My Latest Addiction!

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a news snippet talking about a new website being launched. I noted it down to have a look-see as it is the sort of thing I am curious about and I thought my nephew might like it too. Last Sunday, I finally got around to having a look and was instantly hooked! What is this amazing website, I hear you thinking. It's called GalaxyZoo2 and it's basically an online database of thousands of images of the galaxies out there in our night skies. They are asking for people to help them classify the galaxies as it seems the human eye is a better judge of the subtleties than a computer program.

Here are a couple of beauties I've been asked about this week.

Yes, there are a lot of images of blobs but believe it or not, even they need to be classified because as technology improves, it may be possible to get a closer look at them. The site is huge but interesting. The sign up form has a tick box to say you are over 5 years old (!!) so pretty much anyone can have a go. There was one young man on the newbies forum this week who 'found' this one - how exciting would that be?

Apparently it's a planetary nebula called PN G164.8+31.1 - rather boring name for such a wonderful thing. Anyhoo - go have a look and take your kids with you - it's interesting, educational and pretty much child-safe from what I've seen. Click on the pictures to take you to their info pages - you can zoom in and out and have a look around if you'd like :) Have fun!

Day2Day - this weeks unmissable photos! LOL

Monday - severely lacking inspiration again so delved in my weird things box and found this! Liked the colours. Answers on a postcard please :)

Tuesday - nature provided the inspiration today - the sun caught the few remaining leaves on this tree and made them glow. Not sure I've caught the glow but I like it.

Wednesday - Paper bags for my first foray into the world of craft fairs. Minimum order was 1000 for the 2 smaller sizes and 500 for the big pink bags so 2500 bags for 2 craft fairs - gosh, I hope I sell something!

Thursday - I thought I'd been seeing a little wren at the bottom of the garden but it turns out to be this little brown bird instead - a dunnock or hedge sparrow. Not very sharp - long lens through glass at 7.30am but you get the idea :)

Friday - borrowed a small-ish table top display easel from an artist friend of mine. It will form part of my craft fair table display. I really like how my framed print looks on an easel - may have to splash out and get a couple more if I continue this craft fair lark.

Day2Day - restarted :)

Well, I've started on the Project365 challenge on Flickr which is 1 photo a day for a year so I thought I may as well continue with the Day2Day at the same time. This week, they are one and the same but sometimes I do want to take more than one shot so this way I can do 1 shot for D2D and one for Proj365 :) See, I'm not just a pretty face!

Monday - I set my light tent up to shoot some stock and this is one of my favs.

Tuesday - Harry, the neighbours cat sitting on my dusty car roof.

Wednesday - tea at Mum's and she pulled this out of the oven as we arrived! Mmmmmmm :)

Thursday - a little bit of traditional British street furniture - not so common these days unfortunately.

Friday - More stock to work on and upload but these are 2 of my roses from last Valentines Day from hubby.

Woohoo! I was featured on a blog :)

One of the lovely photographers on the POE team (Photographers of Etsy) has included my 'Three Boats' photo as one of her picks for todays feature with a theme of Boats :) Pop over to her blog and say hello - or you could pop to her Etsy shop where each 15% of each purchase goes to a childrens charity - lovely Allie, thank you :)

On other news today - You may have noticed a new face over there on the sidebar - that is the new team logo for the Etsy UK Street Team. We are busy getting organised - the new blog is up and the team shop is being revamped.

I've also done something a bit silly (well, sort of) - I've joined in on Project365 over on Flickr and started a new blog to keep track of it. It's a photo a day for 1 year and with my track record, I'm not sure how long I will last! I'm hoping the challenge of picking my camera up everyday will get the ol' juices flowing again and I should certainly manage to shoot some stock while I'm at it (also sadly neglected at the moment).

So, that's it for now - I may be back later as I've been shooting this morning. I haven't actually downloaded them yet so if I get all happy and excited about them, I'll pop back to show you :)