Yesterday saw the start of The Big Egg Hunt. 209 eggs of various designs have been let loose on the streets of London (the one above is called Seraphina), and as I’m pretty obsessive compulsive about some things, I think it’s my job to find and photograph them all…and it’s not the first time.

In 2010 London was visited by a herd of 258 elephants (a couple more if you could those which weren’t in the official lists), and I spent a few weeks walking for miles upon miles attempting to find and photograph them all; I succeeded – I just wish I knew about HDR back then

So, for 40 days and 40 nights these eggs are in town, so I will be pacing the streets to get them all. Don’t worry, I won’t post all of them here (but do check out my Flickr for the others).

14 done yesterday…195 to go!

Remember that day of snow London got this year? Yeah, that was awesome…but seems like such a distant memory now. Here’s a shot of a bench in Greenwich park that day, where people gathered to build snowmen, throw snowballs and slide down hills on plastic sleds. It’s also where we went to shoot some fireworks in the evening – happy days.

Today, well when this goes live on the blog I’ll be sat in a passport office hoping that the scheduled 4 hours for a passport renewal will be reduced by…ooh…3.5 hours ideally. On the plus side, when it’s done I can at least start booking flights; I’m looking at you New York.

Have a good day all

Another shot taken from my recent walk around the Victoria area, this one is of Westminster Cathedral, not to be confused with Westminster Abbey which is a little grander than this nice little place.

This is taken at 16mm on a full frame and just reminds me how much I love to shoot wide. I really need to save up and buy a nice 14mm this year as that would allow me to show so much more in the shots, including the tripod, and my feet.

I hope everyone had a nice weekend. I had a pleasant walk in the rain on Saturday, but a hangover ruled out any productivity yesterday and I spent it lounging around in self pity.

A new week now though, let’s hope it’s a good one.

Friday already, and I thought I would end the week with a shot of Canary Wharf taken a few weeks ago while I was out with Dylan, James and John. As I was taking these exposures a boat drove wandered sailed past and left a nice light streak across the bottom third of the image; I would have liked it to be a little closer to leave the trails slightly lower, but am happy enough with what they add to the shot.

It was a pretty cold night and we had contemplated walking to Greenwich from here, around 2 miles, and back up through the foot tunnel to Canary Wharf. Instead we jumped back on the tube to go back a stop, and a few shots later ended up in the pub. This was followed by a brief trip to London Bridge and another stop in the pub.

I’m officially going to stop calling them photowalks and refer to them by the appropriate title of pubcrawls very soon.

Last week I celebrated one year of this photoblog and posted a few of my favourite shots from the previous year. Thanks to everyone who voted for their personal favourites out of this batch, I’m pleased to announce that your preferred shot was The Day The Music Died

I thought I would go for something a little more abstract today, so here’s a section of the glass rooftop which covers the Great Court at the British Museum. It really is a fascinating piece of architecture to look at so if you’re ever in London do pop in and take a look for yourself.

This image is part of a much larger scene but I couldn’t really get inspired by the bigger picture while processing. I decided to crop right in on just the ceiling glass and was happy with the results.

The HMS Liverpool was recently docked in the Canary Wharf area for a day and were kind enough to let the general public aboard to take a look around the top deck and check out a few missiles and such. I popped along with John who has a boat fetish and seems to know the ins and outs of them, which comes in handy if I have any questions as I can just point to something he’ll be able to indicate what it’s for. I’ve no idea if he speaks the truth of course, but if there’s one thing I like better than learning stuff about boats it’s sure to be learning lies about boats.

Towards the back of this battle ship someone had parked a helicopter, though with it’s tail hanging over the edge of the ship I’m not too sure if it was really meant to be where it was. It did have a nice big gun on it though, and so I popped up onto the seat to place myself behind it and get this shot with my hoodie character.

Another shot taken on the Sunday night photowalk, this one shows Portland House towering up at a lovely angle. I’m always amazed by the amount of good light during the blue hour, more so when it’s not visible to the naked eye.

This shot was taken with the 16-35mm which I had borrowed for the shot and which makes me remember just how much I like shooting wide. I’ll need to look into going wide on the 5d Mark II sometime in the near future.

Also, voting is still open for my image of the year, so if you haven’t already done so, head over there and select your fave shot from my shortlist. Thanks.

Yesterday I went on a brief photowalk with James, John and Steve around the Victoria area which saw us working our way in towards Trafalgar Square. Passing by St James’s Park we thought that the frozen over water may make for a decent reflection of the Millennium Wheel from a bridge, however it did absolutely nothing but remove the reflection, which was a shame, so I headed down to the water’s edge instead and framed up so that the wheel was visible through this tree and reflected in one of the few watery parts not fully frozen over.

In some ways I think it would have been nicer without the background lights and noise, but finding a clear sky behind a tree in London can be pretty difficult so that wasn’t to be in this instance.

Here we are. It’s been a year now and I have uploaded a new blog post every weekday without fail, and a few on the weekends too. Come public holidays, vacations, illness or a hangover the posts have been going up daily and I’ve managed to maintain a level of passion for this wonderful hobby that I feared may not last, and which has no signs of slowing down.

Whether it’s happy birthday or happy anniversary I don’t know, but I’m thankful for everyone who has stuck with me along the way and given me the motivation to continue to post my images and work hard to try and get unique shots. This one’s for you, and for the year ahead.

To celebrate this occasion it was suggested by @foolhandy and @andthesewalls that I post my top ten images and have you lovely readers vote on which of them is your personal favorite. Finding 10 is a tough task, and my recent New Year run down was only made easier because I had to choose one from each month of the year, which is not the case here.

So below you will find 10 images which I either class as my favourite or which mean something to me for one reason or the other, and I would appreciate it if you could take a moment to look through them and then vote for your personal favourite using the polls – I’ve placed the poll before and after the images for convenience, but you can only vote once I’ve removed the bottom poll as it doesn’t appear to work too well. Thanks again for all of your support, and have a great weekend.

1. Inferno (Dante) – One of my earliest and most successful attempts at spinning wire wool.

2. Staircase – My favourite black and white shot.

3. The Day The Music Died – An image which turned out far better than I had conceived when composing the shot.

4. Cell 3 – The one shot I wanted from this urbex location, and I was pleased with it when I got it.

5. London’s Burning – Revisiting this popular spot after learning a lot more about HDR made it clear to me how I had improved.

6. St Paul’s – World AIDS Day – This shot won me 1st place in the competition held by St Paul’s Cathedral.

7. Double Tap – One of the rare shots that turn out exactly as I had conceived when setting it up.

8. Alone – This location in the far north of Scotland was awesome, and had me running barefoot through the sea to get several shots.

9. The Bridge to St Paul’s – One of the first images where I appreciated how much other people enjoy my work.

10. Shard Sunrise – My favourite view from my favourite location during a great sunrise.

An obvious title for a shot taken from Waterloo Bridge at sunset.

It was bitterly cold on the bridge on this day and I was hoping to have a nicer sunset to view, however the one on offer did allow for a few nice colours in the sky so I at least walked away with something.

I’m sure the focal points within the shot are obvious but just to make sure everyone knows we have the London Eye/Millennium Wheel on the left, Houses of Parliament (where Big Ben is) on the right, and a boat in the middle. The boat isn’t famous, that I know of, but perhaps one day I might be and then the boat could be famous by association…we’ll see.

I’m fighting off a stomach bug at the moment and haven’t really eaten anything of real substance for the last 60 hours or so, plus my head hurts and body aches all over. Hopefully it’ll disappear by the weekend so I can get out and take more photos