Almost every week I have at least one walk along the front at Gravesend at lunchtime, camera strapped to my back and thinking to myself ‘I doubt whether I can find anything new to photograph’ ... and every time I come back with some reasonable ‘new’ shots. It helps that Gravesend is quite an interesting place when you get to know it but from a photographic point of view you have to think of different lenses, different perspective, different light, different people and for me this week .. different filters.

I used both the polarising filter and tried out a new set of neutral density graduated filters whilst I walked along the front and there’s no doubt that it helped to inspire me. Perhaps the photos aren’t that good but it is very easy to get in to a rut with photography where you only want to  take elusive die for pictures which only come along once in a while! I particularly like the photo of the area known as the Canal Basin with the reflection of the clouds in the water, which were only obvious once I rotated the polarising filter ... if only I could have got some foreground interest in the shape of a large leaf or something similar in the bottom right hand corner then it could have been a classic - but, hey ho, I’m happy!

Most of the photos with very blue skies and fluffy clouds are thanks to the polariser or the filters although I have to say that the Nikon D300 is very good at dealing with contrast helped along with a few tweaks in Adobe Lightroom.

Normal assortment of ships and other shots taken from either side of the river ... the Lord Nelson training ship arriving at Gravesend with PLA’s London River House and Port Control Centre in the background is probably my personal favourite view of the week.