Category: sport

B300 – I CANT BELIEVE I MADE IT THIS FAR!!

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Its a bit of a special day today, this is post 300! that means Ive posted photos everyday for the past 300 days, so heres some rough stats. thats about 90,000 words and 900 pictures, which is about the say about 8,800 words a months. for some people thats not that much but for someone like me, thats more words Ive written in the past 300 days than for probably my whole school career. See most of my classes were about me colouring in between the lines and then ticking the correct answer, everyone I think realised early on that essays where not going to be my strong point.

As this was a big day for the blog I was thinking I should post some cool photos to celebrate, but then nothing was coming to mind and then I decided why have a celebration for 300 when 365 is just round the corner now, so I should really just plan something big for that number.

Yesterday was still a pretty cool day, it was spent with some good chum, Amy, Jacob and Sophie having a look at some cameras at wex photography, Ive now fallen in love with a fujifilm x-pro2. that now holds my heart, but I suppose Ill just have to wait a bit and get it later on in the year, after that we took a trip to one of the coolest places in London, The Tate. That place is massive and so overlooked, its true what people say, one day is not enough time, you could spent a week in there and probably just about see everything. we managed to get through, the first half and then two floors of the new building. its given me some cool ideas and stuff that I wouldn’t mind trying out with my camera, its not me copying an artist its interruption right?

Anyway, today is now my first day of work for 2018! so not only is it a big day for the blog, its also my first day for work!! what a great Monday!

Enjoy these photos!

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– Amy loves having her photo taken, can you tell? –
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– Jacob looking at getting a new camera, do it! –
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– I saw some photos like this in the tate and I really want to copy them –
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– Jacob going looking like hes going at 100 mph –
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– took this on the tube and I quite like it! –

 

B283 – NOT AGAIN!!!!!

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its now Friday and its mid day, im writing this post after one of those mornings that I think has destroyed me and also taken a big stress of my shoulders. It all started at like 7am this morning, I woke up and was kind of excited to get outside and start running again, not going fast or trying to beat my record but just to ran in the mornings around Victoria Park, its that time of day when its still a bit chilly but it feels fresh and everything think is just starting to wake up.

well that exactly that time and at exactly 0.62 miles into my run, I realised that my leg is still not fixed. I tried to carry on for another hundred meters but then remembered that I should listen to my body not that part of my head that tells me to man up and carry on. It was at that point that I decided its time to stop sit on a park bench and google groin stretches. I tried them all, and nothing it still hurts. so I’m pretty much back to square one, only this time I’m not on crutches.

I admitted defeat, and slowly walked home. where I ran a hot bath and tried to think of a way to sort this mess out, after a quick phone call to my mum and maybe a little tear, I decided to have a nap. I had officially been chewed up and spat out by life. Exercising to me is that one thing that no matter what your situation is it will always tell you the truth about your self, and make you work harder. not for money or a promotion but just to do better than what I did last time. thats whats most annoying about this situation, I create goals in my head for running, and now I cant reach them. I need to go back to the drawing board and figure out how I can get there. My main goal in running is to run an Ultra Marathon, I want to reach that target of running an 70 to 100 mile race and was kind of hoping in the back of my head that could be a 2019 thing. but now I really need to think about my body and options.

Sorry this post is a bit of my plabbering on and sorry if I sound like a hypochondriac recently, I just want to blame that all on the worst month of the year. January. It wouldnt have been write if there was some sort of sloppy post, and this is just going to be it.

heres some more photos from that gig the other day, its worth the post and I like them.

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– looking forward to getting back to their next gig –
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– playing the guitar with a index finger wrap up cant be that easy –
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– Tayne Band, give them a listen –

B265 – WHAT A YEAR

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Merry Christmas everyone and a happy new year! its literally the perfect day, as well as it being christmas its also my last 100 days of posting. I’ve made it to the final stretch. as its also the end of the year and also my last 100 days I thought I would show you some photos that Ive taken these past 265 days.

Its probably been one of the best years Ive had, not only have I been working pretty much non stop but Ive also been to some places that I never thought I would go to, I’ve spent 2 months in America and now have a working visa of the states, which i’ve wanted for ages, Ive also been to Canada, china and a few places in Europe. so its been pretty exciting. Amy also asked me out at the beginning of the year, and next year she should be moving into my flat, well thats the plan anyway. who would have thought I would been living with a girlfriend. its crazy and I suppose when you do that your kind of becoming an adult and having responsibilities, which in away is quite cool.

this blog has to be one of the best things Ive done, its literally taught me how to write and in given me confidence to try new things and just work harder to get what I want, and also when I write emails now theres a lot less spelling mistakes, its never good when you write emails and its grammatically incorrect or just doesn’t make any sense but because of the sheer amount of writing I do now I learnt a lot of new words and can spell so much better, I think anyway.

