I've always liked photography but it was never an interest I particularly pursued beyond holiday snaps and pictures of friends and family. I was one of the first people I knew to get a digital camera, for Christmas/birthday in early 2001. I can't exactly recall my reasoning, but it was along the lines of having the freedom to explore photography without worrying about the escalating marginal cost.
About a year later, I began blogging; as much about reading other people's blogs as maintaining my own. Two very early influences were Stuart and Meg, who taught me that the best photos are often of what is very close to you. Coincidentally, they were the very first two people I met off t'internet.
A lot of people think blogging is an solitary indoors activity, involving many hours at the computer. Well, yes, it is. But a girl has to go out and find material to blog. I had just got a new camera following my burglary (in retrospect a really rather fortuitous event!) and it needed testing. It was a gloriously hot summer day. At the time I was based just behind Victoria Station (this was the second of four locations in my current job), and I walked up to St James's Park, and I snapped away at whatever, not really knowing what I was doing.
I have never been an animal person, bored by 'Nature'/Biology throughout my school days, and never succeeding in sitting through an entire David Attenborough TV programme. Yet, from that day in 2003 I have begun to be interested in waterfowl. Not in any deep kind of way, and not in a way that involves knowledge, but enough to have a category devoted to them on UnderDeveloped
Another great advantage of blogging is finding lovely little gems of applications, one being John's Background Switcher, which randomly changes your PC wallpaper from among a predetermined selection of photos on your hard drive. It also works with Flickr (but I don't!). When I got home this evening, I fired up the PC and as I waited and waited for Firefox and Thunderbird to load, I stared at this picture. It's definitely one of my favourites. I also have random photos as my screensaver*.
So, did you spot the duck?
* Jimmy moans "It's that man, staring at me again..."
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