January 2026

This journal records my actual time spent mastering the art of photography through 10,000 hours deliberate practice

Hours 10,386 to 10,477

(February 2026)

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31^st January 2026

Hour 10,477

(½h) shooting seascapes at sunrise, including “Omani Seascape ICM” above (inspired by Hiroshi Sugimoto)

(½h) editing and processing the morning’s images

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30^th January 2026

Hour 10,475 10,476

(½h) shooting seascapes at sunrise

(1½h) editing and processing images from the last few days

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29^th January 2026

Hours 10,474

(1h) shooting in Nizwa and surrounding countryside, “Following Omani Life” above, “Jabal Akhdar Mountainscape”, below

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28^th January 2026

Hours 10,473

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27^th January 2026

Hours 10,471 to 10,472

Stoke Poges PDI competition entered in absentia; images below:

Image	…..	Comment
		“Meeting the Undead” 18 Well seen, nice tight crop
		“End of Summer” 18 A photographers pic, attractive image, good diagonal, creative
		“Fantasy Lovers” Held back – 20 Creative image, clever, not sure without title
		“Tuscan Evening” 18 Warm, attracts attention. Try B&W? Enjoying the concept

(½h) shooting in the grounds of the hotel at sunset

(½h) editing and processing the above images

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26^th January 2026

Hours 10,469 to 10,470

(2h) working on my “100 Years of Surrealism, 10,000 hours of photography and an F Panel” presentation for the APS:

• rearranging the Cast of Character
• adding draft layout of my Fellowship panel

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25^th January 2026

Hours 10,464 to 10,468

(1h) creating an alternative version of the “Persistence of Agadir” below:

(½h) updating this journal and Flickr site

(½h) preparing and ordering prints for Monday week’s competition at the Amersham Photographic Society, the preparing and sending the associated PDIs

(2h) creating a version of Edvard Munch’s “Scream for the Stoke Poges Photographic Club’s Whisper competition where each image evolves from the one before, and a final version of “Persistent Memory of Agadir”, with a better tree, below

(1h) BBC Documentary “Lee Miller: Life on the Front Line”

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24^th January 2026

Hours 10,461 to 10,463

(½h) shooting a Garmin watch for inclusion in the Dali image

(1½h) processing the Garmin watch, melting it over the tree and generally updating the “Persistence of Agadir” image below:

(1h) selecting and processing images for next week’s PDI competition at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club

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23^th January 2026

Hours 10,458 to 10,460

(1h) updating my “Tuscan Evening” and “Fantasy Lover” images for next week’s Stoke Poges Photographic Club PDI competition

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22^nd January 2026

Hours 10,456 to 10,457

(1h) creating “Meeting the Undead” for next week’s “Face to Face” set subject competition at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club

(1h) working on the Magritte inspired “Fantasy Lovers”

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21^st January 2026

Hours 10,453 to 10,455

(1h) Amersham Coffee Club – lots of discussion of my images

• recreation of Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” (“Persisting Memory of Agadir”)
  • shadow by the watchstrap is too dark relative to other shadows
  • the bright reflection on the charger is distracting
• Magritte inspired “Fantasy Lovers”
  • inside of the wall needs to be brighter as all detail is lost in the print which just looks black
  • reflections on the floor will also be a good thing
• “Tuscan Evening” – the rail that she’s holding needs to be brighter so that it is more obvious
• “The Unavoidable Face of Capitalism” – distractions at the edge of the image where fewer overlaps make it appears sharper

(½h) updating this journal

(½h) processing images for the Rosebowl competition

(1h) revising the “Persisting Memory of Agadir”, below, with the above changes and addition of insects:

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20^th January 2026

Hours 10,450 to 10,452

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19^th January 2026

Hours 10,443 to 10,449

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18^th January 2026

Hours 10,441 to 10,442

(1h) updating the About Me section on this site, to replace the version generated by ChatGPT

(½h) updating this journal

(½h) preparing images for the next round of the Rosebowl

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17^th January 2026

Hours 10,437 to 14,440

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16^th January 2026

Hours 10,433 to 10,436

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15^th January 2026

Hours 10,429 to 10,432

(2h) Amersham PiC Group meeting

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14^th January 2026

Hours 10,425 to 10,428

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13^th January 2026

Hours 10,419 to 10,424

(2h) working on my “100 Years of Surrealism, 10,000 hours of photography and an F Panel” presentation

