Loy Krathong yesterday, an ancient festival where Thai people pay respect to the spirits of the waters by floating a small boat made of natural materials. By doing so the cast away their cares and start afresh.

Alternatively, it is an opportunity to get pissed and blow your hand off with a home-made firework.

She who must be obeyed was insistent we do the boat floating bit; so once I had dragged my sweaty body back from the polo (3,300 photos this weekend, just in case you were wondering), it was out on the street to purchase our krathong. Dismissing the polystyrene offerings as being ecologically unfriendly (dismissed a little too hastily I thought, they were substantially cheaper), she decided on two heart shaped Titanics made from coconut shells and corn husks.

In between shooting polo, processing polo photographs and having the occasional shit; I am setting up a site to display and hopefully sell some of my polo masterpieces to those who sit on the horses. For this I need a banner/logo thingie; and today I borrowed a stick (mallet?) and a ball and stuck them next to the camera.

Finally finished the processing from last weekend this morning, and off again this afternoon for the start of another tournament. Will spare you the horse photo onslaught, but I quite liked this. He hasn’t missed the ball, he is hitting it backwards. I can’t imagine how hard this is; because I can’t even imagine sitting on a horse, even one that has been heavily sedated.

Closing in for the kill…..

A long time (the 1930s), in a land far away (Germany), a company called Leitz produced a rather fancy looking lens which was stuck on the front of Leica cameras and sold for large amounts of cash.

Excellent finish to the Formula One season on Sunday evening. Four men with a chance at the championship and, although Mark Webber is a good guy and would have been a popular winner, I didn’t care who won as long as it wasn’t Mr. Moan Alonso. So it was delightful to watch him being stuck behind Petrov for much of the race while Vettel romped away with the win and the championship. Vettel is an amusing young man with a very English sense of humour (a most unusual German) and enough talent to ensure this won’t be his last championship.

It’s been a great season with plenty of intrigue and some good racing; made all the better by my decision to abandon the pile of steaming crap that is the Star Sports coverage and watch the BBC via my computer. Close to four hours of non-stop coverage of race day, with an hour of interest before the race and the post-race forum which never fails to amuse. Eddie Jordan is a bit of an idiot at times, but he has a unique talent for capturing people to interview. On Sunday he dived into a melee of the world’s press, extracted Vettel and placed a BBC microphone in his hands. Irish balls.

Apart from the BBC, the other surprisingly pleasant addition to the F1 experience has been Twitter. Many of the teams, especially lower down the grid, provide plentiful updates throughout the race weekend. And then there are the assorted pundits, journalist and photographers who pitch in with information. Best of all has been @GrandPrixDiary, who has taken the piss out of whole enterprise and is always good for a giggle during the race. He also has a website, where he reveals shocking, if totally untrue, facts about the GP circus. In the last race, the blame for Alonso’s failure to clinch the championship was laid at the door of whoever came up with the strategy. GrandPrixDiary revealed why Ferrari’s chief strategist had been distracted:

Light permitting, you could photograph sports with a high speed shutter and get razor sharp images; but with no sense of movement. So the trick is to reduce the shutter speed so the photo shows some motion blur, but not so slow that all you get is shaky hands blur.

When shooting polo I find 1/640th second gives sharp images, with some blurring in the hoof area to confirm that the horses are not just frozen in mid-air. As the day wears on and the light fades, I reduce the shutter speed and hope for some extra action blur, but without Spike shaky hand blur. Success is limited.

But this one worked quite well. Light was crap and the colours were faded, so black and white was the answer.

I love taking photos. And if the location is a sunny field out in the countryside with horses charging around and a glass of very cold white wine waiting at the end of the day, then I am all for it.

I also love arriving home, downloading my shots onto the computer, and seeing what I might have taken that will inadvertently please me. This applies for a couple of hundred shots, but not for the 3,247 photos I ended up with after three days at the polo field this weekend. This means many, many hours staring at photos of horses and riders in assorted poses; deleting the majority and tarting up those that remain to make them look acceptable. I am estimating completion on Friday morning, just in time to load up the gear and start all over again on Friday afternoon for another three days of shooting.

Progress today has been patchy. I started the day by driving to the airport to collect she who must be obeyed, to save her from waiting an hour or so for a bus. This was an act of extreme charity and I will remind her of it for several days. Then a few photos processed before lunch, then a few more before a walk on the beach before sunset was suggested. Had to take the GF1 of course. Having seen the resulting photo, kicking myself for not getting lower and getting a better outline of the boat.

Slightly less mist and a touch more sunshine made for some pleasing shots this afternoon.

Keep your eye on the ball, part one: