I’ve been off the grid, at least photography wise, for a couple of months now. You may have noticed I gave the site a new coat of paint then left it without finishing the job, then repainted it again, and am now just finding the time to properly sort it out. The blog itself is moving platforms, too, so this is where you’ll find all posts from now on. The old URLs will live on as a working archive and once I’ve rewired the temporary redirects to permanent ones, nobody should feel a thing.

So where have I been? Nowhere really. I got flattened by moving house (my third move in three years), work stuff, social stuff, life stuff etc. It happens. I even got so busy that I missed a day of my 365. Then I missed another. And another. And, well, I’m not sure whether I’ve stopped, but I’ve had to take a more relaxed approach to things as feeling bad about taking a crap photo at 11.59pm each night wasn’t working for me. I could have just started snapping with my iPhone, but that’s not really what 365 was about for me. It was about daily exercise for daily parts of my brain that usually only work out a few times a year. Mission accomplished in that respect, but it’s a shame I couldn’t keep it up through the summer.

However, it is not all bad news. There was a very important photographic reason (among other, unimportant practical reasons) for moving house : ceiling height. I now have metres of it! Which means that, if I want to, I can get a deep octa shining down from two metres above a model’s head. It means I can light, finally. As many combi-stands and kick-ass modifiers as my battered bank balance will allow. It’s home studio time. I also live in a big old Victorian building that puts a multitude of great shooting locations on my doorstep.

Meanwhile, I can’t say I’ve missed much. Things seem to be pretty quiet in the land of photography, unless you’re a wedding photographer – in which case you are probably crazy busy and investing heavily in weatherproofing your gear Nikon’s been super quiet, slowly catching up on their D800 and D4 manufacturing backlog. You can get the D800 now, but I think those who didn’t pre-order are over it. Expensive, large, heavy, huge file sizes. Panasonic dropped a bunch of new models this week, but nothing to get excited about. The new Fuji X-Pro1 lenses are available for pre-order at some places – Park Cameras told me they were expecting the first stock in September. That’s probably optimistic but they do seem to get some of the first stock from other manufacturers. Still no word on new Nikon 1 lenses, or indeed anything new for that system. The D600 will probably be announced at Photokina. I had a play with Canon’s EOS 650D a few weeks ago and came away pretty impressed – they say it’s a beginner’s camera but at that price with those features I think it’s cutting the 60D’s lunch a bit. Oh and Canon might announce a new mirrorless camera next week – that could be interesting. And everybody still loves the OM-D. I’m determined not to buy it on principle, and fortunately I have some very real-word financial constraints that will help me keep that promise

Better get back to sorting out the site. Take it easy.

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p.s. I’ve just noticed that this wordpress theme turns my old-school smileys into yellow happy faces. I just want you to know that is not how I roll.