365 to 42

Today was just going to be a follow on to the holiday stories, but an email waiting for me when I logged on has changed that. One of my favourite blogs has gone “invitation only” and that has re awakened an internal debate over the nature of blogging. I started blogging as a challenge and as a way of getting my photos to a larger audience, I ended up being able to spell audience right first try (really not bad for me as I’m Dyslexic and before starting this hardly strung 3 words together) and finding myself interacting with people all over the world (my first thought when hearing of an earthquake or Tsunami is “I hope no one I know is hurt”). Unintended benefits of doing the blog are that people I know now read it, which is great, but it does have the drawback that some things which I could talk about, if it was an anonymous blog, have to stay secret for fear that they could damage friendships, family harmony or job prospects. A number of blogs that I have read over the years have gon...

Blog of the week time, after a break for the holiday, this one is a blog close to my own heart, a daily photo blog. When I start this blog I had no idea what a commitment it would be and having kept it up for the full year now understand what it takes to keep producing good, interesting photos day after day, while also trying to have a life. Lisa from Glimpses through the mashrabeya manages to keep giving us interesting and inspiring photos day after day, so inspiring that they have influenced the way I both take and look at pictures, so go and be inspired at Glimpses through the mashrabeya. On a similar note I have just posted the next part of my photo course at Brett Trafford photography blog , all about how to improve your technique. Today I have just been declared fit to return to the land of the living by my doctor, it has been nearly 6 months but I can now sustain long enough periods at the computer to return to work, although on a limited basis at the moment. This is great news...

Our first adventure into big Scottish mountains started off with a bit of a navigational error on my part, I took the wrong turn, the very first turn off the road and then followed the wrong path too the middle of a wood, where it ran out and left us a bit bemused as to what to do next. Being as it was a hot day and we really did not have the time to back track our steps, we, once having found where we were, headed through the trees to the side of a little loch which had a lovely walk around it called the Lochan trail. This is the spot today’s picture was taken from, a very lucky accident had lead us to a most wonderful spot and far from it being a day wasted it became a day to treasure. The mountain in the picture was our target for the day, the Pap of Glen Coe and we managed to clime it the following day with much less trouble. The mountain is only small by Scottish standards but still a fair climb with enough height to make me shake a bit on the last clamber to the summit. We left G...

One of the things putting us off a trip to Scotland was the distance involved just to get any where; it takes us 3 hours just to reach the boarder and another hour to get past Glasgow and into the wilder countryside. When you think that our normal drive to the Lake District takes only 3 hours to get right to the centre, we both faced the longer run with some trepidation, who wants to spend so long in a car when you pass such great walking only a couple of hours into the journey? The answer was to brake up the drive with a stop for a walk on route and for the run up we chose Moffat or a hill just out side of there. When the walk was done we headed back to the town for a meal before carrying on to our over night stop, that’s when I fell in love with Moffat. It is just a lovely little town, peopled with great folk and just enough shops to make it interesting without over whelming you, we eat in a lovely hotel where the staff were perfect and the meal was eaten, to the accompaniment of a h...

Holiday time again, I’ve just got back from touring Scotland over the last week and am now back trying to catch up on all the jobs I’ve been putting off till after the holiday (it seemed such a long time away and now its here). It has been years since I visited Scotland and now I remember why I love it so much, it’s not the views, the countryside, the buildings or the weather (which was warm and sunny for nearly the whole week) it’s the people. From the moment we stepped out of the car in Moffat we came across loads of warm friendly people, who all proceeded to talk to us about the places we were at and the places we should see, the locals all spoke with a pride you just don’t seem to find in England and the tourists spoke with a touch of awe over what they had seen. So while I catch up here on all my jobs here is a shot of Eilean Donan castle and if it looks familiar here is a list of films it has been in, The Master of Ballantrae (1953), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Hi...

Challenges, we face these every day, rude people, crap drivers (women in 4x4 in supermarket car parks) or just trying to write a post while listening to you tube (KT Tunsall doing Teenage kicks!) but some challenges are ones we put ourselves through and may plan them for years before having to face them. For me the greatest challenges so far have been unplanned whims, building a VW beetle from scratch (no prior experience!) hitch hiking the length of the country and doing a daily blog for a year. Other challenges are ahead in my future like walking the Pennine way, a long way in the future as well as in distance; this picture is of the Pennine way or at least a small part as it heads over Pen-y-Ghent in Yorkshire. Closer in time is the challenge to change the direction of my life as now I’m well on the road to full fitness I feel I have less time to waste and want to make a bigger impact on the world and have more control over my life, just the simple stuff then! ---------------- Now p...

