pics - gallery recent times

If a picture paints a thousand word, I guess I’ve written a few essays over the years. There’s quite a lot of photos on my site, but once again, since the collaborative community have provided a better tool than I ever wrote, all my photos are now on flickr :D

pics archive - gallery of times past

Desperate for more nostalgia? You can find my previous photos between 2001 and 2008 below.

Llangollen & Lake Vyrnwy	Three day holiday to wales with Rob and Becki, staying in Becki's old Static caravan. We saw hills sheep, a beautiful waterfall and heard to most nutty thunderstorm ever!
Frankley Reservoir	Despite the cold and windy, a venue to Frankley Reservoir meant the opportunity to snap some chops seas and some very committed sailors in their very unstable looking boats! Good for low light and super telephoto practice.
A February week in Venice	A week before Valentines day Hayley and me stayed on Giudecca island just across from the main part of Venice, took in the sights, paid an awful lot for food and drink, and witnessed the annual Venezia Spectacular celebration in San Marco square.
1/8th Nitro Panther Cup @ Frankley	8th and 9th of September this year saw a 2-day race event at the Frankley track.
Oakwood ECC Trip 2007 Fireworks	The traditional annual coaster club trip to Oakwood in Wales, fantastic themepark, and a just as impressive nightly show, complete with dancers, fountain show and fireworks. Keeps a group of us coming back every year. Finally getting to grips with firework photography without a tripod!
Offroad 1/8th Scale @ Licky Hills	Testing our housemate's 3 petrol off-road r/c cars. Very very fast! 50mph+ and they kick up quite a lot of grass, which is always good for photos. Twinned with the fact it was the first day of the year that i needed to wear sunglasses (granted it was still below freezing) it was really a nice after outside.
European Coaster Club Japan Trip	What can I say? The most expensive and amazing holiday of my life so far. 67 Rollercoasters, 19 Themeparks in 11 days. Japan is an amazing country and it was an awesome trip with around 30 memeber of the European Coaster Club and round 80 from the American Coaster Enthusiasts. I should write so much more, but the photos hopefully speak for themeselves it was a busy but unbelievable 2 weeks!
Christmas 2004	At home and in Glossop for Christmas and Boxing Day, very relaxing and festive. With a quick visit into Manchester, hence to big wheel and Filmworks to see The Incredibles on the digital screen...great film; and a great holiday all-round.
September BBQ & House Party	A year late and weeks in the planning, we finally had the houseparty. After a successful practise a few weeks back during a heat wave, it seemed a certainty the real-thing would go just as well. Although after inviting scores of people, we realised the weather was forecast for cold, cloudy, windy raining 24 hours :( With little provision for wet-weather conditions we carried on regardless and it payed off. Not a drop of rain and a gorgeous sunset was the backdrop to this a pretty damn good party with much drinking and sausage consumption :)Thanks go to tony for cooking the food of the gods, Ali for djing blinding music for half the night and generally everyone who showed up and had a great time :D see you at the next one.
Matlock Camping	For Jen's (sister's) 24th birthday seeing as tho we were all short for time and money (mainly me) and the weather was wonderful decided to take a short camping trip to Matlock in Derbyshire. Great weather to start with, took a cable car up the 'heights of abraham' a wonder around a few lead mines and back to where the campsite was for a few pints before closing. Okay it was quiet around there, but what really made it worse was the fact it rained almost non-stop through the night and matters were made worse with the fact i didn't even have a sleeping bag for one reason or another :-p. The next day we went to chatsworth house which was really good and the food was great :) but then our hopes of visiting guillivers kingdom were dashed when it continued to rain for the rest of the day and night and day. We woke up to a torrential downpour and we had to disassmble the tents in it. Before driving home through flooding roads and finish off the rest of the holiday at Jen and Ivan's, all told a wash-out, but a very enjoyable one :)
The Motorshow 2004	Birmingham NEC 3rd June, 4th visit to the show, crammed full with the best international offerings on 4 wheels (sometimes 2 or 3!) BMW again decided not to grace their presence at the show, not that i really missed them. Some personal favourites in the shape of the McLaren Mercedes SLR, the Lotus Exige and the TVR Sagaris. A great day was had all-round and it was only the fact we felt we'd walked 20 miles and i had filled my 2.2gig compact flash card that reminded us it might be best to go home at 19:30pm. but
Kung Fu Training	Thought it might be fun to take the slr along to a friday-night session and see if i could get some snaps, problem was it's awful lighting in there and had to keep using the flash, hadn't really planned anything out and everyone was a bit tired, but it gives you some idea of what we get upto, and quite how well some of the guys can kick ;)
Snowy Morning	Chris thought it would be a good idea to try and get some photos of the sunrise up at the park while it was still snowing (at 6:30am) so we trudged all the way there, clad in fleecey gloves and the works, only to find it was as white a sky as it was everywhere else, so no amazing sun photos, but a few nice ones of the selly oak area, and video of me skidding along a path :) Couple of short-lived snowball fights later and some writing rude words on cars \o/ we scrambled back to the warmth of the house.
