Whilst I remember, since I have nothing better to do at the moment, here are some pictures of all my new kit, I know this is the peak of nerd-ness but I don’t care, since I had to sell a kidney on ebay to be able to afford this stuff, I’m going to make the most of showing off my shiny new things.

Now for anyone that cares, first one is the new camera body, a Nikon D200 no less. the second one is my two new lenses, a Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 HSM LMNOP QRST ETC. and a Nikkor 28-70mm f/2.8 AFS ED SCOOBY DOOBY DOOBY DOO. The last lens is my old one, an 18-70 DX, which I’ve sold and I just put it there to show how fahooking massive the new one is. Here ends this nerd intermission.

A 5 day business trip to Japan seemed a good opportunity to get some photographs of the rich and varied Japanese culture. Nice idea, but in practice business in Japan involves a lot more drinking than I had anticipated – and I wont even mention the Karaoke experience I endured…

This meant that the only chance I had to take pictures was from my hotel room balcony, still, it was quite an interesting view!

Abby’s little nephew Jack is born, and following my practice with flowers and with a doggy it was time to step up and photograph some real people… gulp!

Luckily little Jack was an angel, and his parents didn’t mind me saying ‘um… left…. er… no i mean right… er… look this way, no this way, no this way.. er… umm……’ at them, and we got some good ones out of the whole excercise!

Continuing my theme of taking pictures of stuff other than just cars and dogs, here’s a little selection for your viewing pleasure. Macro photography remains firmly on my list of things that nerdy photographers do, since I’m not a nerdy photographer I don’t usually do it, I must have been feeling the call of the macro lens today though.

During my attempts to see if I could get my car to go on 3 wheels whilst going round a roundabout, I took a detour and stopped for a couple of pictures. Meantime Tuan Le‘s Sagaris was there as well but I only got a picture of the wheel that I liked, so it’s here in all it’s glory.

Whatever you do you absolutely must not look at the fog light that’s all wonky on the front of my car as this will fill me with sadness.

A trip up Cheddar Gorge in Tuan‘s Ferrari 360 with it’s shiny new wheels. Wonderful car, amazing noise, and now some tasty new wheels as well. Shame about the 300 sheep that died from shock because of the noise, and there may have been a couple of cyclists who got stuck in the wheelarches, but nothing we couldn’t lever out with a broom handle before carrying on.

My hair has never looked better than after I hung out of the window to take the wheel shot, and then knelt on the seat to get the rear view. Luckily my stylist was following and he soon sorted me out, bringing me back to my coiffured best.