I like making stock. I’m not talking about stock photography, I can’t be bothered with that. I like making liquid stock from bones. I wasn’t going to mention cooking very much here, but several people have remarked on my stock-making habit, so perhaps it’s worth covering.

We have roast chicken occasionally, and when we do, I always use the stripped carcass to make stock. It’s really simple to do and massively tasty in risotto, amongst other things. Putting chicken remains in a big pot with some onion, celery, other veg and herbs and boiling it for as long as you can stand (1-2 hours) is rather satisfying. It makes our house smell of nothing but chicken for several hours, but the results are wonderful. I usually get 8 plastic tubs of stock to put in the freezer. I can only make more when the last lot is used up, we don’t have room otherwise.

So there you have it, stock. It doesn’t take much work and goes a long way. Even the remains look quite tasty:

The foxes love ripping our bin bags apart on Thursdays to get at this stuff. You don’t have to. Come round for risotto some time instead. Toodle pip.

Wow, Seascapes by Giles Revell. Beautiful.

Pep Boys, 2009 — from the series Dark Stores, photo © Brian Ulrich

via Flak Photo

There was such as response to Giles’ arrival, that I was asked (maybe begged) to make one for Christine. So I drew a sketch, which was approved, and I set about it. Well, time passed, as it must with the birth of any new arrival. But fairly soon there was another visitor in our house, and just in time for Christmas.

This is Giles and his new buddy messing around by our Christmas tree.

The time had to come when the new white monster was adopted. Christine came and took it home, but not before naming him Ben and straightening his tie. I mean, he couldn’t go to work dressed like that!

So bye, Ben, it was fun making you. Giles misses you, send a postcard or something.

Nikki Graziano, a photographer and mathematician, is finding functions in nature and annotating her photographs. Lovely.

I re-designed this website. If you come here to read this, you’ll know. (It’s been done for a while, to be honest, I had a weird January.) I’m going to use my website at kathall.co.uk to bring together all my stuff – the photography, craft, knitting and scrapbook. So, you RSS subscribers, come and look and see the prettiness!

(Phew, that’s broken the typing block. I’ll write some, ya know, proper posts now. As Alex keeps telling me, just START. He can be annoying. But right. Which makes him more annoying.)

In the meantime, here’s something interesting:

Hanging paper ornaments – from nature book illustrations (on Folksy)

By Mikael Kennedy, from Polaroids

By Mikael Kennedy, from Polaroids

via Too Much Chocolate

By Karen Strom from ‘Architectonics’.

From Manjari Sharma’s “Shower Series”

via PDN Photo of the Day

Kickstarter is a site where people can set up a creative project, say how much funding they need and ask for donations. The funding will only be given to the creator if the total is reached, so nothing gets under-funded with higher-priced expectations.

Landscape photographer Dalton Rooney also mentioned it on his blog, so it made me join in. I’ve contributed to Brandon Schulman’s project ‘A Portrait of America Left Behind’.

His photos look great and I’ll be very excited to see his prints when they come. With 11 days to go, Brandon only needs $500. Join me!

UPDATE:

Brandon got the funding and is shooting the photos now. Can’t wait to see the results.

© Alexander Gronsky, from his “Pastoral” series

Taken with a tilt/shift lens to control the depth of field.
View more of Tim Grimshaw’s Manhattan series here.

Border guard officer posing for portrait by the checkpoint, Ukraine, 2008 — from the book Black Sea of Concrete

Photo © Rafal Milach / Sputnik Photos / Altemus (via Flak Photo)

Johanna Basford’s illustration for Vogue.

“The picture was taken in the Altai territory of Russia, right in the border regions of Kazakhstan. It shows the second stage of a Soyuz rocket in the crash zone where they come down to earth. You can see them fall during the day, and usually hear the big bang as they hit the ground. These things are made out of pretty good metal too, so a lot of the locals make a living chasing rocket parts, before selling them as scrap. If you look very carefully, you can see that the white things all around them are butterflies or moths.”

via 100 years of great press photographs

It’s a photo- and internet-based game. The idea is that you take pictures of things that you see that are interesting, unexpected or unusual. Then upload them to Flickr, tag and map them and each day your photos are awarded points according to their content, location and your other entries. Look at noticin.gs for the specifics.

I started playing last Monday, and have uploaded quite a few shots (which you can see on Flickr).

Now, I wouldn’t want you to think that I was competitive, but this is the top ten after my first week (Yes, I am Kat 30):

Ahem. But apart from temporarily satisfying my mile-wide competitive streak, this game has proved useful creatively-speaking.

I’ve discovered the joys of taking photographs with my iPhone. I always used to carry my big Lumix around with me, but it’s heavy and given the size of my (albeit capacious) handbag, I’d have to choose between that and knitting, so the Lumix has been left at home more and more.

But the iPhone has something that I can’t get with the Lumix – it’s more portable and I can do more and more quickly with the photos I take on it. I can alter the colour and add some tilt shift with a couple of nice apps (Mill Colour, Tilt Shift Generator and Camera Bag) and I can upload them in the queue for soup at Pret. You can even get Photoshop for the iPhone now. With the Lumix, I have to wait till I get home for all that excitement. The iPhone camera is pretty poor resolution, and there are no other controls on mine, but I’m going to carry on and use both cameras. It’s the practice that matters.

As for the game, I think I’ll stop trying to beat everyone. Maybe I can cope with not being the top again. The new topic that gets extra points is pictures of things that are mainly red, so I’m just going to look for those. Constraints can be useful too. If you want to give me more constraints for future projects, add something to my list.