http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7427141.stm

The idea is that it will help prevent children from buying them. But there’s more: packets of 10 will also be banned, the packaging will be made plain to make them less “enticing“, and they won’t be allowed “pride of place” in shops.

Personally, I think this is a stupid idea. The more that adults frown on something, the more likely it is that the “bad kids” will want to do it. The plan simply won’t work. Kids will still start smoking and they’ll still manage to get hold of fags. Cannabis is completely illegal, but kids still manage to get hold of that, so why the government think that kids won’t still get cigs is beyond me. All it will take is one dodgy newsagent and before the day is out, that’s where all the smoking kids in town will be getting their cancer sticks from. And aren’t vending machines normally in places like pubs where kids don’t go anyway?

The thing that amazes me most is how kids manage to afford over £5 for a packet of fags and why they think that’s a good use of their cash. I’d have been buying books and records with my money at that age.

There is one further effect this will certainly have: illegal imports of tobacco will go up and the government will lose money as a result. This just hasn’t been properly thought out at all.

One final point: the biggest cause of preventable death in this country isn’t smoking, it’s poor diet. Are they going to ban kids from going to McDonald’s next? If the government were really serious about this, they’d ban smoking completely. But that would cause a huge uproar amongst the 30% of adult smokers and wouldn’t earn them much credit from anyone else, so we get this sort of wishy-washy non-idea instead.

I think the picture above looks a bit like smoke. Very misty this morning, but people are still out and about on the beach.

Cheers, Tom.

…And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time”

These words came immediately to mind when I saw this picture that I uploaded earlier. I knew it was a Hawkwind lyric, but I couldn’t remember where they had got it from. The answer is of course from the very famous poem by Longfellow (see below).

It’s one of the most inspirational poems and makes some excellent points about living. Strive every day to improve yourself, give it your best effort because the grave awaits you. Work hard, try to achieve and be an example for others. Self-improvement is it’s own reward. In this modern world of selfish greed, laziness and expectation of success being handed on a plate, it’s never been more relevant. I think we can all learn something these fine words.

A PSALM OF LIFE

    TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
        Life is but an empty dream ! —
    For the soul is dead that slumbers,
        And things are not what they seem.

    Life is real !   Life is earnest!
        And the grave is not its goal ;
    Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
        Was not spoken of the soul.

    Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
        Is our destined end or way ;
    But to act, that each to-morrow
        Find us farther than to-day.

    Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
        And our hearts, though stout and brave,
    Still, like muffled drums, are beating
        Funeral marches to the grave.

    In the world's broad field of battle,
        In the bivouac of Life,
    Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
        Be a hero in the strife !

    Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
        Let the dead Past bury its dead !
    Act,— act in the living Present !
        Heart within, and God o'erhead !

    Lives of great men all remind us
        We can make our lives sublime,
    And, departing, leave behind us
        Footprints on the sands of time ;

    Footprints, that perhaps another,
        Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
    A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
        Seeing, shall take heart again.

    Let us, then, be up and doing,
        With a heart for any fate ;
    Still achieving, still pursuing,
      Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1838

Here is an excellent live version of the song “Assault and Battery” by Hawkwind - the first 2 lines are from the poem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0_0f6b2Uxg

Cheers, Tom.

Where Helen and I used to live in the countryside in Mid-Wales, there were no street lights. We could see the odd light from a house across the valley, from the occasional car in the distance and a slight glow from our nearest town. But the night sky was mostly dark apart from the starlight and moonlight. If I go out at night now, there are streetlights and it is very different.

This video shows the awesome beauty that can be seen in the night sky, and shows why many people never get to see it any more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfcbQHOJY-E&feature=related

Light Pollution is a growing problem and it’s more than just an aesthetic one. It’s fixed by having lights that shine downwards instead of all around and as well as fixing the Light Pollution problem, this also saves money. Since the light is focussed only where it is needed, less electricity is required and this has an environmental benefit too.

There is a UK organization for fighting Light Pollution and this is their website

http://www.lightpollution.org.uk/

I recommend a look at their website as there is much useful and interesting information on it.

