I’m a bit late to the party on this one, as the Photomarathon was over two weeks ago, but I wanted to record my first attempt at a proper photography challenge. Having admired the results of previous Photomarathons on Emma’s lovely blog, and having tried unsuccessfully to enter last year (boy, those 400 spaces fill up quickly: don’t hang about, prospective 2014 marathoners!), I was pretty amazed that, this year, I not only managed to bag a place in the challenge, but also to take the requisite twelve photos in twelve hours. All this with a husband and toddler in tow, and with a minimum of fuss: there was only one very small tantrum from Eoin (who was tired) somewhere around photo number ten, and one from me (final photo: my plan to hang out under the pier and take cool perspective shots was scuppered by the fecking tide coming in).
I have no illusions about my chances: I’ve seen the winning photos for the last few years, and they’re all excellent. Also, I realised a few days after the challenge (why do I always suffer from this sort of esprit de l’escalier?) that all the highly-rated entries had a common theme linking all twelve photos, and weren’t just a series of random pictures of stuff in their house, their toddler, or, in one case, a seriously creepy plastic Krusty the Klown (coulrophobes, beware).
For what it’s worth, though, here are my entries: the gallery format crops them a bit, so click to embiggen if you’d like to see the whole entry.
Entry number/Who am I?
Poetry
Asymetric
Space
Out and about
Behind the scenes
Animated
A bit on the side
Shadow
Mixed message
Elegant
A different perspective
For “A bit on the side”, I really have Eoin to thank: I was going to take a pedestrian-enough picture of a piece of cake perched on a saucer next to a cup of coffee, so we all trolled off to
Barker, and Stephen and Eoin waited at a table while I queued up to get the goods. As I was doing so, I glanced out of the window, and spotted two ladies in orange Photomarathon wristbands taking – you’ve guessed it – exactly the same picture. Returning disconsolately to the table, and entirely out of ideas, I decided to take the photo anyway. After all, I could always delete it if something better came along. Eoin, however, had clocked the slice of millionaire’s shortbread: he persistently photobombed my every attempt to take the darned picture, desperate to get at the cake which, for some inexplicable reason, I was photographing while he was trying to get down to the serious business of eating it. In the end, I gave up: you can probably see the teethmarks in the chocolate in this picture (it was several tries in), but at least there’s some humour instead of a just boring old shot of a cake on a saucer.
Incidentally, that’s a proper Vesper Martini in the penultimate shot, and, if you’re reading this Paul, yes, that is one of the cocktail glasses you gave us! I did not get to drink it, though: Stephen polished it off while I was on the seafront, swearing impotently at the incoming tide, and desperately trying to think of an alternative subject for “A different perspective”. Mind you, he did make me another one when I got home from dropping my entries off, proudly clutching my certificate of completion. I suspect that a rather lovely cocktail will be my only prize in the Photomarathon, but it was great fun nonetheless: I can’t wait to try again next year.
I took this a couple of weeks ago, on a day when the spectacular sunrise coincided with me being out early to take Ronan to his childminder’s house. I’m using it as a bit of a test post: WordPress seems to be doing some funny things in terms of sharing posts on social media, and I wanted to try to find out what is happening. Although I’ve shared this around the place before, I thought that it was at least prettier to look at than a page full of Lorem Ipsum text.
Biographia Domestica 