It's very easy as a photographer to fall into the trap of just taking our usual style of photograph.  With the wealth of tools at our disposal in this electronic age we shouldn't be afraid to experiment with our photographs.  The photo here is a case in point.  It's of a rotting boat, where the primary boat colour was (or used to be) red.  The paint was peeling and flaking and it seemed to create a very busy looking image.   By desaturating the red, orange, and yellow tones we have been left with just the blue tones and a grey boat.  We think it works quite well.  Do you?

We couldn't resist posting a photo of this gorgeous black labrador puppy recently encountered on parkland in Colchester.  His name is jeff, he's 6 months old, and had boundless energy chasing a multitude of rabbits.  Getting him to pause, let alone pose, for a shot was quite an achievement in itself.  To get a shot with a setting sun and lovely colours was a bonus.  If the owners of Jeff, two French women we believe, happen to see this and would like to get in touch we'd love you to have a copy of this photo too.  Dogs - No wonder they're known as man's best friend!

Harwich in Essex has had a naval defence presence since the days of King Henry VIII.  After successive building works up to and including WWII, what remains now is the disused ruins. Officially called Beacon Hill, it's known locally as the old war department.  The image above shows just part of what remains, notably a couple of gun batteries and an observations tower, although the whole site is much larger and comprises numerous underground chambers as well.  Although closed to the public, the site is regularly explored by many who access it via poorly maintained perimeter fencing.  There's many more images of the site available in the People & Lifestyle galleries.

An unusual water shot for this blog entry.   A rear engined sports car decided to spring a leak from its coolant system.  Not a major issue, except this one is part of a pressurised system and spurted directly onto the exhaust manifold, but only at hot temperatures and with the engine revving above 3,000 rpm.  Add to this scenario it being a mid/rear engined car and when it erupted it did so in a spectacular plume of steam behind the driver.  Suffice to say we felt unable to replicate those circumstances to further our photography but did capture this shot during fault finding.  The engine appears to have escaped damage and since repair has performed as normal.