Las Vegas is the strangest place on this weird old planet. It's a prime example of the peculiarities of humanity, the highs and the lows.

Deep in the bowels of Bally's, on the way to monorail, we saw an old fashioned arcade claw machine. Oooh, we thought, a touch of old school deep in the heart of the Strip. Then we realised what the claw was picking up. That machine suddenly became one of the lows. But in a weirdly cool way...

It was picking up lobsters.

Live lobsters.

Straight out of the tank. Pay $4 and if you manage to grab a squirming crustacean, your dinner is free.

It was really quite disturbing, imagining the lobsters scurrying away from the descending claw, in some obscene parody of a scene from Toy Story.



Las Vegas, Nevada
October 2009

Boston was, in more ways than one, a bit of a washout.

Not only did I have a dose of the man flu, but the weather had taken a distinctly wintry tone, and the rain was coming done solidly for most of the time we were there. Then, on the last morning, the skies cleared and the sun came out.

It was crisp and clear when we walked across from our hotel to Boston Common, wandering around the pond where the Swan Boats paddle in summer. The trees were well into their fall colours, bright reds and yellows amongst the faded greens.







It's something we really don't get here...

Boston, Massachusetts
October 2009

Conference food is generally meh.

The food here is even more meh than usual. Apart from the arrival of low-GI agave nectar sweetened drinks alongside the usual high-fructose corn sugar rubbish.

However it does offer the odd comedy moment, like this label:



It could have been worse, it could have been the beef...

Las Vegas, Nevada
October 2009

While we were in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, we spent an afternoon wandering around the Getty Center's gardens.

They're one of my favourite places, and as the sun slowly drifted down the clear California skies, the light on the white polished stone of the Center's gallery buildings faded from bright clear white (that stereotypically LA glare) to a pale yellow.

It's fun to photograph elements of the buidings in isolation, leaving white stone adrift in the blue.





Los Angeles, California
October 2009

Network Rail has been installing new security equipment on the railway bridges around Putney.

They're vicious things, scaffolding poles that have been ripped apart into razor sharp petals, and then left spinning on a metal pole. They're a crude and angry thing, that looks as though they've fallen through time from some mediaeval castle's siege defences. Touch them and they'll rip the skin from your hands, flensing flesh from bone.

But they do have one redeeming feature.

They're shiny.







Putney, London
September 2009

Autumn is on its way. The air is cooler, with the oppressive heat of the city summer is fading fast.

You can see it in the huge spiders that sit in the centre of their massive webs, and in the crumbled brown leaves on the pavement. It's the mellow month before the storms of October, when the fruit is ready to pick and the trees begin to hunker down for the winter, pulling sugars into their hearts.

The colours are turning, leaves slowly fading from the deep emerald of summer to yellow, to brown and to red.



Putney, London
September 2009

Growing up on an island you grow up with horizons.

The aren't the fading into the distance plains, or the misty mountains and foothills. They're lines drawing stark between ocean and sky, broken here and there by distant reefs and the silhouettes of the rest of the archipelago.

Then there are the hazy days, when everything fades into the bright distance.

It was one of those days when we visited Whidbey back in June, where the still waters of the Puget Sound lapped on the warm rocks of the beaches, and sea birds skimmed the languid waves. And of course, somewhere, out there, was Canada.



Whidbey Island, Washington
June 2009

There's nothing that stares quite so well as a pissed-off cat.

And there's no cat quite so good at being pissed-off as our Ben. When he gets his snit on, it's quite clear the whole world is against him, and that it manifests its bile in the shape of everything around him. Especially in cameras.

Me, I'm keeping back at a safe distance.



Putney, London
September 2009

Driving down to Birling Gap last weekend I got a hitchhiker.

Somewhere around East Grinstead I saw something green on my wing mirror. "Just another lacewing," I thought, "Food for the spider that lives in there..."

But it wasn't one. The long antennae were a giveaway, curling the slipstream as I slid around another roundabout. My passenger was a cricket, and even though it was still a wingless nymph, it was a pretty big one. Not as big as the cave weta I saw in New Zealand, but still, big enough.



Birling Gap, Sussex
September 2009

We drove down to the Sussex coast yesterday.

I'd realised we'd managed an entire English summer without looking at the sea, and it was something that I was missing. The salt tang of the air, the gentle breezes, the soft lap of the waves. Yesterday might not have been the best of days to go down to the sea, the grey skies hanging over south London weren't so much a portent of bad weather as, well, the rain itself.

Still, we headed south.

As we rolled over the Downs the skies began to clear, and the sun was soon peeking out from behind the clouds. We arrived at Birling Gap shortly before sunset, and stood on the top of the steps watching the gulls swoop and swirl. The sea was gentle, and the setting sun reflected in the rock pools and on the wet sand.

It was, as they say, a lovely evening.



Birling Gap, Sussex
September 2009

The city, at night.

