365 to 42

Well it's been nearly 6 weeks since I last had chance to update the blog so this really is not as active a blog as I would have wanted, but then I am a photographer first and not a writer. I said last time that I wanted to make this blog a bit more personal than it had become and less about work, but the trouble with that is that my work is also my passion and so very hard to separate from my personal side. I think that it will just have to be less corporate than my work blog so if you are easily upset be warned. That said I've nothing to rant about, no crisis on the horizon and my life is going great, I'm even getting time to blog! My biggest challenge is keeping ahead of my paper work and planning to move the business forward. The big job that I will have to start soon is to catalogue all my images, or at least those that my be saleable, around 6000. This task is needed so that I can sell pictures more easily on line and via outlets, at the moment I identify the pictures...

I've been blogging for more than 4 years and in that time have posted nearly 1500 post that have been seen over 150,000 times in 174 countries. Not bad for something that was only going to last a year and I'm not done yet. It's been a few weeks or even months since I last posted, depending on which of my blogs you read and this post is an explanation as to why and a update on what I'm planning next and is being posted on all my blogs (apologies if you follow more than one as you will get this multiple times). First a bit of history...       Turning 41 is a bit of a let down, you have had your big party for your 40th and 41 is just another year older, so with that in mind I decided to mark my 41st year by blogging a photo a day, not really knowing what a blog was or what a mammoth task it would be. That small decision made over a ten minute car journey changed my life. It changed what was a hobby, all be it quite an obsessive one, in to a full time career and...

Dusk till Dawn is the name of my latest exhibition displayed in the Foxlowe, The Market Place, Leek from the 1st of May to the 31st May 2012. The free exhibition, “Dusk till Dawn” is exploration of photography when the sun has gone down. Pho•tog•ra•phy \fə-ˈtä-grə-fē\ The process or art of producing images of objects on sensitized surfaces by the action of light. Night  \ˈnīt\ The time from dusk to dawn when no sunlight is visible. Dusk till Dawn \ˈdəsk til dän\ A collection of 12 images captured between sunset and sunrise. The idea for the exhibition came to me as the nights started to draw in last September. My days were taken up with running a full time photography business and daylight hours were reducing, giving me less time to take photographs.  A chance comment on a photography forum about the joys of night time photography, coming right at the moment that I was complaining about the lack of daylight, lead me to flip the situation and see the winter as ...

Life is just so busy, you never seem to have enough time to get the really important things done and you miss loads of other stuff in the process. Then all of a sudden something happens that stops you in your tracks and makes you think. My Mum had a heart attack on Easter Sunday, she fine, it was only a very mild one, more a warning really, but it could have been much worse, I lost my Dad to one when I was only 9. Then yesterday a lad I knew from school and had reconnected with on Facebook, in fact spent some of last week following his adventures in Dublin on holiday, die yesterday. Some things just stop you and make you think. These 2 event did just that. My first thought on hearing about Mum was that I might have never seen her again, and if that had been the case did I have any thing I wish I had said to her, in this case I could answer no, she knows how much I love her and how great I think she is. I think that losing someone close at such an early age has meant that I normally try...

Well it's been sometime since I had a moment to update this blog, March really has been mad, I've lots going on and even more planned and may even find time to take some photos. Firstly, The free exhibition, “Canal Side” an attempt to capture the many faces of the canal in all weathers and seasons, is now wonderfully displayed in the Cafe Clique, Getliffe’s yard, Leek, Staffordshire until the end of April 2012. The images are a mix of digital photographs and slides, taken along the Leek and Caldon branches of the Trent and Mersey Canal over a number of years and most of the images are being exhibited for the first time. Second my new exhibition Dusk till Dawn is to start on the 1st of May at the Foxlow and will run for the whole of May. I will also be at Art in the park on the 12th and 13th of May, more details on both nearer the time. The Leek United building society has also changed it's web site to show my spring photos, the Winter ones went down very well so I'm ho...

I've blogged for quite a few years and very early on I learned that if you open your self up to comments not all of them would be positive. My first negative comment took me by surprise and really upset me, until I realised it was a good friend having a laugh, but by then I had gone through the emotions associated with the comment and come to terms with them. Over the next few years I've had the odd bad comment and a fair share of spam, but have kept the comments free from any restrictions or censorship, but I do delete spam. A few weeks ago I received a very poor comment regarding one of my photos, but before I could respond one of my readers beat me too it Anonymous my 12 yr old can take a better pic than that lol Alison Worrall Nice reflections and colours, my fave bridge subject is Cherry eye further along the canal. Don't fancy meeting a 12 year old of such prodigious talent with such a gutless anonymous parent. My comment was "After blogging for over 4 years I ha...

The free exhibition, “Canal Side” is an attempt to capture the many faces of the canal in all weathers and seasons and is wonderfully displayed in the Cafe Clique, Getliffe’s yard, Leek, Staffordshire from the 1st to the 31st March 2012. The canal has been part of my life for over 15 years since moving to our current house over looking tunnel pool near Leek. It's the first thing I see every morning, its proximity means that a quick walk nearly always includes a stretch of it's banks and its ever changing face means I never tire of it. Over the years the canal has featured in many of my images but this is the first time that it has had star billing. The images are a mix of digital photographs and slides, taken along the Leek and Caldon branches of the Trent and Mersey Canal over a number of years and most of the images are being exhibited for the first time. This small stretch of canal, only about 10 miles in length, running down the picturesque Churnet Valley, it is very light...