenly become quite popular download at shutterstock. I wonder why

blue towel

this is an old image, taken on Fuerteventura in april. we've just booked a christmas break o Lanzarote and I am really loking forward to it. Hope the weather doesn't let us down - darkness of late autumn is getting at me lately

salsa photo

this photo of Juan and Rosi was taken back in June. Unfortunately, they don't teach in Cambridge any more (to the best of my knowledge, anyway, and not in the same place in any case). the club where the photo was taken weren't a great place for photography - it's a basement location, with mirror ceiling to the dance floor and partially mirrored walls. While you can bounce the flash off those surfaces (which I did), it doesn't really diffuse the flash much, but rather makes a squiggly light patterns all over the place. Even so, I think the results of the session were quite good, and of course those guys are very photogenic, which helped

Juan teaches classes in a couple of locations in east anglia, check his website if interested http://www.salsa-son-cuba.com/index.html

one of a kind

I can't figure out what tree it was. the leaves were maple-like, but it had the fruit like a prickly sphere, similar to plane tree, but smaller.

update : it's a sweetgum tree, Liquidambar styraciflua. was identified by collective effort :)

Timur gets a haircut

as you can plainly see, he doesn't really like to pose, but well, I wanted both "before" and "after" pictures and here they are

False Bay

sometimes, when the weather is bad and light is poor, I look through my folders from sunny places and pull out pics that are not new, but nice to look at. This one is from South Africa last December - False Bay

silly stripes

this picture (taken a goodish while ago) now found its way into one of the featured lightboxes on shutterstock - "silly /offbeat". Fine by me, it sells again, after sale-silent months.