I've hardly had time to learn how to use my new camera but yesterday the sun came out and I headed off for some waste ground bordering the sea where I planned to try out some of its features. I quite like photographing in bleak places where you really have to look for shots, but I don't get out much, and since my last visit the waste ground had been fenced off - for a new housing development. Noting the security cameras I decided not to scale the fence but drove on and eventually stopped at a small beach. By now the sun had disappeared and a bitter wind was blowing, but once I got down onto the shore I became absorbed in some of the natural 'abstracts' there. Most, like the one above, were composed of a mixture of sand, stones, and human detritus in various stages of decomposition. These random elements occasionally fall together in (to me) visually satisfying, strange or ambiguous ways, and the search for them becomes a form of beach-combing. The camera is great but after half an hour my fingers were too numb to operate it any longer. I plan to go back, but, of course, by then the small sad beach will have become a fully-fledged Marina, with deep-sea Aquarium, Holiday Inn and Fitness Club.