Archive for the ‘Project 52’ Category

I disappeared there for a while, I am truly sorry about that but I will be back properly soon but I think it’s about time I gave an explanation or two as to where I’ve been.

Are you ready for it?

Are you holding your breath?

Are you excited?

Ready?

Wait for it!!!!

Wait for it!!!!

Bugger I’ve got you all worked up now and the honest truth is I don’t have much of an excuse short of work pressures and a blown up laptop which I could have gotten round by just getting off my fat lazy arse and using the desktop PC that lives on the other side of the room. I have also been very bad about reading and commenting on many of the blogs that in the past I’ve been very good about spending time interacting with, sorry.

I haven’t abandoned photography though, I’ve still been taking pictures almost every day but again plead the above when it comes to editing and sharing.

I do have some news though, I’ve decided to retire, like soon, like at the end of the year.

Well I call it retiring, Mrs Bunny Chow tells me that I will be something called a house husband or her cook, clean and junior bottle washer (she’ll always be the chief) which amounts to much the same thing in my book.

It’s a decision I’ve been putting off making for sometime as because as much as I like to pretend that I am a modern metro-sexual man the reality is I’m rather boorish and scared of being trapped in a small home with two little people who will look to me for entertainment once I have banned daytime television as I don’t want them to grow up as Croydon oiks looking to loot and pillage for entertainment as they age.

Still economics have forced my hand and I’ve had to suck up my ego and accept that Mrs BC is smarter and wiser (read earns more) than me and as such it is my duty to voluntarily remove myself from the world of the gainfully employed and insert myself fully functioning as some sort of domestic god/children’s entertainer and educator. In theory once the boys are older and the costs of childcare reduce I will be able to re-insert myself back into the world of the employed. I have certainly discussed the possibility or reemployment in the future with my current employer and he was at least mildly enthusiastic if understandably unwilling to make a guaranteed commitment.

Well there you have it.

I don’t promise to improve the frequency of my posts in the coming month but normal service will hopefully resume once I have settled myself into a routine of art projects, duplo and visits to places that dads go, MacDonald’s shamefully sprang to mind ahead of the library and park, thankfully I don’t like MacDonald’s.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

 

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I know I know I’m back again already but I realised I was actually a week behind sharing with you even if the pictures were already in the can.

negative space

Not a lot else to say other than I hope you enjoy my interpretation of negative space.

now that I’m back up to date I guess I’d better go out and find you some colour to satisfy next weeks hopefully more upbeat theme

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

yesterday I published a rather depressing shot for my Autumn weekly theme, this one I’m afraid is not much better, but I can also honestly say that it’s one of my favourite photographs of the year, it just captures that depressing mood that autumn brings.

what do you guys think, am I just being depressing?

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

I’m not even going to bother trying to apologise for my levels of crapness this week I’m just going to throw this one out there, but I can assure you that you can be safe in the knowledge that this weeks theme Autumn could not be more appropriate, I thought summer this year was generally pretty awful but goodness gracious me do I always forget how much I hate the cold grey misery of Autumn, funnily enough by the time winter proper comes around I generally have re-acclimatised and cope fine, but these last few weeks as the nights draw in are sheer hell for me.

throw in kids who are teething, kids with inexplicable temperatures, me and Mrs BC with constant coughs and sniffles, a silly work load and I’m frankly amazed at how little I’ve been ranting in these pages, maybe it’s just exhaustion that has made me too lazy to bother.

Still the local council suck for giving me a parking ticket whilst I waited to collect a sniffly miserable Mrs BC from the station, they didn’t even have the guts to give it to me there and then rather they just chucked it in the post to allow me to rant no doubt fruitlessly at their on-line appeals process. I might win, they say I was parked on the walkway, I say I was parked in a driveway, time will tell if they’re going to get their sixty pieces of silver.

