Despite being informed that this was part of a Diesel ad campagn from 2008 (thank you @pgreenhalgh on Twitter) I still quite like this shot and thought I’d post it up. Fresh off the chip so to speak; taken this afternoon from a little sidestreet just off Ancoats, Northern Quarter, Manchester, sunny England.

Plus (a first for me), numero uno iPhoto upload onto my blog. So, albeit a tad grainy, but it’s a better camera to have with you whilst cycling back from a Client meeting than none at all!

LINKS: After a bit of digging I found a couple of other Manchester graffiti images featuring the same slogan:

Flickr/Kate Aldridge
Flickr/Claire Wroe
Flickr/davescunningplan
Flickr/Polyhymnia_

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Got up especially early this morning, wanted to take a specific shot which needed virgin snow and not many people around, but I discovered it also has to be a working day for it to work. Hopefully I can get another chance on that one.

Anyway as I was out and had my camera, I couldn’t resist taking this shot:- I’m a sucker for those patterns in the snow. No, not my footsteps, I was on my bike!

Really enjoyed these images from Liverpool photographer Stephen King, featuring photographs taken in Lewis’s Department Store in Liverpool, one of the UK’s oldest and most iconic department stores a building sadly shut down and hidden since the early 1980s.

What a cracking idea, I wish I’d thought of it!  The still life images work better for me, some terrific compositions.  The project has it’s own website www.lewissfifthfloor.com (though it’s a bit slow to load) and there are quite a few images over on Stephen’s site.

I remember, as a Wirral girl born and bred, it was a big treat to be taken over to Lewis’s on a Saturday for a shopping expedition.  I particularly remember the broken biscuit department was a highlight.

Dates: 26th February to 30th August 2010, Lewis’s Fifth Floor: A Department Story at Liverpool’s  National Conservation Centre.

Indeed, it is that time of year again when a cultural reckoning is required.  Did you have any favourite films this year and what was cooking up a storm on the music front?  Just like a friendly chinwag round the internet campfire, all are welcome to spend their two-pennies worth, please share your own Best Of’s for the Year 2009 and leave a comment.

I shall kick things off with my choices:

Best singles:

Over the summer I watched in wonder as my sunflower grew skywards.  Inch by inch it became taller than my new rowan tree and then one day in the high winds my Heath Robinson string support system collapsed, leaving my sunflower dangling like a high jumpers pole.  Since it’s glory days, the head has been quietly crisping up nicely inside my house.  I kept it, because it was still inspirational.