This is perhaps the only sort of pollution that we actually can fix at the flick of a switch!

This blog is nothing at all to do with the rather good telly series Dark Skies. If you saw it, this will remind you of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LeQbOLYYdE

Cheers, Tom.

The answer, my friend, is Blowin’ in the Wind. I should really have recorded myself playing the song, but I didn’t think of it in time. Here is a cover of it by a woman on youtube who does it better than he does (but I wish she‘d pull a few less faces!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdXBMKSmFfE

That’s the general story. Dylan is an astonishing and incredibly important songwriter, but an awful performer: his songs are almost always done better by other people (rather like The Beatles in fact). Just look at this clip of him from 1986 accompanied by the really rather good Tom Petty band:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvKJGZyGjDE

He’s terrible! The band would have been far better without him. He actually makes them sound bad.

The only reason I have for posting this is that the wind has finally died down. It’s after-effects can be seen in the picture above (click on it to make it bigger). The sand has piled up on the windward side of the groyne, whilst there is a gap on the leeward side.

Cheers, Tom.

Tescopoly beckons.

Some scary statistics

£1 of every £7 spent in UK shops goes to Tesco
£1 of every £16 privately earned income in the UK goes to Tesco
30% of all domestic food is bought from Tesco
Tesco turnover last year was £46 billion: that’s over £750 per person in the UK

Where has this success come from

About 2000 independent food, drink and tobacco shops closed last year
Approximately 1,000 independent newsagents closed last year
The biggest countryside employer is now no longer agriculture, it’s retail

Bleak future for Town Centres

The future for town centres looks bleak. Up-market shops for the wealthy will be fine: other shops might not be so lucky. This is what the government think anyway, in their “High Street Britain 2015” report. “Unlikely to survive” or “Very Unlikely to survive” are: Convenience stores, grocers, newsagents and independent petrol stations. Pharmacies, bakers, rural shops and most post offices might be alright.

The problem we see now will accelerate. The report puts it like this:

“Small shops in the grocery sector cannot compete with larger competitors, in terms of buying power, promotional activity, etc. The limitations offered to them by the supply chain in terms of differentiating their stock means there is likely to be an acceleration of shops going out of business, as reduced market share continues to impact on the price advantages enjoyed by the larger retailers“

A huge problem for the smaller, independent, stores will be finding suppliers. I recommend reading the report here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/15_02_06_highstreet.pdf

 It lays things out very plainly, the key sections being pages 45 to 59.

Choice will reduce and prices will eventually rise. “Mega brands” will dominate and supplier margins will reduce, which will result in a reduction in the number of suppliers too. Innovation will likely reduce too as homogeneity up and down the supply chain increases.

There is a further, different problem: the internet. You can now buy anything online. Who needs shops any more? Imagine what this will do for your local high street, when compounded with the “supermarket effect”.

Why You Should Care About Local Economy

Again, from the government report:

“Without the widespread existence of local businesses, money will be drained from local economies. This will have a long term adverse affect on local and regional areas in the UK as there will be a discontinuation of local cash flows. Some studies show that 50% of turnover from local retailers is returned to the local economy. However large retailers may return as little as 5% to the local economy”

Clear enough? The money you give to Tesco goes into the pockets of their shareholders. It doesn't come back into your community like it does if you buy from a local shop.

But there is more. If  you live in a rural area as more and more people are now doing, your options are going to reduce sharply and your travel will increase. The same applies to impoverished town and city areas too: “food deserts” will increase and those without access to cheap transport will suffer, i.e. the poorest people, the elderly and the disabled.

And there is that other factor we can all see, and it’s called “clone town syndrome”.

Hypocrisy?

In 2006, Tesco opposed the planning permission for an Asda shop in the centre of Bangor North Wales because “it would hurt local retailers”  and then 2 months later they opened a hypermarket of their own on the outskirts of Bangor. Why the absence of worry about local retailers in this case?

Reasons for Success

The reason Tesco and the other big supermarkets have done so well is because they give a lot of people what they want. They supply reasonably priced products and they sell pretty much everything that people want. If you have little free time, a supermarket is very useful to you. One trip gives your week’s shopping and you’re done in an hour or so. No trailing round little shops buying a loaf here and a joint of meat there.

