I took this photo while waiting in Cardiff Central station this morning. Although the white balance setting was inadvertently left on “daylight” while under incandescent bulbs, I tried shooting with the “correct” WB and actually preferred the vibrancy of the colour in the original. Which is here…
I’ve walked over this footbridge between Porth and Ynyshir at least one-hundred times but hadn’t stopped to consider its construction. Today I snapped this part of the bridge — a geometric pattern as iron girders are joined together.
I’d like to take more photos like this with my DSLR camera.
Yes, I know it’s the 2nd January, but I have a really good excuse for yesterday — flat camera battery.
OK, that’s a lousy excuse. In fact, I almost didn’t get today’s photo because the rather old compact digital camera I have now has an extremely loose sliding lens cover which causes the lens to keep retracting. It’s quite a balancing act propping the cover open while holding the camera and depressing the shutter button.
Anyway, without further ado, here’s today’s photograph.
Taken in my home town of Porth, on a little metal bridge which crosses the Rhondda river. I love the different contrasting colours of green. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether I meant to have the leaves slightly out of focus. 
If you’ve visited my blog you’ll have noticed a distinct lack of updates in 2012. I’ve continued to be creative, more in music than photography or writing, but haven’t published what I’m doing.
2013 needs to be a year where I am much more active in pursuing my creativity and the possibility of making a living from it. Even more importantly than that, though, is my continual need to create, even if I’m the only one who sees, hears or appreciates it.
Expecting the year to be full of busy-ness, I’ve decided to try to build in specific times for creativity. Not so as to attempt to manufacture it, but to allow myself time to nurture it. I know that without building a framework, other things will crowd it out.
To that end, I’ve decided to sign up for the Creative Every Day 2013 challenge. There are plenty of similar programmes running, but I found out about this one via Julie’s blog (which you really out to check out).
Being a stickler for punishment, but also knowing that it’s OK not to strive to create every single day, I’ve decided to attempt two regular creations. One will be a photograph. The other will be an improvised music composition.
These are likely to be fairly raw in nature, but my hope is that they will be a springboard for other ideas, as well as an interesting collection in themselves.
I haven’t decided exactly how to publish them yet. Photos will probably be published on this blog, while music may well be converted to video and posted on YouTube. You’ll find the latest updates on this blog in the relevant categories.
I’ve always wanted to earn some income from music, and in the past month or so I’ve come a step closer to that by advertising my services on Fiverr.
While it’s not going to make me rich, I’ve got two ‘gigs’:
Some might say I’m selling my talents far too cheaply, but the fact is I have an excuse to play piano and improvise (which I love, and do for free anyway) and earn a little bit of money for it.
What’s more, the whole process is quite uplifting. Being such a perfectionist, it’s hard for me to believe that anything creative I produce is good enough. I’m getting better at learning when something is good, despite my continual desire to tweak and polish ad infinitum, but when someone else (a stranger who has paid money) says what I’ve produced is good, that really means something.
It also means I have to play, and therefore I continue honing my skills, becoming a better musician (particularly when it comes to recording, which always seems to put me under extra pressure) for some of my own projets.
I’ve finally launched my Real About Worship web site, in which I share my thoughts about worship leading, musicianship, faith, and living the Christian life in the 21st century.
Take a look at the domain name record for real-worship.com and you’ll see a date of mid-Summer 2010. That’s how long I’ve been sitting on it. Now I’ve finally pushed on and started posting.
My goal is to have an article posted every day. I realise that’s quite a tall order even if I dedicate time to storing a few up in advance so I don’t always have to write every day).
Worship and worship leading are very high up on my list of passions, but I’m under no illusions that it will always be plain sailing. Yet I’ve had people suggesting that I should be writing more, and this seemed like a natural subject to focus on.
There’ll no doubt be some crossover between subjects on the site and the first worship book I’m writing, though the web is a more immediate medium and will likely contain less structured musings, whereas the book will (hopefully) be more structured.
It’s an exciting time and I’m looking forward to seeing where these projects lead.
I have decided that I will write my book about worship leading/musicianship in November. In other words, I start tomorrow and, by the end of the month, hope to have at least a first draft ready for editing and, ultimately, publishing.
The initial title will be a more general look at worship leading, rather than more specifically aimed at keyboard players. I think that project, which will include a number of practical elements and potentially be more heavily tied in to a web site, is due for completion in early 2012. I do have a first draft of several chapters, but I have a feeling I’m about to change direction on the book’s purpose.
I’m being a NaNoWriMo rebel and using the system to get this book done. I’ve got a lot of ideas bubbling around my head but I really need to get on and write it. Having a week off in the middle of the month will hopefully help, and I intend to dedicate at least a couple of hours each day to writing it. If I don’t, Christmas will fast approach — with all the busyness that comes with it — and we’ll be into the New Year with no first draft.
Let’s see how it goes!
Since relocating to in the Rhondda Valley, I’ve become fascinated by the Rhondda Heritage Park located in Trehafod. I first noticed it while walking my dog along the National Cycle Route 881 from Y Porth.
The Rhondda Heritage Park based at the former Lewis Merthyr Colliery, Trehafod, is one of the top heritage and cultural visitor attractions in South Wales and provides a fun and interesting day out for individuals, groups, school children and students.
The tower and other buildings are clearly visible on the skyline, nestled between two sets of hills, as looked down upon from the north. I used both a ‘standard’ lens and a telephoto lens to capture a range of images at sunset. I’d been wanting to capture some shots for a while, and nearly gave up on this occasion as it had been raining quite heavily earlier in the evening (as is common for the Valleys). I’m glad I went out with my camera and tripod, despite the fact that it meant a ~2 mile round trip from home.
I’m hoping to produce some definitive pieces of artwork based on the buildings in and around the Park, and how they interact with the surrounding countryside. These preliminary shots, from some distance away and from a few angles, give me inspiration to get closer to the buildings or see if I can approach them from a different angle — bearing in mind that I’ve no idea how accessible the hillside to the south is, in order to get a similar distance away!
Anyway, here are some of the photos I took. They are intentionally quite dark, given that they were taken after sunset, but if you’re viewing on a PC they may seem exceptionally dark. That’s due to the differences between how a Mac (which I use) and a PC display things on screen. Anyway, I hope it gives you an idea of one of my first Welsh projects.
Before the sunset, a fairly flat grey sky against which to display the fantastic orangey-red metal structures.
The tower backed by interesting gradation of cloud.
Closeup of one of the structures.
A shot of the main complex.
Slightly closer in.
And another...
Some interesting reflections of sky and trees in this row of semi-circular windows.
The sky began to get really interesting with clouds and varying colours including some purple, and the structures began to take on a silhouetted look.
The main structure with great clouds.
A nice silhouette closeup.
The tower once lit up, presumably from a display light within the Park, and with interesting cloud.
A closeup of the lit tower.
Another silhouette with a cloudy 'figure' alongside.
Though it might not be immediately obvious what this is, it is in fact the River Rhondda Fawr which passes to the north of the Park and Trehafod. This was captured with a fairly slow shutter speed (given light levels) but managed to capture a range of faster and slower moving water, hence the patterning effect. I'd love to experiment more with this.
I hope you enjoyed seeing these photos. Bear in mind they’re just preliminary shots that may or may not make it into any “final” pieces. I’ll be adding more photos and possible digital derivatives once I’ve found a good time to do another shoot around the Heritage Park.
