Cute Cop

Grabbed this candid at the Cenotaph in London while waiting on the Queen going past the office for the state opening of parliment.

Lest We Forget

Took plenty of the queen going past the Cenotaph outside the office but then thought this one meant so much more.

Underneath the arches

Yours truly has been a bit busy of late and Swansea feels like its rapidly becoming my second home due to the amount of time I spend down there so apologies for not updating the blog of late.

However I was back home in Glasgow tonight and not one to be afraid of dark spooky places dived under the Glasgow Bridge on the way home and grabbed this shot.



Aside from one or two interpersonal communications consultants working on a strictly cash only basis I didn't get mugged, accosted or approached by any unsavoury types as I fumbled about like a numpty with my camera.

Although I have been asked by the lovely ladies working to the strictly cash only arrangement to advertise that Monday nights are usually quiet and so they are currently promoting their £5.00 special which , if I took them correctly, seems to involve the provision of a French lesson which I thought seemed quite reasonable given that my local community centre charge upwards of £15.00 for foreign language classes.

Fudged again

I can't believe some sod actually nicked my Welsh fudge from the in-flight overhead locker today.

Sadly my counter espionage attempts at recovering it , which involved edging up to everyone who looked dodgy at the baggage reclaim like a spooks extra and checking them over, also failed.

Next week I plan to transport my sweeties in one of those armoured briefcases that gets handcuffed to your wrist........

No bugger's getting my swedgers again.

Weekend arty picture slot

Wandering around town today looking for some shots but it started pissing rain and all I got was a shot of this lousy fire-escape and a wet pair of jeans.


And for a bit of fun with Halloween not far off....... a spooky house
(Actually it's a flat down by Charing Cross but who cares)

Kelvingrove Museum

Lights at Kelvingrove Art Gallery


Just looking

The eastern tourist gutter fetish.

Why is it that whenever you see tourists from the far east they always seem to have their cameras pointing somewhere up at the rooftops in, what would appear to be, some form of bizarre photography fetish that involves taking as many pictures of gutters as possible?

Or......maybe its because all the planes that fly from Tokyo have defective headrests which SNAP back on take-off resulting in passenger short term upper spinal injuries manifesting in the inability to look below the horizon line.......I don't know.

I just feel sorry for the bloke who works in the Tokyo branch of supasnaps, he must go mental processing all those pictures of gutters and downpipes.

Magazine vendor uses horror scare tactics

Okay, I came across this guy in town today trying to sell magazines about some Halloween fancy dress ball and failing miserably, possibly something to do with his scary appearance eh?

Don't know about you but I'm pretty sure Mary Shelley never depicted her monster in a beige nylon anorak and a dayglo satchel.

Felt sorry for him as his whole demeanour said "Why me" rather than "Wooohaha"

Midnight Sun

Actually its late afternoon but Adobe Lightroom is rapidy becoming my favourite app.

My Office

What can I say, this is as exciting as my office gets.

Alan's Arty Picture Slot

This weeks "Alans Arty Picture Slot" comes courtesy of the River Kelvin and Byres Road in Glasgow.


Shops - Ashton Lane


Bike - Ashton Lane


Autumn - Banks of River Kelvin

Sponge fingers

Why does this terrible affliction only ever gets discussed in supermarkets but never in medical journals?

Tomorrow I will discuss the saying "Life is what you make it" and what you should do if you happen to be crap at D.I.Y.

Life changing knives

Just back from the Glasgow ideal home exhibition and I now make a plea to the general secretary of the U.N. along with all leaders of the free world who wish to end world poverty, hunger and all other manners of human evil.

Just nip down to the ideal home exhibition whereupon you will be offered various items which will be guaranteed to change your and everyone else's lives for ever.

The most popular items appear to be the all-in-one wonder knife and the mad mental chopper which allow you to fashion no end of foodstuffs into small useless chunks and nice flouncy things that fall to bits when you pick them up.

All we have to do is supply one to each of the worlds tyrants and they'll be so busy slicing endless supplies of peppers, tomatoes and potatoes to make enough salad and chips to feed China that they'll no longer be bothered to invade countries or steal Red Cross food parcels.

Actually, in an open gesture of goodwill, they'll all be inviting around the neighbours to admire the various fab and groovy display of vegetable flowers that they've created using the "ever-sharp wonder knives" but only if they bring round some aluminium cans instead of bottles of wine to allow the host to display the useful can cutting abilities of their knife set.

What a load of pish!

Boy caught using gingie bottle collection shock tactics

In a desperate attempt to collect gingie* bottles to save up for a new ipod this young fella was caught using shock tactics to get as many empty gingie bottles as he could in one go down to the local newsagent to get the empty deposit money.

*Gingie
Glaswegian collective noun for any form of soft drink

Actually it was a competition at the ideal home exhibition where I grabbed this shot and my brain obviously works in odd ways .

Arty picture slot

Time again for the Alan's arty picture slot...

This week its one of the walkway to the SECC I took while walking back from the ideal home exhibition in Glasgow.

Ghost

Was staying at the Manchester Palace yesterday night which is an old Victorian and incredibly picturesque hotel.

Whilst making my way back to my room I spotted a possible shot of one of deserted and rather eerie corridors in the hotel which are tiled from top to bottom with stunning terracotta.

The door plaque at the end of the corridor was glinting rather brightly and was drawing my vision towards it. Anyway I took my camera and took a few shots but was a bit annoyed that I didn't have my tripod as the light was to low to get a good exposure and I didn't want to use flash and the pictures looked garbage and under-exposed on the image preview.

It wasn't until I got back home tonight and loaded the original into Adobe Lightroom and beefed up the exposure that I noticed something rather chilling.....



The photograph below is the original before I used Lightroom to increase the exposure..

Now that your eyes have a reference its easier to spot on the original that there is "something" there at the end of the corridor.

I've checked the shots I took within a few seconds either side of this one and nothing other than an empty corridor can be seen.