I just had a look in the folder on my laptop that stores all the photos downloaded from Flickr by my Background Switcher and I was really impressed. No, not by my software, but by the sheer high quality of photos its downloaded over the last few months.

There are 466 photos in there taking up 162MB of hard drive and my switcher’s been either looking at specific groups or the most interesting photos of the current day. There really are some amazing photographers out there and without Flickr I’d never get to see their work and be inspired by what you can do with a camera.

Sure, the internet can make the worst parts of human nature accessible to anyone, but it can also showcase what creative things humans can be. Flickr may just be a piece of software but a paintbrush is just a piece of wood and some hairs stuck together and look what you can do with that!

I’ve spent quite a few nights recently in the freezing cold with my friend Ade taking photos around various spots in Yorkshire. Oh how I’m looking forward to summer! However, despite the finger-numbing cold it’s been really good fun and I’ve managed to get some very interesting pictures of things I never would have even seen and learn a hell of a lot about photography.

I’m starting to look at the world in a different way now. When I used to drive along a road or walk down a street, I’d mostly be looking at where I was going, making sure I didn’t hit people and watching the speedo. Now I find myself trying to make a photo out of everything I see. I’m looking for angles, leading lines, shapes, textures and colours. I notice buildings I’ve never really looked at before. I look at the sky for interesting clouds. I’m really seeing the world around me rather than just looking at the ground.

It’s opened my eyes and once they’re open they can never be closed again – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Even the most mundane thing – like a wheelie bin or a ladder (below) – can look interesting if you frame it correctly.

And that’s the challenge, to take a picture of something I wouldn’t have even glanced at a few months ago and make it worthy of a place on my wall. The trouble now is that I only have a finite amount of wall space to fit them on!

My good lady, a couple of friends and I went over to the east coast on Sunday to try and take some photos. I was picturing in my head shots of cliffs, the sea at the bottom lashing the shore, a path along the top and a moody sky rich in colour and texture. Unfortunately we got rain and low cloud instead.

However, it turned out to be pretty good for photography – aside from having to dry the filters after every few shots. It did stop raining long enough for me to try and take a photo of a swan – annoyingly it beat its wings and looked majestic (as swans do) whenever I turned my back so I didn’t get a decent shot! Never work with children or animals… I did, however, get this:

It was worth the wet feet. No wait, it’s the fish and chips that made it worthwhile. Nice!

I spent a good part of Tuesday taking pictures of attractive women.

Perhaps I should clarify that a bit. We’re doing some work on our extranet and the idea came up that we should get some photos of our sales people – some team and individual shots – to show our customers that there are real people at the end of the phone. As I’m “into” photography I naturally volunteered to take the pictures. It was an interesting experience for several reasons.

Firstly, it was nice finally getting to talk to a lot of these attractive women I’ve only seen in the cafeteria and realise how nice they are. It’s amazing how you construct someone’s personality in your head from their appearance but that can turn out to be completely wrong.

It was fun trying to get people relaxed when I was taking their photo. A lot of women (usually the really good looking ones) don’t seem to like their picture being taken so I had to try a bit of banter with some to get them to oblige. And some of the complaints afterwards that they look terrible just mystifies me – why do the pretty ones often have such low self esteem? Still, I wish I’d discovered photography when I was younger and single – it’s a great way to get to meet women!

I also got a glimpse of what a pain being a photographer must be. You’d think that to get a team photo of, say 10 people would be easy enough. Just show them where to stand, get them to smile and click. But you really have to take control of people, get each person to stand in the right place to balance out the shot and pay attention at the back!

I think I’ll stick to the day job, although I’m rather pleased with how they came out. I had to continually resist the urge to go for good portrait shots or something arty. We wanted people to look like they were on the phone or something whereas my natural instinct is to try and get the best shot of people that they’d want to put on their wall at home or something interesting and a bit different. I guess sometimes you have to sacrifice creativity for work. It was fun though!

I went to my first beer festival on Saturday – the Bradford Beer Festival to be precise. Well, it’s not that precise, it was actually in Saltaire but that’s near enough to Bradford I guess! It was pretty much how I expected it to be: you get a glass, go into a large hall and then drink a lot of beer. Lovely!

Since moving to Yorkshire I’ve developed a taste for Real Ales which is lucky because there are a lot of quality ones around. When you’ve grown up being subjected to Tennents Special and Export then find yourself drinking beautifully smooth ale that massages your throat as you swallow it – you won’t want to go back!

Oh, and on Sunday I finally got around to taking a proper waterfall picture where you leave the shutter open and capture the water flow – not bad I thought!

It’s Posforth Gill near Bolton Abbey in case you were wondering. My friend Ade wasn’t so lucky, he keeps saying he needs a new tripod and I found out why. He paused to answer the call of nature and his tripod and camera fell over and into the river. And we’re not talking a cheap camera with cheap lenses either. Ouch. May his faithful 10D rest in peace…

Another of my favourite types of photo are reflections. You know the type: a beautiful mountain scene in the background, a perfectly still lake in the foreground filled with the reflection of the aforementioned mountains. Well, given the absence of mountains and clear, mirror-like lakes this was the best I could come up with around Leeds last night:

I must confess that it took a few attempts to get the shot centred and lined up – I think my neck must be crooked or something because it looked fine through the viewfinder but completely squint on the screen after the shot was taken!

I spent last night out with my friend Ade standing around in the freezing cold taking photos of passing cars. One of the types of photos I’ve always wanted to take is the long exposure, “car lights passing by” shots and here’s one that turned out okay:

The main things I took away from the night are that I’ve got a lot to learn about photography! But the best way to learn is with practise so that’s what I intend doing (combined with a lot of reading).

The second thing I learned is that when you’re standing on a motorway bridge with a camera on a tripod, well over half the cars that drive past you will slow down and have a really good look at what you’re doing. I’m not sure what they’re expecting to see. Maybe they’re bored and want something else to look at, maybe they’re nosey, or maybe their brains are befuddled and they just don’t understand what they’re seeing – that’s what the vacant expressions most of them (that I bothered to look at) gave the impression of.

People are strange. But then they probably thought the same thing about us…

I’ve always loved photography and have wanted to create the sort of pictures you see in National Geographic magazine for a long time. My father’s been into photography for longer than I’ve been around and he’s taken some amazing pictures. And then my friend Ade started taking some stunning photos as you can see here. It was about time I got in on the act myself…

So after a lot of thinking about it I decided to shell out on a proper digital SLR:

I’ve spent the first few days just taking random pictures of things lying around the desk, like my Rubik’s Cube:

Anyway, I plan on spending a lot of my weekend finding more things to take pictures of – my good lady is already sick of me taking photos of her! You see, if she’d let me get a cat I could take pictures of it and leave her alone. Sadly she doesn’t quite see things that way… Ah well, one step at a time!