The garden was a bit of a jungle because of not mowing it for a while and all the rain we’d had recently. I had a good shuffty through the grass before running the mower over just in case there were any little animals hiding.

I ended up finding 3 beautiful frogs in different parts of the garden. They were all pretty lively, with the tiny baby being the most difficult to catch being so small.

The kids helped take them all up to a natural pond just up the road where they should be happy.

For day 4 of my 365 project I took some macro photos of ice crystals on my car from the overnight frost.

My wife recently was picked to play Deal or No Deal. She was lucky enough to get ’saved’ to play her game on Christmas day. Unfortunately we only won a penny (and a nice holiday), but it was an amazing experience and I met some of the most genuine and fantastic people in my life.

Anyway, before my wife started filming back in June she asked me to make some cufflinks for Noel and the Banker. I’d started making my own cufflinks a few years ago. I’d wanted some Mario cufflinks as I’m a big Nintendo fan and lifelong video gamer. I couldn’t find any, so decided to make my own…

As I don’t like doing things by half, and as millions of people would see them I wanted to do something a little different. The boxes were an obvious choice for Noel, but they needed to be different. Unique.
I’d been planning my designs for a ringlight using LEDs for my camera and the idea hit of creating a hinged box that lights up when you open it (a bit like the box in the opening credits of the show). I then figured I’d use red and blue LEDs to signify the red and blue values inside the boxes.

I only had a couple of days to completely build them so didn’t have enough time to work out a hinge mechanism and switch for the box lid – especially one that had to be so small.
Plan B was to have a switch at the bottom to turn them on and off. I couldn’t find a switch small enough in the house so I resorted to plan C. That was to use some tiny push-to-make switches. I knew I had some old mice in the loft that I could find some of those.
It meant that you had to hold down the button to get the LED on, but at least that would save on batteries, because they were going to have to be small, very, very small.

Scroll down to see how I put it all together.

The Banker’s cufflinks were really easy. I printed it out around 100 tiny likenesses of a note and cut them out, glued the centres with PVA glue so they fanned out a little, cut out a slim piece of metal and bent it into a money clip.
I then sprayed the whole lot with an acrylic varnish to help stop it getting damaged (it’s still pretty fragile).

Banker's Cufflinks

Noel’s cufflinks:

Looked at a few different ideas to make the boxes, but settled on lego as the most convenient given my time constraints. I cut it in half and removed the inside and lumpy bits on the top, and used some 1200 grit wet and dry to polish up the cuts.



Drilled a small hole in the bottom and glued the button in place.

I used heat shrink sleaving to hold wire connectors onto the 1.5V button cell batteries. They were the smallest button cells I could find. The LED’s had a forward voltage of 3V, so two 1.5V batteries were ideal. I used a 100Ohm resistor to make sure the batteries weren’t flattened too quickly.

I rearranged the insides to fit and gave it a test.

Using hot glue a ’sealed’ the insides so they couldn’t move, and stuck on the back and the lid slightly ajar (by making a small chamfer on the back).

A cleanup of the boxes and a few finishing touches.

These are pictures of my father-in-law (with his partner and dog). Every year he dresses up as Santa and rides his motorbike through the locals towns and villages. He doesn’t get paid, or recieve anything at all for his troubles. He does it because he is an amazing guy and loved by pretty much everyone who meets him.

This year he asked me to take some photos for his Christmas card. He was unwell at the time but you wouldn’t guess from the photos. He had been in remission after throat cancer a couple of years ago.
2 Days after this shoot we found out that he had lung cancer and was terminal.

I’ve known him most of my life – since I was about 12 in fact. He will be very sorely missed.

A couple of images from a wet and windy Shell Island in November.

I love the expression on Bassett’s face as the cricket flies over her head (sequence below).

You have to dust the crickets with vitamins which make them powdery and she can’t always get a grip with the tongue.

Even with 5fps offered by my 20D, I’m struggling to get mid action shots like this. Either side of this shot she is stood still and a distance distance from the cricket.

Once I get another light in the viv I will spend a a bit more time of feeding shots – and hopefully nail the focus in one.

This amazing cake was made by my wife for our Halloween party. I think this is the 4th ‘proper’ cake she’s made (as in fully featured and iced, not just a sponge cake with some jam in the middle).

I think she’s very talented so wanted to put some images in my blog.

(and if anyone in the West Mids is looking for a cake, drop me an email).

For the DDN compo themed ‘After Dark’ I had the idea to draw light trails in the dark with a torch. Being close to Bonfire Night a fireworks scene was the most obvious. I tried a few other ideas like painting a fire and trying to paint ambient light on the ground as if created by the fire, but it was far too complex. I also tried things like Space Invaders and Tetris, but it’s really tough to get the lines spot on.

I shot tethered to my laptop so that I could get instant feedback on what I’d created. I used two Maglites to paint, a big one which I covered the end with electrical tape with a small hole in the middle to get a small defined light, and a mini maglite to paint thicker lines.

I cut up drinking straws to stick onto the torches and colour the light. I could’ve just coloured it post production, but my idea was to have the background exposed a little too, and obviously I wanted that a normal colour. In the end though I kept the background pretty dark.

The Canon software doesn’t let me shoot bulb, so I had to dial in the maximum 30 seconds exposure @ f/16. That left me tight on time to draw everything I wanted, so I ultimately draw smaller pieces with the view of bringing them together in photoshop.

This image is a comp of just two photos.

Checking on Bassett before I went to bed I found him fast asleep, outstretched. Didn’t look very comfy, but obviously he was happy enough.