(½h) shooting components for a prospective homage to Salvador Dali

(½h) updating this journal

(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – Print Competition, set subject: “Abandoned Places” my entries below:

Image	…..	Comment
		Set Subject “Abandoned Beach” 16 Not really abandoned and would have been better were it sharp from front to back
		Open “Backward Looking Hyena” Help back – 19
		Open “Stripes” 18 Head of zebra too close to the edge of the frame. Otherwise, very clever
		Open “Tomlin Gorge Composite” 17 Too complicated

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12^th January 2026

Hours 10,415 to 10,418

(2h) Cast of Characters for my “100 Years of Surrealism, 10,000 hours of photography and an F Panel” presentation

Surrealist font: Didot

(2h) Amersham Photographic Club – PDI Competition my entries below:

Image	…..	Comment
		“Into the Blue” Held back – 20 & 1st Place Artistic ability and good technical detail
		“Stripes” Held back – 20 & 3rd Place Very artistic and very clever

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11^th January 2026

Hour 10,413 to 10,414

(½h) updating this journal

(½h) YouTube, Inventing Romance Studies: “On André Breton, Nadja“

(1h) Cast of Characters for my “100 Years of Surrealism …” presentation

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10^th January 2026

Hours 10,411 to 10,412

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9^th January 2026

Hour 10,410

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8^th January 2026

Hours 10,407 to 10,409

(2h) preparing prints and PDIs for next week’s competitions

(1h) minor tweaks to images including lightening the eyes of zebras, etc.

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7^th January 2026

Hours 10,404 to 10,406

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6^th January 2026

Hours 10,401 to 10,403

(½h) updating this journal

(½h) working on another version of the Zebra stripes picture

(½h) preparing images for this evening’s meeting at the SPPC

(½h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – favourite members’ pictures

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5^th January 2026

Hours 10,399 to 10,400

(1½h) Amersham Photographic Society – Speaker – Guy Edwardes ‘Creative Nature’

• lots of use of off-camera flash
  • uses the Godox V1, like me, (see “Flashes and Lighting Modifiers“)
  • some defuser/ small softbox – usually hand held (camera in one hand flash in the other)
  • usually only one light source
• artificial backgrounds
• shoot mainly in manual mode to avoid changes in the background that might otherwise throw off the settings

(½h) researching the poetry of André Breton

Ma femme aux cheveux de feu de bois (My wife whose hair is firewood)”

André Breton, Union Libre, 1931 (first line)

• changes the nature of language to that of free association
• like Magritte’s “Treachery of Images”, it breaks the contract between description and truth
• considered a poetic summary of his Surrealist Manifesto

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4^th January 2026

Hours 10,397 to 10,398

(½h) YouTube: MoMa: “Helen Mirren on Vasily Kandinsky“

The skill is developing the happy accident”

Francis Bacon

(½h) updating this journal

(1h) adding some AI generated images to my “100 years of Surrealism, 10,000 hours of photography and an F Panel” presentation and organising the cast of characters

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3^rd January 2026

Hour 10,396

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2^nd January 2026

Hours 10,388 to 10,395

“Stanbrook Abbey Christmas 2025”

(1h) researching abstraction:

I asked ChatGPT for suggestion on how to learn more about abstract art, it suggested:

• Kandinski – “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” – I ordered the book
• Clement Greenberg – “Modernist Painting” (Summary by Timothy Quigley, 1996)

YouTube: Jude Shimer: “The Animated Theories of Clement Greenberg“

“A painting is to be looked At, not Into“
Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting”, 1961

Greenberg suggests that modernism forces the viewer to first look at a painting as a painted surface and only later as any kind of picture. Contrast with my friend and mentor, Chris Palmer (doyen of both the RPS and London Salon), who regularly implores people to look into pictures not just at them. As with many profound philosophical statements, that are true, the exact opposite is often also true

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1^st January 2026

Hours 10,386 to 10,387

(1h) updating this journal, including all the new month and new year admin

(½h) reset the file naming on my cameras for the new year (first established on 27^th January 2023)

(½h) editing and processing the images shot over the last few days

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(December 2025)