Up towards Fleetwood there are inlets with lots of beached and rotting boats. And lots of mud. There are a variety of locations that offer amazing photographic possibilities.

A really good exercise would be to go back and find all the images you missed. Get in close, really start to look and see endless potential. For a start, close ups of parts of that car could give you endless variation.

We all tend to skim a scene with our eyes and we're luckly if something jumps out, but when we start to really look and see the world....

It was shot at an animal sanctuary by available light. It's just that this particular shot had a deep shadow in the background and she's chosen a levels setting that renders it almost black.

You can go through a double door access (an airlock in effect) to walk amongst the monkeys and we noticed that they were very interested in my 55-300mm lens. All we did was put the lens close to a monkey or two and they tended to grab hold of it to have a closer look at the reflections in the front element. Sue took advantage of that and she got all the shots!

It just goes to show that these days we don't believe the shots we are looking at, but in this case it's as straight as a shot can get.

Someone in yellow wellies stood in the middle of a dry field on a hot summer day holding an umbrella is odd or incongruous (I must stop doing it...)but a figure shrouded in mist is mysterious. Just as an example!

Thanks, Mannesty, that's the other side of the argument. If we never trust anyone, we never communicate with anyone and end up isolated and all the poorer for that.

So maybe we have to take risks, we just use common sense as much as we can.

Can anyone explain the mysterious dearth of entries for the "Mysterious" competition.:

And Chris A, I've now reminded you to enter (or at least if you read this I have) so if you haven'y already then don't forget!

There could well be a danger if you don't use any account, because how many of us would check something that we had not used for years?

At the same time you might want to think about old unused e-mail addresses, internet banking for closed accounts and credit cards and other sundry items.

It's difficult to avoid danger altogether though.

Hi Andy

Welcome to the forum.

I'm a great believer is using only Pentax lenses, for reasons of consistency of colour balance, positioning of controls for faster operation, image quality, compactness and better resale values for a start. On the other hand, two lenses we can afford to have will be more useful than just one lens that breaks the bank. So there is a balance that only you can decide on.

Why not try the lenses you have, discover their strengths and weaknesses and then you'll be in a better position to know what you want next. If that means getting a new set of lenses, then so be it and the unwanted ones can always go to eBay!

The trouble may well be that 28mm on digital is not very wide. I know you don't want me to say it, but Photoshop does indeed offer one possible solution.

The other one is to use the widest lens you can get (the 12-24mm in my case) and keep the camera back absolutely vertical. You will get lots of empty foreground, but the top part of the picture will be rectilinear and the unwanted parts can be cropped off.

I think it's great that you are thinking the right way round. You have pre-visualised the image that you want and now all you need to do is find the location and make the photograph.

I find working that way much more satisfying than just wandering around hoping to see something interesting. It's a more focused approach.

You will find your location, you just need to search it out.