But this convenience comes with a massive additional cost: the destruction of local shops and economy, increased transport with related environmental impact, reduced choice, reduction of suppliers, and the creation of food deserts. Factor these additional costs in over the long-term and the picture isn’t so good.

The Poster Child

Tesco aren’t the only culprit, the big 4 supermarkets and their wholesale suppliers are all guilty, as are other massive trans-national companies such as McDonalds and Costa Coffee that we can see sprouting up in towns everywhere.

You could spend all your money at Tesco.  You could:

Buy your house with a Tesco mortgage
Furnish it with Tesco flatpack furniture
Get on the internet with Tesco Broadband
Buy your car with a Tesco loan
Put fuel in it at Tesco pumps
Get your mobile phone deal with them
Oh, and you could buy your food there too

Tesco are merely the most visible part of this problem in the UK. That’s why there is a campaign against them, which is focussed here:

http://www.tescopoly.org/

Your Other Option

They aren’t always cheaper then the smaller shops. You could buy everything at other shops for about the same amount of money, but it would probably take you a little longer. But the benefit is that you’d be supporting your local shops and looking after the future wellbeing of the area you live in, and helping to prevent long-term decline. In the long run it might even be the most cost effective option. You might also be getting a better quality product and you might have more buying options too. You’d certainly get a more personal service and perhaps some community spirit as well. From the report again:

“Social contact will be reduced if small shops are lost. The importance of this cannot be underestimated for people in less populated regions, such as rural areas, and people who are less mobile, such as the elderly. For example, it is estimated that around 30% of people over 65 do not see any friends at least once a week191. For many, the small shop forms their only form of regular social contact. Its loss, therefore, has a much wider social impact”

“Many communities will be severely disadvantaged by the loss of their small shops. Such local businesses can be a focus for community activity, as well as providing employment and vital products and services. Many communities will no longer be able to cater for the needs of its residents if the retail sector is too heavily disrupted, leaving those affluent enough, both shops and homeowners, to relocate to other areas”

My grandfather wouldn’t let my grandmother shop at the supermarket because it hurt local traders, and this is about 35 years ago. If only more people had followed that same policy, perhaps things wouldn’t be heading down the route they are now.

Conclusion

All you have to do to help prevent the nightmarish future for 2015 and beyond in the report is:

buy some things from other shops.

Buy your cigarettes from an independent tobacconist, your papers and magazines from a newsagent, your alcohol from a local off-licence, your meat from a butcher, your vegetables from a greengrocer, your books from a bookshop, etc. etc. Even if you can only do one of these, it will help prevent the hellish future that is predicted. Even if you only do it occasionally, it will help prevent the Tescopoly that is developing now.

Cheers, Tom.

References:

High Street Britain 2015 report:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/15_02_06_highstreet.pdf

Article by Janet Street Porter from 2006:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/janet-street-porter/janet-streetporter-im-still-trying-to-break-the-tesco-habit-466724.html

The Tescopoly website:

http://www.tescopoly.org/

The above picture was taken whist a raging gale was howling all around us. Shaun and I were determined to make the best of it, regardless of the conditions. So, rather than put coats on, we took our shirts off.

Cheers, Tom.

So there we were walking down the beach with the dogs off their leads running round sniffing things. Suddenly there hoves into view a man and his huge bulldog on a lead. And of course Dan and Shep went over to say hello. They literally ran rings round the man and his dog. And he wasn’t at all pleased. So off I trotted to put them on their leads, saying “sorry about that”.

He glared at me as if I was straight from hell, the devil incarnate. So I put the dogs on their leads and said sorry again and as I turned to walk away, he barked at me “That shouldn’t be allowed, that”. That was one of those moments where there was nothing fruitful to be said, so I just walked away. And 10 minutes later we met a really nice man with a little terrier. He told us that there was a man with a bulldog at the other end of the beach that was off it’s lead and running all over the place. What a big dirty hypocrite.

That sort of person defies belief. He himself is a crime, and he is also his own punishment.

Cheers, Tom.

But as we can see from the picture, the urge to overtake is just as strong on the sea as it is on the road!

Cheers, Tom.

When it comes to UFOs, I am a complete sceptic. My personal opinion is that all the people who claim to have seen them were either:

1. Mistaken - what they saw has a simple explanation

2. On drugs

3. Lying in order to get publicity

4. Bonkers

After all the thousands of “incidents”, there has never been even a single decent photograph, no physical evidence and nothing that couldn’t be explained by something far more mundane. In the absence of hard evidence, Occam’s Razor makes the above 4 possibilities the most likely ones. Two explanations are often proffered for these “visitations”:

A. They are time travellers from our own future

B. They are aliens from another planet

Explanation A. is exceedingly problematic physically since this would require the invention of a time machine at some point in the future that could travel back into the past, I.e. our present. The astro-physicists and cosmologists who have thought about this the most reckon that if (and that’s a HUGE if) such a machine ever gets invented, then travel back to before it was invented would be impossible. I.e. it could only be used in it’s own future. But the building of such a device is enormously problematic anyway. Any means of doing so either involves travelling faster than the speed of light (disallowed by Einstein‘s Special Relativity), or the consumption of amounts of energy so utterly massive that it becomes infeasible.

Explanation B. is similarly problematic. This requires the existence of aliens at a higher level of development than us to exist, and to exist at the same time as us, and within reasonable travelling distance of us. They would also have to be able to build ships that were invisible to us whilst they travelled to earth, and which then became briefly visible for short periods whilst they got here, to tiny numbers of people at a time. Whilst not impossible, all these factors make repeated alien visitations astonishingly improbable.

I know lots of people really “want to believe”, but we all need to face a basic truth here: the odds are that there are aliens somewhere in the universe, but our chance of meeting them is almost vanishingly small. I’m sorry if anyone finds that thought distressing, but that’s how it is.

Here is the nice song by Steve Hillage where my title comes from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjTGKkJB7Jo

Cheers, Tom.

It was another gorgeous day yesterday - t-shirts only. Well, plus trousers of course! When I uploaded the above picture to my computer, it immediately made me think of the very happy song “Mr Blue Sky” by ELO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98P-gu_vMRc

A very 1970s video that one, on which the band actually appear to be playing, but it is clearly the studio recording we can hear. Musht be shome mishtake surely? Lovely guitar solo, whatever else.

Click on the picture to make it bigger.

Cheers, Tom.

There is a famous stereotype that men are terrible at finding missing items and women are good at it. This was just demonstrated when I couldn’t find the music book I wanted. I asked Helen if she’d seen it, and there it was right in front of me on the music stand (DUH! Where else would it be!). There is a wonderful evolutionary explanation for this that appears to be quite well accepted by scientists in the field. It’s this:

Because of the thousands of years men have spent hunting, our brains have developed so as to be good at seeing movement. We therefore have difficulty seeing that mobile until it starts vibrating across the desk. In addition this gave us a narrow focus, and this makes finding that elusive pen harder still.

The phenomenon is sometimes called:

Male Pattern Blindness

It manifests as long-distance tunnel vision. Men can see further and in more detail but only things which are directly in their vision, and preferably moving. There is a further complication. Recent research has revealed that men like object and word to go together: “If the tub is facing the wrong way and he cannot read the label, he virtually can't see it”.

So how come women evolved such a wide field of vision, I hear you ask? This is the suggested explanation:

“As a nest-defender, a woman has brain software that allows her to have an arc of at least 45 degrees clear vision to each side of her head and above and below her nose. This was needed to keep an eye out for potential predators”

Much of the information in this blog came from reviews of Alan Pease’s book “Why Men Don’t Listen And Why Women Can’t Read Maps: How We’re Different and What To Do About It”. It sounds like an interesting book but I‘d keep losing it, so why bother buying it?

I found this nice Haiku at all poetry.com too:

“Honey, where's the milk?
I don't think it's in the fridge!
oh, wait... there it is. “

In the picture above, I didn’t see the ladybird until I uploaded the picture. It’s taken straight down into a crack in the wood of a groyne post.

Cheers, Tom.

(click on the picture to make it bigger)

Common advice to aspiring novel and screen-writers is to keep asking the question:

What If,

at every key point in the plot. What happens if her keys fall down a drain, what happens if he doesn’t pay that debt, what will he do if she spurns his advances, what will the gangster’s head honcho do to me if I really have left the bag of money on the train?

A similar question is important for aspiring photographers, and it’s this one:

“I wonder what a photograph of that would look like”?

These thoughts occurred to me yesterday afternoon as I was on the beach looking for something to photograph that I hadn’t taken before. And there in a small, shallow pool of water with light rippling across it’s surface was a tiny blue shell. So I put my foot on the edge of the pool, rested the camera on it and took the shot. 5 shots in fact, but the other 4 were blurred. The result wasn’t what I expected, but I am rather pleased with it. I think it looks quite like a painting.

One of the great features of digital photography is that you can take as many pictures as you like,  and it remains inexpensive. I tend to take about 400 when I go out for a walk with the dogs and this would cost a fortune if I were using film. And this brings me on to the difference between an amateur photographer and an expert one. The amateur asks the question above, the expert thinks:

“I know what a picture of that will look like”,

and then either takes the shot or doesn’t.

Cheers, Tom.

Families, eh? When I was taking photographs on the beach at sunset last night, a mummy, daddy and 2 kids appeared; older boy, younger girl. There was stone-throwing and raucousness as you’d expect and I tried to tune it out. Then there was a loud girlie squeal and I just had to look. The lad had picked his sister up around the waist and appeared to be about to throw her bodily into the path of an oncoming wave. That’s when my title line happened. The slightly bored yet exasperated sounding mother said quite loudly:

“Don’t Throw Your Sister Into The Water, Sam”

If only I had a picture of it. But unfortunately, at the precise moment when I wanted to take a picture of the situation, daddy looked directly at me and I thought I’d better not. Legally, I had every right to snap the situation but I chose not to. I wasn’t infringing their privacy as it was on a public beach but I got “the fear” anyway. There is something very wrong with the fact that I am worried about being called a paedophile for taking a photograph of children playing on the beach.

I’m an amateur photographer and I take photographs. The media have whipped up a storm over Stranger Danger and now everyone is a threat. The biggest threat to children is a member of their own family: 80% of cases are by a family member, 19% by someone known to the child and only 1% of child abuse is by strangers (these are official government statistics). People don’t like to think about that rather unpleasant truth. This media storm creation diverts attention from important issues and onto less important ones, for no other purpose than the selling of newspapers. Whatever happened to decent journalism?

The family being discussed were to the left of me when I took the picture above. Click on it to make it bigger.

Cheers, Tom.

Did you know that was a nautical expression? The rest of this blog is a list of nautical expressions that have crossed over into general usage.

The cat is out of the bag - The Cat’o’nine-tails  was normally kept in a cloth bag
Three sheets to the wind - sheets are ropes; if they are loose in the wind then the boat is out of control
No room to swing a cat - too many people on deck for a whipping
By and large - Sailing “by” is done when there is little wind, “large” when you run free with it
The whole nine yards - all sails set
Slush fund - literally slushy food saved by the ship’s cook
Pooped - smothered in a mass of breaking water
Taken aback - when the sails press against the mast and progress suddenly stops
Go by the board - be thrown overboard
Make headway - against a tide or current
Batten down the hatches - a batten is a piece of wood to cover a hatch
Jury rigged - a jury mast is a temporary one cobbled together when the proper one is lost
At loggerheads - Iron balls on handles which are heated and then used to melt tar with no risk of fire. Used for sparring.
Crew cut - short hair for sailors
Skyscraper - A triangular sail at the very top of the mast
Freeze the balls of off a brass monkey - a monkey is a cannon ball holder
Field day - a day set aside for cleaning the ship
Water-logged - so full of water as to be unmanageable
Pipe down - The Bosun’s pipe call to say those not on duty can go below
Bail out
Catch my drift
Clear the decks
Close quarters
Dog’s body
Down the hatch
Give leeway
Hit the decks
In the doldrums
Loose cannon
Make a clean sweep
Show your true colours

Cheers, Tom.

