On the outskirts of Leeds, in Roundhay, there is great place to spend a day out – Tropical World! For Chris’ birthday we headed out there as a group and spent the afternoon looking at all the amazing creatures they have there. A fair few photos were taken by us all too, you can catch my contribution in my photo gallery.

After our visit we grabbed a pub lunch and then as most of the group got things ready for snacks and drinks at Chris’ place, myself and Norm went to the pub with Chris and sunk a few ales. It was nice to chat to Chris and Norm over a few drinks as its not something we’ve really done before outside of a group setting.

After we’d got ourselves nicely tipsey at the pub we went over to Chris’ house and had a nice evening chatting with everyone, and for me, catching up with what had been going on while I had been away down south. It just proved to me how great a group of friends I have here and how much fun our gatherings and days out really are. Oh and if you haven’t yet heard, Sarann got really rather drunk 😉

On Sunday I finally did it – I bought myself an amazing digital SLR camera, the Cannon EOS 400D to be precise. You can read a review here. Put simply it is amazing. The freedom it gives compared to a conventional digital camera (or at least my old one anyway) is akin to releasing a caged animal into an area the size of which cannot physically be covered by the creature.

While I haven’t been able to explore all the features and indeed I’m still not entirely sure what some of them do, I have been able to practice with the different settings by taking pictures in and around the house and noting the flexibility and versatility of the options available. I can definitely see myself being able to take some superb pictures with this piece of kit.

The ability to change the ISO settings and manually focus are just two functions which make me excitied. While a film camera will allow you to focus to your hearts content its not something available on conventional digital cameras and changing the ISO with a normal SLR was reserved for film change time, and then you had to take a whole 24 or 36 shots at that ISO. Now I can chop and change at will and its fantastic – great for those low light level shots. I have high hopes for my sunset pictures in the future.

I hope to get out and about with the camera this weekend and if I get any good shots I will be sure to post them up here for all to see.

On Christmas day I went a little mad with the camera so there are a fair few photos from this years family Christmas knocking about on my computer. I’ve picked a few of them and popped them into the Family Christmas 2006 gallery for you all to look at. It was a very enjoyable day and nice to be with the nearest and dearest. There is another family gathering tomorrow so there will probably be some shots of the wider family going up into the gallery when I get home afterwards.

Given all the foggy weather we have been getting in the south of England lately I decided to try my hand at taking foggy photographs. I headed out into Verulamium park, St. Albans and took a few shots. The thumbnail on the left and the photo album are the results, please check them out and leave me your comments. I know some are better than others!