May 29th 08 - Gateway

The penultimate day in my black and white photo-a-day week. It has been harder than I thought it would be to tell the truth. But I suppose that was the challenge, to find out new ways to take photos and what subjects work as black and white and which don't. I'm not sure what the next challenge I'll set myself will be, for now I'll just keep taking photos and see what takes my fancy.

This one was taken at the gates to a long driveway down to a lovely farmstead near Firbeck village, not far from where my parents live. It was set in a valley, surrounded by lush fields, woodland and a large lake. Somewhere I definitely wouldn't mind living.

I liked the way that the driveway was flanked by the tall trees and fell away from you down into a vanishing point, not really revealing much about what was at the end. It must be nice to drive down there to your house after a long day...I think a Jaguar E-type with the top down would be perfect for that :)

This afternoon I had to go back to the consultant about my ankle. Its been nearly 9 weeks now since I broke it and I'm still in quite a bit of discomfort and some pain from it. After an X-ray today the consultant was happy the bone had healed correctly but said the pain etc was down to the amount of trauma the ankle has suffered and is how the muscles are correcting themselves and rebuilding the strength. I have to work the ankle as much as possible and try and build up the strength as best I can. He told me that it would take up to six months to completely heal...but he was happy with my progress so far. I've been signed off work for another three weeks so hopefully by then I should be mobile enough to get back to work.

This evening my brother, Chris and I headed into Clumber Park for a few photos.Chris wanted to have a god session with his new camera, a Sony Alpha 200 D-SLR, as he's been pretty busy ever since he got it. He loves the camera,and rightly so, it's packed full of features and he is managing to get some superb photos with it. I know he'll only get better and better as the ones he got with his old Fuji were great too. You can check out his photos on flickr by visiting his photostream here.