I guess this photo kinda show’s where I would rather be on a cold miserable Autumn evening

steamy warm pub

Until the next time, which hopefully will be soon.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

oh what a hopeless host I’ve been, I can only apologise it’s been a hectic couple of weeks on both the home and work fronts.

on a positive note I’ve entered one of the Trip to Brighton pics in a photography competition on the dreaded Facebook and would be hugely honoured if you’d click on the link and vote for it by clicking like on Facebook. I’m not much of a facebooker but please feel free to add me there if you want to.

The theme for week 37 was in the garden and I’ve ummmed and ahhhed over long and hard, my own garden is definitely not for public consumption at the moment and I’ve done dozens of roses at night for you so I thought I’d share this technically terrible but still rather fun shot of the blogs namesake Bunny Chow chasing a fox in a neighbourhood garden (the gardens attached to a block of flats I don’t make a habit of traipsing through people’s back gardens)

Bunny and Master Fox esquire

I apologise for the terrible quality, it was taken with my 50mm and a big arse flash gun

Until next time

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

 

harumph, I’m sorry I keep making excuses but work commitments and yet another cold mean that I’ve neglected you all again, I actually posted this weeks Metal shot on Google+ on Sunday yet here we are it’s Friday night and I’m drinking wine in bed trying to avoid the television as Mrs BC watches Celebrity Big Brother remembering that life could be worse I might not have you guys to talk to and actually be forced to concentrate on the background noise around me.

There will be a later post tonight that goes into more details about my week and one of my trademarked rants so I’ll keep this one short and sweet.

Metal

Next weeks theme is “in the Garden”

I’ll be back once I’ve finished my rant.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

P.S. Mrs BC here, Mr Bunny Chow is a bah humbug and Celebrity Big Brother is car crash telly fab.

 

I have failed to find you a sunset within the prescribed time frame so have decided to go with a spooky moonrise as a substitute.

Moonrise over Croydon

Time has kinda run away with me this last week with Grandma Bunny Chow now having returned to Zimbabwe I hope to be able to dedicate a little more time to you all in the coming weeks.

I haven’t forgotten the deadline is fast approaching for Nick and Shannon’s monthly community collaboration project either, although I may have to miss out on this one as time and idea’s are rapidly running away from me, we shall see.

Next weeks theme is going to be metal and I already have some great idea’s lets hope that I manage to execute them in a timely manner.

for now though

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

 

first off I wanted to say a huge thank you to all of you who read these random ramblings of mine, I’ve now reached the landmark of 100 wordpress.com followers and having that support and following has been great. As some of you longer term readers will know I started rambling around on the web in frustration at shoddy customer service and to give poor Mrs Bunny Chow a break from listening to me whining. At the time I’d never even read any blogs and had no idea that this community even existed or dreamed that I could become part of it.

Blogging has become a hobby for me and keeps me out of trouble, I became really down a week or so ago when a close friend began questioning why I would be “doing shit drawings and putting them all over the internet” well my friend I do them because it’s my hobby and I gain pleasure from it and thanks to you good people out here in the blogosphere seem to gain something from my photography and art, I could have retaliated in person and attacked his passions and questioned what led him to do what he does in his free time but I was grown up enough to drop it and remember that art is subjective, just because he might not like what I am doing that’s entirely his right to make that decision and whilst my feelings at the time were deeply deeply hurt and poor Mrs Bunny Chow had to listen to me griping and whining, having allowed myself time to simmer I realise that in reality I would defend to the end his right to his opinions, I may not agree with them but the internet is a wonderful democracy and if he chooses not to enjoy my artistic that’s his prerogative, I’m not going to give up my hobby because it doesn’t float the boat of someone else, be they a real life friend or the occasional internet troll.

Next I’d like to talk about artistic inspiration, it’s a topic I’ve covered a couple of times before in these pages but would like to touch on again inspired by the lovely Patricia over at Pixygiggles who asked about artistic Mojo and how creativity can be commanded, well the simple answer is that it can’t be commanded, well at least not by me, there are plenty of weeks that go by where I battle to keep taking pictures but I keep going. I draw my inspiration and ideas from a variety of sources, Google+ and especially the Project 52 list have thus far inspired at least 34 posts with plenty more to come, Nick and Shannon from www.nickexposed.com and http://seeingspotsphoto.wordpress.com/ have been equally inspiring with their monthly community collaboration projects.