It's not the place you know. The bright lights are there, but they're focused, now shining on one or two objects. Your eyes are dragged to them, the places that are lost in the blur of the day.

The Monument hides by day, behind its tube station, and cuddled in among the high rises. It comes out at night, in the actinic glare of spotlights. The buildings around it disappear, and you see it as it would have been seen in those days after the Great Fire: a symbol of hope and a city reborn from the ashes.



From the other side of the river, tweaking my exposure to get just the right shot with a long lens on a London night...

London
August 2009

Volcanoes are pretty amazing things.

A while back there were two big eruptions in the North Pacific - one in Alaska, one in the Kuril Islands. You've all seen the picture from the ISS of the Kuril eruption, with its ash cloud, shockwaves and pyroclastic flows. The dust from those eruptions went high into the stratosphere, eventually blanketing much of the Northern Hemisphere.

That's why we've had some spectacular sunsets recently, with a distinct lavender-purple tinge, much like this one from early July here in Putney.





Putney, London
July 2009

There's a cage at the San Diego Wild Animal Park where you can take sugar water to a group of brightly coloured lorikeets.

It's a strange place full of screaming kids traumatising themselves as tiny parrots climb over their bodies on sharp little talons, hunting the little plastic pots of nectar. Meanwhile parents wave futile arms, trying to flap away the unflappable.

Then there are the photographers, zooming in on each brightly coloured feather, awed by the blues and yellows and reds and green, admiring the detail in the pinpoint black eyes and the curve of the orange beak.

The birds pose for them, hoping for a sugary reward.



"Who's a pretty boy then?"

Escondido, California
May 2009

One of coolest things about Maker Faire are the art cars.

One of my favourites this year was covered in little metallic pinwheels. As the warm summer breezes spun the little windmills a flurry of colour would move over the car, scales flickering and shimmering in the warm air.

It was quite beautiful.



San Mateo, California
May 2009

We often forget that chickens are really creatures of the forest floor, living in the humidity of sub-tropical rain forests. Trapped in battery huts, or pecking around a dusty farmyard, or even free range in fields, these are not the real essence of chicken.

It's only when you see a small group of feral chickens coming out of the underbrush in a Hawaiian forest, that you realise that the birds you know are mere facsimiles of the real thing. Even though these birds, like many you see on Big Island, are interlopers, they're more at home here than most of the places you'll see them. Suddenly things make sense: the high stepping walk as they cross exposed roots, the bright coloured feathers to stand out from the viridian bush, the loud cry to keep flocks together, the scrapping to find insects and seeds under the detritus of the forest floor.

You hear them coming first, the cluck of the hens and the crowing, herding call of the cocks. They're wary, hiding from mongoose in the bush, darting behind leaves at every noise. Then they come out, ballet stepping across the forest floor, the cocks guiding the hens across the clearing - fast - to keep out of danger.



Lava Trees, Big Island, Hawaii
June 2009

Growing up on an island, it's hard to imagine not loving west coasts.

Sure, the east has its good points as the sun rises over the horizon, but it's those long, lingering sunsets that really make island life worth living. West, as I might well say, is definitely best.

A long west coast, like the US's Pacific coast, is a special thing, where sunsets change with the weather - and where you are on that coast. Seattle's spectacular Olympic sunsets are one extreme, as are San Diego's southern orange fade to black. We were on Coronado Island when this little bird hoped up onto a pole, just in time to catch the evening light.



It may have just been a sparrow, but in that evening light it became more than a little brown bird.

Coronado Island, California
May 2009

Whidbey Island is a beautiful place, a narrow strip of land in the middle of Puget Sound. There's a mix of terrains, strangely familiar to anyone who's spent time in Northern Ireland. Bog and forest give way to cliffs and beaches - this is Antrim in miniature.

We drove down the the ferry port at Keystone, to watch the tiny Port Townsend ferry trundle its way across the still sound to the Olympic Peninsula. As the ferry vanished in the haze, we walked on to the nearby shingle beach. The water was lapping on the stones, washing up bright colours on the grey rocks.

A bright red scallop shell.



Some worm-worn driftwood.



And some coloured pebbles.



Whidbey Island, Washington
June 2009

As a beer drinking British geek I have one not-so-secret vice.

I like wine.

A lot.

I'll explore wine growing areas for the little out of the way vineyards that don't make too many cases, and I'll happily sit in the sun with a glass of something especially pleasant, just taking in the sun and the subtle flavours. It's a favourite way of passing the time - and we've found many delightful wines that don't normally make it to the UK,

Driving up from San Diego to the Bay, we stopped off in Paso Robles for a quick visit to a handful of wineries. We made to one of our favourites, Justin, just in time for lunch, and sat out under the old oak trees with a sandwich, some cheese, and a glass of their always excellent Sauvignon Blanc. As we sat there, marypcb noticed a reflection of vines in her glass.

Of course that led to a photograph.