Carnage!	Traditional broad street t-shirt clad pub crawl, via 12 or so pubs and finishing in the works this time - Apologies for the appauling composition in all the photos, most of them were rushed 'happy-snaps' rather than anything planned and artistic lol. Also I had my camera 'borrowed' for a few minutes in springbok, so i don't even think i took all of these, but it was a wicked night nonetheless - Also I did get *chronic* hiccups at about 1am which forced me to cut short my evening. :( hehehe
Pancake Day 2004	Pancakes, then pub for Chris' 21st, then the last Remedy, DJ Society night clubbin! 12 eggs later, we're all a bit full and tired.
Thorpe Park September 03	Same weekend as Margate, thought as we'd traversed the country we may as well make the most of the visit; so we popped into Thorpe Park to try out Nemesis Inferno, which is fantastic, great small, blindingly fast coaster that shows you don't have to go high to have fun. Although i with thorpe would hurry up with their rocketcoaster :(
Scenic Railway at Dreamland, Margate	The oldest rollercoaster in the UK, and unfortunately also the longest drive from anywhere it seems :( after 780 miles of running around the country picking ppl up and checking into hotels we'd ridden The Scenic Railway enough to remember it before it goes (hopefully not). Maybe there isn't a place for old rickerty things anymore, but it doesn't stop them being a whole lot of fun in the dark with a bunch of equally enthusiastic coaster enthusiasts!
Laura's Birthday at Lloyds Bar	A hampton 2 event to go out to Lloyds Bars in celebration of Laura's...20something birthday :) few drinks at their's before hand and it was off to Broad Street, with a few people ending up in Risa before the night was through. Notice inparticular Steve spilling a pint over himself as he fell off his stool drunkenly to the floor, and James who's attempt to cover Geoff with mustard back fired somewhat ;)
Anger Management 2003	22nd June, Milton Keynes, my 20th Birthday - What better time and place to drive a couple of hours south to see one of my favourite music artists, if you don't like him - fair enough. But for those of you who can look far enough past his media image to the talent he clear has you'd have loved it. So sunny to start with I decided shorts and t-shirt would be all I needed for the day. But the time the slower acts of xzibit, cypress hill, and obe trice and gone by (with some quality songs I hastent to add) it was time for the main event; and unfortunately to rain. But after the quick addition of a bin bag to my outfit for the duration of the day, we were all happy to enjoy the best of his past 3 albums with the help of d12 and a 70000 strong crowd, at no point disheartened by the seething rain.
Holland 2003	Two days before my second year exams (and revision) start - What better time to go abroad for a few days :) Went upto Manchester on the Thursday via Burton and Sheffiend, then flew to Schipol friday afternoon with my sister, Ivan had gone ahead a few days before for his php conference so we met up with him in Amsterdam, had a few Biers and went back to the hotel before going to Six Flags Holland (themepark) all of saturday, (the big green coaster is Goliath :))) another night in the gorgeous hotel and we went to Haarlem on the saturday to look at windmills, bulbs and buildings before flying back late sunday night. Great weekend, and I've got 7 new coasters on my tally :D
Aston Villa v Spurs Jan 18th	My first football match! lost at home 1-nil but wasn't really a problem cos I didn't really support either of them hehe, but it was just cool to go along and see what the atmosphere was like, and it was really cool, 37 thousand people there which I guess is a pretty big stadium, but supprising how close the pitch seemed. £14 squid is quite a lot to pay each time, but it was be really great to see an international.
Christmas in Wales 2002	As a break from traditional xmas at home, my sister and Ivan decided to spend the week over christmas away in a cottage somewhere, after inviting me and spending ages looking for somewhere not already booked up and less than a £1000/day we found a great log cabin by the sea between Pwllheli and Aber Soch. After a quick visit to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch (well just about enough time to say where we were before leaving ;)) we made it to the cabin. Being brand new, luvly and warm, and having a jacuzzi I saw little reason to do much more than stay in eating and watching the arbitrary twelve different tv renditions of 'A Christmas Carol'. We went on a fairly hardcore boxing day 4hour walk, which saw us having a picnic on the beach, nearly getting cut off by the tide, stranded at the top of a mountain in dense cloud, then walking back soaking wet with only the memory of the jacuzzi to spure us onto the finish. 'Tis the season to be soggy.
Andrew's 21st	TCs, then onto Heducation for some class pub action then hardcore r'nb, hip hop and 4 or 5 crazy breakdancers. It was a wicked night and my first time at the med bar, not a bad place, might have to go back. Hope Andy had a wicked time like the rest of us, but check out the photos and judge for yaself :)
God's Kitchen Tiesto Solo	6th December 2002, DJ Tiesto (officially world's number 1 DJ) played his last 6 hour mammoth set of the year at Code in Birmingham, £12 a head and the lasers were running til 5am. A faultless set with a lot of the classics from GatecrasherNXT, but mixed up with hours of seamless hard trance that only Tiesto can deliver with such consistent energy. That night is gonna take some beating :)
Laura's Fab Birthday	Fab 'n Fresh - a night at birmingham's student union meant for a great night out to celebrate Laura's which we all saw in at 00:00am (well near enough). £3 tickets and cheap alcohol meant that at least for those of us who started drinking in the afternoon it was a fairly heavy night. (Apologies for the large amount of ridiclous facial expressions in most photos).
Bar Risa 18th November	Another great night out, which seems to quite a theme for risa on a monday. Made even more special by Emily's birthday who lives down the road from me, as well as going out with a good 20 ppl I knew, I bumped into numerous others. A good time was had all round I think, this was partly or probably entirely due to £1.50/pints of stella =)
Gatecrasher NEC 2002	This year's installment of crasherness was kicked off with a slightly late arrival just to catch the start of Tiesto's solo, the with the likes of Armin, Jules and Haliwell, none of us were planning on leaving the main arena, til 5am, when we decided it might be nice to get some sleep before my early start the next day :-/ Fantastic stage, and lasers which put God's Kitchen to shame really added to an atmosphere you only get at large dance events... 3 bottles of water, 5 blinding sets and a WHOLE bunch of light sticks later we landed ourselves a taxi back to my front door. Wicked night, worth every penny.
Zanzibar at Halloween	After a significant fireworks display on the vale by the lake, a few of us headed off to Zanzibar (club in birmingham centre) for the halloween party there, few pints later and a lot of cheese and R'nB later we taxied back...(I took a fair few decent videos of the fireworks at the start of the night, but size/bandwidth hassle means I won't upload vids here for the time being.
The Motorshow 2002	Birmingham NEC 25th October, my third visit to the international show, it's been a good 3 years though since it's been here due to cancellations and such like by various companies. However, except for a lack of a few manufacturers eg. BMW, it still managed to impress and drain camera memory with my every step around it's many halls.
Creamfields 2002	24th August saw the biggest dance of the summer, £50/head and a lift upto Liverpool ensured my place. 10 hours of dancing later and myself plus three other hardcore mates left the gates reflecting on sets by such dj legends as Dave Pearce, Jules, Tong, Van Burren, Ferry C, Tiesto, PvD, Underworld, Faithless, the list goes on and on.... Amazing night, couldn't believe the atmosphere and probably the nicest crowd of 20000 ppl you'd ever bump into. :) can't wait for 2003.
Southport ECC Trip 2002	My only visit to Pleasureland, Southport this year, just down the bay from Blackpool. This small park offers a great bunch of rides particularly their SLC Traumatizer (the big red steel thing), and cyclone (the wooden coaster) which I got the chance to walk the track of before the park opened! Also my opinions of shot towers were change after riding 'Space Shot'. I realised that at only around 100ft this new addition for 2002 gave fantastic air time and a great view of the park, without making me feel like I'd just fallen out of a window. Anyway, take a look at the pics and marvel at the fact it's not raining! (Absurd for 7th September).
Chamberlain Summer Ball	Second biggest student accomodation in europe and £70000 meant for a serious party in June 2002. Notice the huge meal, casino, bouncy castle, pimps and stawberries, inflateable laser quest, enormous turnip and masses of drunk dj-clad students :)
Hampton 2 Poker Night	Near the end of our year stay in Chamberlain Hall, Hampton Wing, Floor 2, it was decided that a themed poker-night should take place in H247 and only the most hardcore gangsters with enough cash to upfront the stake should be allowed to take part...failing that, a bunch of overly serious students and a bottle of jd was all I needed for a good photo-op ;) Also, I decided to stay in keeping with the costume and applied a few photoshop touches to some of the earlier images...