I think this blog has been good because a lot of the time its easy to think up ideas and then even easier to think up excuses why you cant do them and this has really made me just forget the excuses and just go with my gut and try to get the job done. thats why next year ive got a few plans lined up for this blog and also things that I want to try and do work wise. im planning on getting a second job i think just to help pay for all the things I need todo and the adventures / holidays im going on. Its time to up my game and smash 2018 out of the park!

Thank you 2017 its been a pleasure!

oh and sorry my blog didn’t have any photos on it yesterday, i literally have no idea how that happened. WordPress was just having a bad day I think.

 

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– amy and me exploring the town of Ratio on the Amalfi coast –
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– I also went to my first american high school football game right, this was like 10 minutes away from Harvard University –
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– Flying out of Newark Airport in New York. That is definitly a place Ill be going back to soon! I love New York –
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– a picture of Soho in London, I quite like this photo. Might have to get it made into a print –
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– the shot from the Barbican last week, im just happy with this photo and really like the way the man is –
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– this guy was definitely a highlight –

B252 – BANG BANG CHICKEN

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8am Monday Morning. temperature, 5 degrees. weather, rain / snow. What better way to start the day?

Thats literally what I said to myself as I walked out my front door and headed to Camden yesterday for a meeting, its hard to find a positive about the weather yesterday when the snow didn’t even set but I do quite like the rain in London, especially when I have my camera mainly because taking photos of people when its raining becomes so much better, everyone literally walks around like the are allergic to water and that makes for some cool photos. Don’t get me wrong I love to sun and the summer and would much rather be taking photos from a beach in the Mediterranean but that wasn’t an option yesterday.

After my meeting I decided to take a long walk back to the train station and grab some photos of the area, Camden is this cool part of London, which kind of feels like its separated from the rest this city and made its own set of rules and its own way of life. its kind of where punk rock has decided to plot up and fight the likes of TopShop and River Island and to some miracle punk rock seems to have won.

Josh’s Top Tip: If you ever find yourself in Camden that chances are your going to want to eat some food, now what most people would do is end up at the world food market and grab some sort of pizza of Naples or maybe a burrito for Korea but what I think is by fast the best option is to head down to the original camden market and pick up some of that Bang Bang Chicken, the food isn’t really fried chicken that you might get at KFC its more Chinese but possible the best Chinese you can get hold of. that stuff is completely out of this world and the guy who sells it might even sing you the Bang Bang chicken song. Trust me, there is a song.

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– on the bus toward to Camden –
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– Camden Market, the home of Bang Bang Chicken –
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– the snow yesterday unfortunately it didn’t settle –

 

 

 

B245 – I GOT KICKED OUT

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Yesterday was a bit of a funny day, after I sat down to get all my work done I decided to go and to the apple store and have a bit of a geek out at a macbook pro and see what its like, as I do with any outing I took my camera. My idea for yesterday was to shop what shopping malls are like when christmas hits and normal middle age people turn into packs of wolves as they run around the shops trying to get presents.

Well after pulling out my camera and taking a photo I security guard taps me on the shoulder and basically says you cant take photos in stratford and escorts me to the door. the good news is I did manage to have a look at the new macbook pro, the bad news is I was planning on doing a few more things there, but I suppose they will just have to wait.

The other thing is all year ive been saying how much I want to take December and January off for christmas and to have a bit of break, now that time is actually here I’m like a week into not having constant work and already I’m getting a bit antsy. I know I should enjoy this time and just watch a few box sets and chill out, but for some reason my brain just wont stop. maybe I just need to make myself lay in front to the television and stop. Is it too early to start thinking about christmas? or should I still be trying to sort out work? I know I should enjoy my (f)un-empolyment while I can, but part of me is ready to get back out there and work again.

lets just see how this meeting goes this morning and make a decision after that.

Here are my photos from yesterday, I still have my picture from inside westfeilds. so here it is.

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– one of the lasts photos i managed to take in westfeilds –
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– the new light in the living room looks pretty cool –
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– our attempt at a christmas tree –

B241 – WHY DO IT?!

