Well I have had a flurry of new subscribers to this blog recently; so i will take this opportunity to say thank you and welcome. And I hope that the images you see and the words that I write move you in some way.

So a good opportunity for me to take up a challenge posed by Muse&Mentor; why am I doing this; a partially self-referencing question from that person as it was that person who challenged me to start up the blog in the first place. Still, here goes …

I was given my first camera by my parents when I was 7; a Brownie 127. All you could do was wind on the film, point, click. I loved the ability to capture moments, places, memories yet had outgrown it within a week and had to wait another 6 years (i.e. forever at that age) to get my first ‘real’ camera, a 35mm rangefinder semi-automatic, a Petri 7s. The picture quality was a quantum leap yet I was still frustrated by the inability to do much more than capture the moment. And it took another 7 years to progress to my first SLR, an Exacta RTL 1000 and from there through Minolta XE5s, Canon EOS 50, Canon 30D to my current Canon 60D with many ‘sidelines’ on the way such as my lovely but oh so heavy (difficult when you like to take pictures half way up a mountain) Bronica, Fed , Zorki, Lubitel, and various underwater cameras. And at each stage the ability to do more than just capture a moment but instead to create images increased; after all we don’t see in telephoto so even a simple telephoto lens ‘creates’ an image we don’t truly see.  And with the advent of digital and photoshop the possibilities to create images are huge, and all down to the creativity, observation and imagination of the image maker.

And with this two things drive me. Firstly, concerns my Father. He had been a keen photographer before I was born, bizarrely gave it up when I had my first camera, and then took it up again some 20 years later. And on his death, my Mother, not in any sense an acrimonious act, decided she did not have room for all his photographs when she moved from their house to a small apartment, and threw them all out. All that effort, some good photographs and then …. gone!

And secondly, with encouragement from Mentor&Muse, plus some growing self belief, i feel that the images I am creating can move people and, particularly as a primarily landscape photographer, to show them what a fascinating, beautiful and intricate globe we live upon with its ever changing patterns of wind and rocks and water; vast vistas and, for me, often small details. Patterns and textures of our still beautiful and complex planet; images that move me, and I hope I will move others, to inspire you perhaps, to fascinate you; even annoying you enough to do something different and your way is fine by me.

And so this blog ensures that at least some of my images are no longer tied to my lifespan; they exist for others to see. And they exist, hopefully, to remind us of our wonderful constantly changing planet; Gaia.

I have just come back from a walking trip to the English Lake District with my son. This image comes from that trip. It is just a small pond we walked past as we walked down from a mountain called Dale Head. And there are many such ponds and mostly people just ignore them. Yet I liked it and hope you do too.