I don’t know if this is just a British obsession or a universal one, but people seem to just love staring at the sea. I’ve noticed pretty much everyone who comes here doing it at some point. Their gaze heads for the sea and the horizon, a distant look comes over their faces and silence descends like a cloak of tranquillity. For several minutes they are then lost in a reverie just gazing towards the lonely sea and the sky.

I do it as well, every day. It’s not just the sight of the waves endlessly rolling forwards and the intriguing flatness of the horizon, it’s the sounds too. The sounds of water, rushing, splashing and roaring and the sound of the seagulls.

If I keep taking pictures of people doing it, it will make quite an intriguing portfolio.

Cheers, Tom.

The Brazilian rainforests are in the news again:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7399109.stm

There is a plan to develop the region to make it economically successful whilst at the same time satisfying environmental concerns. The man in charge of the  plan is “Former Harvard law professor” Roberto Unger. He says:

“We do not see any contradiction in principle between an active economic project and the conservation of this treasure for humanity”

I’m glad he is so confident but I’m not, and what the hell is a law professor doing administering this plan anyway? The plan is to limit the number of trees that can be chopped down every year, and develop infrastructure. Sounds fine in principle, but that’s the legal logging. There is also illegal logging. The effort to prevent illegal logging is described here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7397782.stm

But unfortunately the strenuous efforts to prevent this are insufficient: deforestation rates went up at the end of 2007 and so far in 2008 too.

This is a very difficult situation. I can perfectly understand the locals’ wish to use the great and valuable tree resource they have in order to make money. But if they over-log the area, they deprive themselves of long-term income for short-term gain, destroy a treasure-trove of wildlife and have potentially serious impact on the climate of the whole planet. I have a bad feeling about this situation.

My title comes from Jah Wobble’s “Take Me to God” album. The track “No Change is Sexy” features a heavy stream-of-consciousness rant over intense music, and “I’ll Never See The Rainforest Anyway” occurs during it. Youtube let me down, so I had upload it myself with inappropriate images of waves - I should have used some forest pictures really, but I didn’t have any. It’s an excellent track and well worth a listen. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGxYcyIsdNo

Cheers, Tom.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8huXkSaL7o&feature=related

Two American blokes have just been fined millions of dollars for sending out over 700,000 spam emails. Hooray! I don’t know about you, but I get lots of “snail mail” Spam too. I snapped the chap above promenading very slowly indeed along the promenade a few days ago.

As well as being annoying, Spam emails can also infect your computer with a virus and trash all your data. So, this seems like a good time to remind everyone:

Back up your data regularly!

My cousin Shaun lost his hard disk and all of his photographs and other data recently. How well would you cope if that happened to you? I’d also recommend using a firewall and antivirus software.

Cheers, Tom.

Smoking is to be banned in mental hospitals by 1st July, as part of the general workplace smoking ban, according to this report:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7265537.stm

Apparently 70% of mental patients are smokers, as compared to 26% of the population at large. 70% of schizophrenics smoke too, and I can’t help but wonder if there is a connection between smoking and mental illness. If it’s just coincidence, it’s a hell of a big one. It’s not just mental illness either: 56% of people with depression smoke.

I see three major possibilities:

1. Smoking is a factor in causing mental illness and depression

2. Those who suffer from mental illness and depression start to smoke, possibly to help cope with it

3. They are unrelated.

Which of the 3 do you think is most likely?

Whatever the situation, it’s going to be a bad time for the 70% of  smoking mental patients for whom hospital is their home. I would have thought the last thing many of them needed was a forcible stop in their smoking to add to their other problems.

Rather curiously, prisons are exempt from the ruling in the mainland UK. The Isle of Man is different though: it's now banned in their prison and a hunger strike in protest has recently come to an end. Result: the prisoners lost even though one of them lasted 10 days without food. If anyone wonders how strong the smoking addiction is, think about how well you'd manage 10 days without food!

Cheers, Tom.

P.S. I’ve posted far too many sunset pictures recently, so my next few blogs (after this one) will contain pictures of something else. Something different, but hopefully equally interesting.

In yesterday’s blog, I gave a few suggestions for how to increase your chances of taking a good picture of the sun as it sinks. Last night, I tried to put those suggestions into action. I concentrated on getting a composition with the sun on one side of the picture and something on the other side to balance it, and with the sun a reasonable size and neither too bright nor too dark, and close to the horizon.

As on previous occasions, I was somewhat stymied by low-lying cloud as the sun descended towards the horizon, but I gave it my best try in the circumstances. I took a few OK pictures, but no really good ones. The best 3 are below, with comments beneath each picture. The pictures haven‘t been post-processed in any way, and they all get bigger if you click on them.

This first picture has good colour and the birds balance the composition nicely, but the clouds are obscuring the shape of the sun.

This picture has the same cloud problem as the first picture and is balanced by the breakwater and post. The reflections in the sand make this more interesting. It is slightly too dark.

The cloud problem again, but good colour. I like the fact that on this one, the image is symmetrical top to bottom, but non-symmetrical left to right. There is too little of interest on the left side though, and ultimately that lets it down, even though the colours are nice.

---

There is a Pink Floyd song called "Obscured by Clouds" that they used to open their concerts with. You can hear it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rxy3EX5a4k

Cheers, Tom.

Last night, the sun was dipping towards the sea in the most stunning manner and it looked like an ideal time to get some good sunset pictures.  So, out on a walk on the beach with Helen, and our 2 dogs, I took 400 pictures: not a single one of them was good. No, not even one. So, the rest of this blog is a list of 10 problems of taking good pictures of the sun as it sets. It’s not an exhaustive list by any means.

1. Composition. It’s boring if the sun is splat! In the middle of the picture with nothing else visible. It’s better to one side, with other things of interest on the other side: trees, rocks, buildings, people, anything. Even good colours are sufficient.

2. Horizon. This should be flat. The sea is a particularly harsh mistress for this as if you have the frame even slightly canted, it stands out like a drunk in a midnight choir.

3. Too bright. The sun is brighter the higher it is. You have to wait until it’s sufficiently low or use some sort of filter to compensate, otherwise it will be too bright. If you over-filter, all you’ll see is the sun and nothing else and that’s a further problem.

4. Too dark. If you wait until the sun is dipping below the horizon, there will be much less light and the chance of a dark picture increases. It will also end up too dark if you over-compensate with the light controls on your camera.

5. Sun too high. You need to be patient. Taking pictures before the sun is close to the horizon can result in having the sun at the top of the picture, a big boring space and then something at the bottom of the picture. This isn’t good. You can get away with this is you managed point 1. Well.

6. Low-lying cloud. This problem occurs everywhere, but more often at the seaside. As the sun dips, the air cools and moisture is more likely to form close to the ground (or water). This creates mist, or even cloud. It feels like a conspiracy. Just as the sun dips towards the horizon it goes behind a dirty great cloud to ruin your shot. This has happened here every day for the last few weeks when the weather has been mostly good. Last night was no exception.

7. Sun too big. If you zoom to get a large sun, it doesn’t look good. It dominates the picture too much, probably looks too bright, and is ultimately not interesting to look at.

8. Sun too small. The sun is supposed to be the main thing in your picture so if it’s just a dot, it’s no good.

9. Too pale. This is generally the result of poor settings on your digital camera. Make it a little darker and the colour should come back, but don’t overdo it.

10. Lens flare. This is a problem with all cameras but more-so with digitals. The unwanted images can sometimes look good but tend not to. It’s best avoided by not shooting directly at the sun, and by not having the sun just out of shot.

Really, it’s a wonder any decent sunset pictures get taken at all! Helen and I reckon there is a higher occurrence of stunning sunsets in Winter.

The picture above is one of my best ones yet, and I took it in early March. Click on it to make it bigger. I think it’s compositionally flawed because the top left side of the picture is fairly uninteresting but I like the colours and I like the size and position of the sun in the picture.

Cheers, Tom.