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Today Ive spent my time involved in some manual labour, Ive basically been scraping wall paper off my hall way and then painting it white, this has taught me two really important lessons, that I will definitely carry with me for the rest of my life.

Lesson one, if I ever need to scrap wall paper off a wall again, pay someone else do it, there nothing nice, easy or rewarding about scraping that stuff off. Ive been there and Ive got the medal now its time for me to sit back and in the future let someone professional do it properly.

Lesson two, painting a white wall white again, its properly just as fun as taking the wall paper off. I also managed to literally blow up a light bulb socket with my head so I’m not really sure if my paint job was even and will have to wait till day light or a new light gets fixed to actually see if my job is even. by the way it wasn’t on purpose, I stood on a chair and moved really quick and my head just made contact with the light bulb thing.

apart from those two extremely good life lessons its also been a good day, the hall way has been on my list of things to get done for a while and today I knocked it off my todo list. I’m now completely nackered but need to power on till 3/4am as Im working on an over night job Friday and need to try and get used to being up at night and asleep during the day, my thinking is 3/4am is a good time go to sleep.

When I was in the mist of completing the painting I was thinking of things to photograph, it was way to cold outside to venture out for some street photography so my idea was to show how a photo looks before its edit and also how it looks after a few changes. I wanted to use a boring photo as it makes it easier to see the difference as theres no “WOW factor”.

the photo you see below was shot in .RAW which basically means you can do a lot more editing and manipulation. how that happens is by the camera sensor remembering all the information collected when you press the capture button, meaning you can change the white balance, the thing that makes either white, white or makes white that weird egg shell colour you some times see.

If  a photo is really dark, say you shot inside a house at night and were trying to take a photo of your family and when you looked at it back you noticed the only thing you could see was the light on the fridge door, well because you shot .RAW you would be able to bring the exposure up in Lightroom or photoshop and be able to see what is going on. The files are slightly bigger than .jpegs but if you camera can shoot .RAW. do it! you really wont regret it.  just buy  a bigger memory card, and back your photos up regularly.

have a look at these photos below and see the difference, they were shot in .RAW. look at the different shades of white on the paint pot and see if you can tell the different.  If it was .JPEG they would near enough be the same colour depth and not looks as good.

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– this is the original photo –
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– I have changed the white balance to 28k and done a few other things with the contrast / exposure / highlights and cropped in a bit –
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– this has a 55k white balance and is obviously back and white –

 

B233 – BACK TO LONDON LIV’N

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I have literally just slept for like 12 hours, i cant remeber the last time I spelt for that long and now I feel amazing. Im pretty sure Ive beaten jet lag and now back to normal. my plan for today was to spent the day sleeping on the sofa watching netflix but after a quick phone call with my mate anders im on my way to south london to go rock climbing at some place called the Arches. what happening to just chilling on the sofa.

Its been a bit of a productive day, I also put some blinds up in my living room this morning, but ill show you those tomorrow. I need to get hold of some velcro to finish them off, im not about to show pictures of half a job!

it feels good to be back in London and Im now motivated to get on with what I started 233 days ago! since I’ve been doing a lot of travel recently Ive had time to think of some cool projects I want to start, so I’m now going to spend the next few days seeing if I can put them into practise. work has started to slow down for christmas so Ive now got quite a lot of time on my hands, which is actually quite exciting. I really want to get a lot done in the flat and get it up to a level Im proud of.

Ive had a week of not being able to post and now Im finally back on track and ready to pull my canon 5d out and take some cool photos but first I have 4 episodes of the new Peaky blinders to catch up on, I didnt even realised that it had started again!

here are some photos from yesterday and also a shot from the Grand Hyatt hotel reception, Im struggling to get over this view.

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– climbing yesterday, I think I could have a new hobby –
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– welcome back to london, the best city in the world –
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– see you soon shang hai –

 

B231 – JUST A DOG WEARING SHOES

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It’s weird not posting these each day, I’m not really enjoying it. I love following the stats and getting to see what people think of my photos, it’s one of those things if I post each day I really try and set my self a brief for each day, ie something to concentrate on, but at the moment I’m just snapping shots when I can.

Not really sure if that’s a good idea, but at the moment it’s the best I can do.

