Portland Island was a surprise to me. I drove onto it purely by accident, but once there found it to be a pretty sort of place with four lighthouses within 500m of each other and a very quiet nature to it.Tthe surprise came when I parked on a tiny entance to a dirt track and walked down to some cliffs I thought I had seen at the bottom. Here I found the most astoundingly beautiful views I could imagine, with scenes that conjoured up images of places such as Motopos in Zimbabwe, and the cliff top amphitheatres of Athens, Greece. This island is the home of Portland Stone, the well known building material famous since its wide spread use over the past two to three hundred years (although it was used locally for far longer). Here on these clifftops the remnants of quarrying and huge basic machinery designed to lower vast blocks of freshly squared stone onto ships waiting far below still remain, and the region's rugged nature is only complimented by man's hand shaping of its ancient rock faces.

Lullworth Cove: a continuation of the World Heritage Coast, this utterly beautiful inlet of the sea has at least three crystal clear, fresh water streams tumbling down over its smoothed pebbles to terminate in its gentle clear waves. Surrounding the water on all sides are an incredible array of cliffs with all of their strata clearly visible like the layers in a giant onion, seemingly scrunched up in ridges where their collosal movement was recorded centuries ago.

On Monday the 26th I left at 5.30am for Weymouth Dorset, where a large scale conservation project has recently been completed. Chesil Beach was my primary target and although spectacular when viewed from the right place I was astonished to find that its beauty contributed only a very small amount to the overall majesty of this untamed coastal region. Below are some images including panoramics from my visit, click on the image to go full screen (Strongly Advised!)

Taken on a walk round the lake of my local park in Crawley, this image goes a long way to remind me of the infinate quantity of inspiration ready to be drawn from the smallest aspect of such an untapped resource as creation really is (Creativley speaking)

Seasonal Variations

Isnt it amazing the way new seasons reveal new qualities in a site, not even necessarily the same as the year before, but you look away for a moment and if you dont take that second look you miss the picture of itself that the site really wants to show you. the old 'dont judge a book by its cover', wait and see whats really inside those seemingly familiar pages, you might be surprised!

The unconveyable FLASH

In the spirit of continuing interest where all forms of expression via computer media are concerned, the last few days of this; my university focus week, have seen me attempting to learn animation free- trial-Flash-package style. While this has been fun it has certainly presented its own brand of challenge, something i was warned of by the laughter of my flash fluent freind, when i informed him of my intentions for the week. I have however been reasonably succesful and have graduated from an early stage animation of a bouncing ball to a photographic animation of my son playing with me. However attempting to attach it to this post on my blog, has been to run into a brick wall, but i have not given up trying and hopefully it should soon be viewable by all. WATCH THIS SPACE!

p.s
In the meantime here is a link to a website that sells examples of the kind of thing i am trying to achieve: www.bigshotmedia.com