The birthday boy

Today is Adam's birthday. We have a family tradition that the presents are placed on the kitchen table and as everyone wakes up and comes downstairs, the birthday person opens presents. Unfortunately that did not happen this morning as I had to take Thomas back to Mr IT man, which I thought would be a quick visit to collect the laptop after he had transferred all the data on to it - but after an hour I left Thomas there and went back home - and 3 hours later Thomas phoned to say it was finally done and I should come fetch him. So hopefully that is all sorted, with all the necessary anti-virus software loaded and all his programs, music and data back on there again.

Adam opened his presents after lunch and seemed very pleased. His girlfriend Molly is spending the weekend with us and last night she took Adam to the BBC Proms as a birthday present, and they saw a brilliant clarinettist play Mozert's clarinet concerto, which Adam plays, so it was a well chosen concert and he loved it.

I took a few photos of Adam as I always like to record their birthdays, and I got some lovely ones of Adam and Molly too. Tonight we are all going out to dinner to celebrate so that should be fun.

I am enjoying watching Master of Photography but I find the judges so harsh and unkind. It seems for a photograph to be considered worthy it has to be pushing the boundaries of what one usually sees in photography magazines. The last episode was on landscapes and the candidates were taken to Ireland. I noticed they did not use tripods and filters (the standard equipment of any professional landscape photographer), and I was surprised that one of the images that I really liked was the one the judges found weak and that photographer was asked to leave the program. I think they are trying to be too edgy, bringing the techniques and characteristics of street photography into other genres of photography like landscape and portraits which in my humble opinion does not always work.