Paso Robles, California
May 2009

Recently marypcb and I got to ride a shiny metal elevator high over the streets of London.

We ended up on the 31^st floor of the Centrepoint tower, looming over the West End and Oxford Street. The views were spectacular, as the sun slowly set in the west. Looking down we could see the sad remains of the Astoria, one of those rock venues that seemed to be a fixture of the London scene. Until the great hand of the planners came along, and decreed that it was right they wanted to build the entrance to an expanded and refurbished Tottenham Court Road tube station as part of the Crossrail project.

The top floors of the building are gone now, and you can see right down into the theatre - as well as into the hidden atrium that lit the next door office block.



The end of an era (or two).

London
July 2009

There's something about Meerkats. It's probably the way we anthropomorphise their eusocial behaviours, the watchers guarding the foragers.

Transplanted to the US, their normal predators may be thousands of miles away, but there are still dangers. The ubiquitous turkey vultures circle overhead, and red-tailed hawks swoop out of the sky on unsuspecting small mammals, all while the silver-brown coyotes lope across the plains. Then there are the new threats: the roar of the jet, the deep growl of the Harley Davidson.

It pays to be alert, to be on watch at all times.







That, and they're just so cute...

Escondido, California
May 2009

One of my photographs of Kilauea's current eruption ended up as the Station Ident image on Warren Ellis' site yesterday.

It's been interesting watching the effects of linked images on my Flickr stats. Digg has giving me the most hits to date, with StumbleUpon a distant second. There's a distinct long tail from BoingBoing and Lifehacker, while news sites like TechRadar give you a quick boost that fades away as stories drop off the front page - as does linking to an image in a tweet...

Warren's site is definitely a long tail site, as I've seen when images of mine have appeared in his regular collages. This new format of his seems to mix the burst of a news site (though not as high traffic, though high for a genre writer) with long tail effects...

The image?

It's another shot of the steam plume from the current lava ocean entry points on the south coast of Big Island.



There's just a hint of lava glow in the underside of the clouds of steam, while the underlighting from the sunset light adds a touch of drama as the southern sky darkens with yet another tropical squall.

Volcanoes FT(photography)W.

Deception Pass is a narrow channel at the north end of Whidbey Island, near Seattle.

Early on a summer evening the light is fantastic, a platinum sheen on the water, bright bright in the westering sun. The lines of the currents weave towards the cleft in the cliffs, drawing lines on the mirror-smooth water. Fishing boats pass by, drawing their own lines.

Zoom in on the reflections, on the white gold ripples...



Whidbey Island, Washington
June 2009

Getting up the mountain to Mountain Thunder can be a little tricky. Two roads spiral around each other as they climb up the steep mountain slopes.

1000, 2000, 3000 feet. You're up in the cloud forest when you arrive, tall trees disappearing into the mists.

It's a long climb, but it's worth it. Our hire car was struggling by the time it reached the top, but the farm's staff were there with cups of fresh brewed coffee for us to taste. It was good, possibly the best coffee I have ever drunk. Mountain Thunder's an organic farm, and there are plenty of animals under foot - all manure for the carefully tended coffee beans.

You'll see plenty of coffee bushes as you drive up the volcano, and there are plenty of cherries growing on the bushes. Most were still green, so a few weeks from harvest.



Unlike many of the other Kona farms, Mountain Thunder roasts on site.



The finished product, 100% Kona coffee



Mmmmm. Coffee.

Why yes, we did bring some back with us, all the way to London...

The Honu is the Hawaiian Green Turtle, a gentle giant of the islands. You'll find then (now that they're protected) in rock pools and on beaches all round the Big Island, feeding on the green algae that coats the lava rocks. The old royal fish ponds at Keauhou are home to a small group of these beasts, and you can watch them gently scull through the cool water. At the hottest part of the day you can watch them haul themselves out of the water to rest and bask on the rocks.

One morning I scrambled over the rocks around the pool to get as close as possible to where they were feeding. You could see them sculling, their huge fins sliding out of the water.

Two turtles had a bit of a disagreement over who had right of way. Needless to say the biggest beast won.



One sculled around the pool, looking for the an unoccupied patch of algae.



Another came very close, and I was able to photograph its delicately patterned shell,



Beautiful beasts.

Keauhou, Hawaii
June 2009

High above the Kona coast, in the cloud forests that rise up the slopes of Mauna Loa, the climate is just right for growing coffee. The bushes rise up above the twisting Hawaii Belt Road, disappearing into the mist that shrouds the slopes.

It was pouring with tropical rain when we visited Greenwell, one of the many coffee growers on Big Island, where you can watch coffee move from cherry to bean, and then taste the final roast. It's one of the oldest coffee farms on the island, and the bushes grow tall and strong.

The coffee cherry is ripe when it's red., but the green fresh cherries covered the bushes in a riot of embyronic caffeine.



Captain Cook, Hawaii
June 2009