Then there are just people like the aforementioned Patricia who goes out of her way day after day to share her interpretation of the world and what it means to her at any given time, I’ve discovered so many people who inspire me to go out and create on a daily basis, I don’t share every failure with you but I do share plenty of them and do you know what sometimes I cringe but more often I’ll just look back with pride and think I created that, sure I’ve learned a lot about photography in the last year or so and might approach things differently if faced with the same opportunities today but isn’t that what learning is all about, do golfers ever shoot that perfect round and think sod it that’s enough I’ll quit now?

Phew this is turning into something of a rant, deep breath, I started writing today because I wanted to thank all of you who have welcomed me and inspired me to keep going and enjoy myself, at the end of the day this is my little fiefdom but all of you make it a happy little fiefdom so thank-you for being you.

My last little ramble is to ask opinions of phonography and the proliferation of filter apps like instagram and hipstamatic, I keep changing my mind about them, they’re fun, they’re quirky, they’re always in your pocket but the pictures that come out of them are crap, yet it’s that same crapness that I somehow like about them and keep finding myself drawn back to even when editing my photographs from my camera I find myself drawn back to retro feeling editing styles, is this because of the cliché or just because it’s what I’ve always found aesthetically appealing, I’m not sure I can answer that at the moment so I’ll leave the floor open for your thoughts.

The pictures interspersed throughout this post are not new, they’re just a few I’ve chosen because I liked them and felt like sharing them, I’m pretty sure they’ve all been seen in these pages before but if they’re new to you I hope you like them and if you don’t then that’s fine too.

Comment your lives away.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

I’ve been neglecting you my friends, and I’m sorry, sometimes the creative juices just don’t flow beyond my own four walls and I don’t want to keep boring you with near identical pictures of my kids as cute as they may be to me I’m sure that despite my bias to the world at large they are just kids with foppish hair and silly grins.

This weeks theme was portraits and my initial intention was to do some portraits of Mrs Bunny Chow’s cousin the very talented rapper Twig who we had a braai (barbecue) with on Saturday, I really did have good intentions, I got my camera out, I snapped some pictures of the kids in the garden, we talked about lenses and aperture and geeky stuff and then the sun got to me and reminded me that I was unfairly hung over (it was unfair I honestly didn’t have that much to drink the night before and can normally get away with plenty more, sometimes hangovers are just like that) and all good intentions went out the window with nothing useable captured.

Hmmmm well with that one out of the window I was left with either begging Mrs Bunny Chow to pose for me (slim chance of that happening) or utilising my amazing Mother who thankfully flew in to attend the Alzheimer University a fantastic course designed to help Alzheimer’s Societies from around the world. She’s very honoured to be representing the Zimbabwean Alzheimer’s Association and I’m very proud to be her son as she continues to give of her time to this wonderful organisation.

Still we’re here to talk about photography and pictures so here is my chosen portrait of my mother.

portrait of mum

I know it’s becoming a bit of a cliché at the moment but I’ve given a light retro twist to the edit.

I may have to get creative again next week as the suggested theme is sunsets (yes I know they happen every day) and I’m not sure if  or when I’ll have the opportunity to capture a new one as currently sunset falls smack in the middle of bed and bathtime and I don’t want to reach back in to the archives for an older picture to share in this series.

I hope that you’ve all had a great week and I promise that I’ll be making more time for you in the coming weeks.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

as promised here is my texture submission for week 33 of my Project 52.

The photo was taken with my little Canon IXUS 107 and all of the editing done using the simple effects available through the Google+ editing tool.

The mono version was chosen by the rats view master Thorn Button although I’ve also included a colour interpretation for contrast below.

Next week’s theme is portrait so if there is anyone in the London area who’d like to volunteer as a model I’d be most grateful.

That’s it from me today

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow