I installed WordPress and then messed around with various themes until I found the excellent Sliding Door, which does the neat sliding photos effect you see above. Needless to say, I swapped out the default sliding images for a few of my own.

From left to right:

A dusky scene at the Milton Country Park north of Cambridge, as a family we’ve spent many a happy hour playing, cycling, walking and photographing this ex-gravel pit.

Bunsen, our family black and white short-hair former cat in an unusual fast-moving action shot.

One of the giant species of Papaver orientale (poppy) that grow in our front garden and to which I am drawn each summer with a camera in hand.

York Railway Museum silhouetted steam wheels/machinery stuff. Ever since childhood I’ve found this museum to be fascinating and I’m certainly no trainspotter, in any sense of the word.

The night view from our room at the Belfast Hilton on a visit to the chemistry department at Queen’s University Belfast.

Aldeburgh/Slaughden beacon – an indicator of why tide and wave power might be the future for renewable energy, given that there used to be a village here rather than a shingle beach.

Baltic Flour Mills and Newcastle Eye over the River Tyne. The Mills are an art gallery, the Eye is very much testament to the fusion of art and engineering.

As I was uploading the new images it suddenly struck me that the new photo blog could do with a stronger theme than it just being my random photos of everything and anything, and so I intend to tie in a scientific theme with each photo I post. I’ve got almost 50 gigabytes of digital images and that does not include traditional negatives yet to be scanned of which there are several thousand dating back two decades. I’m fairly confident I can post at least a weekly item with a scientific connection. Watch this space.

Next week carbon dioxide…

Photography gained the interest of many scientists and artists from its inception. Scientists have used photography to record and study movements, such as Eadweard Muybridge’s study of human and animal locomotion in 1887. Artists are equally interested by these aspects but also try to explore avenues other than the photo-mechanical representation of reality, such as the pictorialist movement.

Military, police, and security forces use photography for surveillance, recognition and data storage. Photography is used by amateurs to preserve memories of favorite times, to capture special moments, to tell stories, to send messages, and as a source of entertainment.

Source

The word “photograph” was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek ??? (phos) “light” and ????? (graphê) “representation by means of lines” or “drawing”, together meaning “drawing with light”.[2] Traditionally, the products of photography have been called negatives and photographs, commonly shortened to photos.