After last weeks blog of the week, this weeks is again all about a face, or the impression of a face. Faces in places is a photographic collection of faces found in everyday places, but not real faces. Pop over to the site to see as it would take longer to sum up such a great idea, but be warned you will start seeing faces every where. Today’s picture is of a money tree, again not quite what the name brings to mind but a great subject for a photo, this tree is on the waterfall walk just out side Ingleton. ---------------- Now playing: Adam and the ants - Never Trust a Man (With Egg on His Face) via FoxyTunes

Kennedy, Lennon and 9/11; no it is not a list of bad things that have happened in America, but a list of time defining moments, you could add to this princess Diana and going back in time there are probable a lot more you could use. They all have one thing in common; you will know where you were when you heard about them, it’s like a time stamp in your life. John Lennon I heard about, fittingly enough, in a music room at school, I had no real idea who he was (not a big Beatles fan) and still cannot see the point in all the acclaim for his music, but the event stuck in my mind as one of the clearest memories from my school days. Princess Diana I heard about off the news one morning as I was getting ready for work, it had a feeling of unreality about the whole thing. Driving work on the day of her funeral I remember how empty every where looked, like the whole country was in morning. 9/11 stands out because once it had become clear what had happened you just knew the world had changed. I...

I see the light, after a few days of cloud and rain this morning dawns with a cloud inversion and a bright blue sky. It’s the first morning that I have wanted to grab my camera and head to the hills in a very long time; it just shows what a difference a bit of sun can do. So that’s what I did, I stopped writing this post and went out for 3 hours onto the hills above Leek, just the way to start the day. Another picture from our trip to Egypt, a sunset over the Nile. ---------------- Now playing: Suzanne Vega - Cracking via FoxyTunes

Blog of the week this week is less of a blog and more a daily photo site, but I like it and feel you will too. It’s called The Adaption to My Generation and is a photo a day of the photographers face from 1998, the whole set are shown as a video that runs for just short of 2 mins and is fascinating to watch, it is such a cool idea. The new web site, bretttrafford.com now shows on Google, it took only 2 days; the last site took 6 months to appear in the search engines so I’m very happy at that and will be tweaking the site over the coming weeks so any feed back would be appreciated. Photo today was taken back in 2004 on our holiday to Egypt, not knowing what to expect I only took a digital compact camera , next time I’m taking my full kit as the place is just fantastic. ---------------- Now playing: Neil Diamond - Love On The Rocks via FoxyTunes

Some times fate forces your hand and this is one of the prime examples, as I mentioned earlier I have had some problems with my web site host and now because of their change in policy I have had to rethink my whole web strategy. For nearly a year I have been unhappy with my main web site but have been unable, because of time or fitness, to do anything about it, but now I have had to make the changes that have been in mind for so long. So meet the new site, Bretttrafford.com So what’s new, well the layout is all new and is based on my excellent business cards designed exclusively for me by Trevor Bass. The navigation is always on screen so hoping around the site should be a lot faster. The links at the moment are quite limited as I have had to do all of this in quite a rush and am not really a web site designer, but it is built so I can add to it very easily. The sales link goes straight to my Red bubble site and gives you the chance to buy the images in a number of formats and preview ...

Yorkshire, the name for me conjures up images of grim northern towns or bleak farm covered hills, rain and darkness predominate and the people gruff and taciturn. So I was looking forward to our camping trip in the middle of the wettest summer I’ve ever known. We pitched the tent on a little site just outside of the village of Austwick, in between rain showers and in high wind. The site was nice and flat with about ¾ of the field filled by the time the sun set and very little noise from the site on the first night. Sunday was spent doing touristy visits to the local villages and ended with me having to change a tyre on a supermarket car park after hitting a kerb at high speed. Back at the camp site the numbers had dropped considerably and we all settled down to a quite night, until the disco started. Site rules stated that all noise should stop at 11:00, so at 10:45 at the other end of the field, from within a complex of tents and gazebos came the very loud sound of a 70’s disco. Not b...