Today is show day and I can now say that I’m working on Victoria Secrets Fashion show in Shanghai!!!! The rule of posting photos still stands, so if your expecting to see Back stage photos of Super modes wearing underwear and wings. This is the wrong place, instead I can offer a shot of a dog wearing shoes.

One thing has really surprised me is that amount of bikes that are in the city and the comparison to London. A few months back someone introduced this public bike scheme where you can pick up these yellow bikes via an App and then drop it off where ever you want, two days later the bikes had been destroyed, seats stollen and wheels buckled. Not in China, they literally have exactly the same bikes but times a thousand, there are hundreds on every street and not a buckled wheel in sight. China is this country where people stick to rules and one of the coolest things is everyone has a job (apparently). From what I saw which to be fair is very little, the streets are cleanish and there’s this proper hustle and bustle about this place, it feels like a super power city and I suppose that’s exactly what this place is. 10 years time and Shanghai will be this place with hovercrafts and jet packs, I promise you!

 

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– Victoria Secretes fashion show 2017 –
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– one of the weirdest buildings Ive ever seen –
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– just a dog wearing shoes –

 

B208 – MY FIRST HIGH SCHOOL AMERICAN FOOTBALL GAME DAY! GO SOMERVILLE!

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My normal routine for the past two months for getting these daily posts up and online, has revolved around getting back to my hotel between 20:00 and 2200. From there I jump in the shower for roughly 15 minutes before laying in bed and doing my daily post, it normally takes me about one hour to complete and in that time, I edit my photos, write a minimum of 300 words and then schedule the post to go up at 10am GMT. That’s always my plan, but tonight I’ve decided that for once I’m going to head out get some dinner and write the post while eating dinner. so its not the same thing each day, mix it up a little and stop myself from basically getting bored.

I’m sat in this place which is abit like Wachacca meets your local kebab shop, its called Chicken and Rice and its in this town called Medford, Massachusetts. Im eating what can only be linked to a Lamb Doner in a Salad, but its pretty good so I cant complain.

My photos today are from the other night on my adventure to Harvard, on the way back I was driving along this highway, when I saw a bunch of floodlights and hunderds of cars all parked up along the road. It was a high school basketball game, something Ive always wanted to see. Somerville High vs Triton Regional. One thing you learn as a teenager about sports is how big the Americans go for high school and collage sports , they literally treat it like a team in the premier league. It was like a two thousand seater stand and everyone was there, it seemed like they were just genuine fans. Nothing like the UK where you might get one dad and a few mums turn up to watch their little boys play. This was the whole families, friends and genuine high school football fans.

It felt like an event, there was an atmosphere and people were genuinely involved in the game. It was just how I imagined it to be, teams were going hard against each other and they even had those coaches with the talkback systems on, getting angry when a mistake was made by a player.

The final score was 27 – 9 to Somerville high, my new favourite high school football team and really the only one I know about.

Here are the three photos I took from the little de-tour post Harvard Adventure.

 

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– I want one of those jackets, they look sick –
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– I bet these players get such a rush from playing in front of such a crowd –
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– i wonder if they could throw me that high –
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– Somerville where on the offensive and the crowd were loving it –

B177 – A SEA PLANE

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Sorry for this post being a bit rubbish, Ive had a few drinks and just looking forward to gettign back to Amy. At the momement we’ve had a good explore of victoria and ive basically got to pack for my flight at 6am tomorrow. Candada has been amazing and I love this place but im looking forward to my sleep.

one thing ive learnt about this place is how freindly everyone is, they all just want to be freinds with the next person. im just walking out a oub while im writing this, so basically im in the perfect state to be wirtiing a message. people should come to canada and just experinance the wild, see the dear and take in the view.

tomorrow we fly home and I cant wait to spend the 19 hours travelling just to see amy, thank you bobo for introducing us, i think im abit drunk but not too sure. sorry for any messages that people don twant to read, I just want to buy a leica. anyway its not my fault, I blaime the people that brought me some shots.

im not sure how much you know about these post but each day I try and post something that relates to the readers, but tonight I have nothing. im just impressed with how this has gone and the people that our reading this. at the moment I think its mainly my dad, but much love steve spear your a ledgend.

im currently in bed lookingat my travel plains for tomorrow thinking about how im going to make it work. sorry if todays post is a bit weak, its been a hard month and tonight Ive enjoyed my self.

enjoy these pictures and make sure thar you visit chucky cheese, that place is amazing. much love josh

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– this is a sea plane –
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– i like this picture –
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– a nother great photo