I've taken to carrying my camera when we go out at weekends. The little Slingshot bag I used (yep, papa's got -another- brand new bag. More on this later) was really handy for just tossing in the car or over the back of a pram.

Anyway, last weekend we were visiting some good friends for an impromptu BBQ and I noticed some excellent weathering on one of the patio chairs, so proceeded to snap.

Unusually, the original image from the camera was very constrasty and looked awful when I uploaded it (OK, it looking awful wasn't unusual but normally they look flat and awful). But I wanted to do something with the picture and felt it might look better in black and white. It's kind of ended up as something inbetween, but I do like the faded, weathered feel of it.

(f/4.0, 1/400sec, 50mm, ISO-100, 18/05/08)

For me, what's important about this image is the lines. I wanted to show the way the weather beaten lines are bracketed by the varnished areas - the back struts of the chair providing protection. I'm not entirely convinced I ended up with that.

I chose the angle for the shot to give it more of a 3 dimensional feel. The struts when shot stright on didn't seem 'interesting'. I also chose a small f-stop to try to keep the background out of focus as well as allow the struts to fall slightly into and out of focus.

What I'm trying to do at the minute is understand what I'm taking before I take it and to make a conscious decision about what I want to achieve. "ooh, pretty" isn't really getting me good pictures, so I need to get to "ooh, pretty... Because..." and that means thinking more I guess. Geoff's comment on the boat pictures a few days ago kind of brought this home and made me realise I was too busy playing with photoshop to actually ask what I wanted to show in the picture.

This picture is one of a few where I'd actually done that before pressing the button.