Before I get to this picture, a word about the gap in my PADs. I've come to the conclusion that June is a month in which the stars simply do not align for me and PADing. Or maybe it's just winter. Last year the 40D and/or the 24-105 were out of service for a lot of that time. This year I was out of service for quite a bit of June, with a really unpleasant cold and/or 'flu that I just couldn't shake and still have a remaining cough from. In fact I do have some other PADs from the last few weeks to put up, but nothing great.

For quite a bit of that period I held the line on taking a PAD each and every day with the aspiration of making it to the end of the year, but truth be told I was feeling sick, and I was getting quite sick of the process of taking and processing a PAD each day. This was especially so as there were days when I was only out to get a shot, rather than taking a bit of time to (try at least) to get a good or interesting or at worst experimental shot. At some point during the last month I wondered "is this the best use of my time?", answered myself "no it isn't", missed one day... and with that the spell was broken as there would be no coming back from that to do the whole year anyway. So with that monkey off my back I'm going to do what I did for a while last year, but with no more multi-week gaps. There will be weeks when I shoot 7 images. There will be weeks when I shoot one or two. There will be no more weeks where I shoot none.

Now to this image. This is me in "Influenced By The Ghost Of Edward Hopper" mode again. I've seen this park in the pre-dawn light but have never had a chance to shoot it. In fact, I did quite a few shots with the intention of merging them into HDR which indeed I did... but in the end I didn't like the result better than the "standard" image. Frankly pulling out the detail on the Nokia building at the rear really doesn't enhance the image; quite the opposite in fact, as the loss of detail, rendering it as a mostly black object with a few illuminated windows, makes it amplify the sense of emptiness of this place.

Of course it won't always be so; come Monday lunchtime there will be mothers and children, office workers and even the odd tourist enjoying the sunny open space by the water. But for now, at this time of the morning? It's a place with a distinctly lonely feel to it, however much lighting it has.