Some of the best pictures are one hundred yards from your doorstep. Or less..

Given how much time we spend in our homes, it’s surprising that many photographers feel they have to journey to remote, exotic locations in search of picture opportunities. They arrive tired, are in a strange location which they have no time to ‘learn’, and leave frustrated. You must make the return flight and have to make do with whatever weather is around at the time.

By contrast, the circle centered on your home, with a 100 yard radius, provides some of the best photographic opportunities. You know the area, are rested and have no deadlines. There is no return flight. And you can wait for the weather to come to you.

Here are a couple snaps, taken over the years, all within 100 yards or less of where my bed was the previous night. More to come over the next few weekends.

100 yards. San Diego, California. M2, 35mm.

5 yards. Templeton, California. 5D, 24-105mm

For more on this theme, please click here.

What’s not to like about the evening sun?

The hat

Compare with the previous snap. Here, color does the trick.

Shutter lag need not apply.

Snap!

The fast shutter response of the Panasonic Lumix LX-1 makes this sort of thing easy. Black and white keeps the clutter down.

If you dislike dogs, don’t bother viewing this.

If your parents were wise enough to expose you to the four legged set – no, not cats or horses – when you were a child, chances are you turned out pretty well. After all, anyone who can conduct a conversation with a dog knows that this is a pursuit of an intellectual kind on a level sadly lost to those lonely souls who have never enjoyed canine company.

I do not have the keyword ‘dogs’ in my Aperture library. It simply never occurred to me to do that. But leafing through my early monochrome snaps the other day, I was struck by the sheer number of pictures where a pup featured heavily in the subject matter.

Some maintain that people ‘own’ dogs simply because of the guaranteed love the animals unselfishly offer. Well, that may be true for Labradors and Golden Retrievers, hardly the intellectual end of the genus dog, but for me I like a little more challenge and discourse in my canine relationships, meaning it starts and stops with terriers. These chaps can give you a fair run for the money when it comes to politics, economics or even affairs of the heart, and who ever encountered a terrier interested in political office? No, terriers are too smart and honest for that.

So here, without more ado, are some old doggy snaps from the archive which just happen to feature special canines. And, in my book, all dogs are special. Why, there’s even a terrier or two to be found here.

Greenwich, London

Cruft’s Dog Show, London

Brighton, England

Kensington, London

Tuileries Gardens, Paris

Montmartre, Paris

Cruft’s Dog Show, London

16:9 is really tall!

As I mentioned earlier, I’m getting more serious about using the full frame in widescreen format. That is what the Panasonic Lumix LX-1 delivers and it’s really a pretty exciting experience to see images this wide …. or tall.

Here’s my 2006 Halloween picture – no drama. Just one lonely, uncarved pumpkin lolling around in the lovely afternoon light, minding its own business. A Hopper pumpkin, if you like.

By contrast, this sad scene of an abandoned toy in an alleyway, snapped seconds later, is in monochrome, to heighten the feeling of that moment:

Snapped while strolling with Bert the Border Terrier, which confirms that the only good camera is the one you have with you. Or, in the case of the LX-1, the one you have just whipped out of your pocket.