This may look like a photo of a rock ...

... but there's more to it than that.

This is an idea that's been brewing for a while. You can't get much more inanimate than a rock. Its an unyielding lump of, well, rock. Normally, we wouldn't give it a second thought. We just walk on them on the beach and maybe search out a flat one to skim on a lake.

And yet, if you look closer, each one is capable of giving away its whole life history - the patterns of wear, the colours, the seams of different material are all there to be deciphered if you know the code.

I don't know the code - geology was always a bit dry and lifeless when I was at school. That bit is for others to deal with. And you don't need to know the precise details anyway.

But I've been thinking of turning this into a project. The challenge is not so much to find the interesting rocks and stones - that bit's easy - but to try and photograph them in such a way that what I'm banging on about above makes sense to the viewer. I don't know if I've succeeded in the above, or whether it needs a coherent set of photos before the point becomes clear. Or whether I'm just talking gibberish and it will never make any sense.

Its not particularly important. It may not be particularly interesting. When I signed up for this site, I said in my profile that photography makes me see things in a different way. This photo is an example of that.