Up above Derwentwater there is a tiny hamlet and tarn; both called Watendlath. Great name! And when I first went there 50 years ago it was a run down fairly derelict little hamlet. But time and tourism march on and it has been smartened up and there are, inevitably, a couple of tea shops, yet the essential character remains, a sheep farming hamlet built out of local grey slate … but you have to pay £3 to park there now. And this pretty bridge is where the tarn flows out into the stream that eventually drops down to the lake. It is a pack horse bridge and hints at a more industrial past. The Lake District has (or had before they dug holes into poor Gaia) mineral wealth; copper, tungsten, lead, and where this is lead there is silver. And paths and cobbled roads were built for packhorses to drag laden carts to smelters and ports, so they had to be strong, and this pretty shape is strong. And the classic histories say the mining only goes back to the 18^th century; but I don’t believe it. The Romans were very interested in the area with forts at Ambleside, Hardknott and Ravenglass plus many cobbled Roman roads and routes. And the Romans did not visit and fortify places for the pretty scenery; they were hungry for mineral resources and preferred to take rather than buy. So does this route go back that far; who knows; only Gaia perhaps.

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.

This is all about the textures and patterns created by wind, rain, and waves on the side of a bay in Australia. The rock is a sandy limestone … now as an ex geologist that ought to be a contradiction in terms, you get limestone from deposition of shells and skeletons in very quite conditions with now influx of sand or silt … otherwise you get sandstone with fossils … but Gaia has her whims and in this southern corner of Australia she specialised in sandy limestones. And this creates landscapes on a grand scale (12 apostles … now 7.5, Loch Ard Gorge and more) and on a very small scale in this corner of a bay. As ever, it pays to think and look at the detail sometimes.

And now I am off for a few days in my beloved Cumbria … a few thousand images I feel. See you when I’m back.

Well these two very different images will end my tree theme for now. It has been difficult and though it is good to try and push myself there are few images, perhaps the first in the theme, that I feel happy with. Perhaps a lesson for all; we cannot be good photoimaginators  for every topic. So Mentor&Muse will be pleased that (a) I tried something different and (b) I need to delete some stuff from my hard drive.

The first image is a simple winter trees shot. It was taken on a simple 5mp compact that bI had in my compact as I trudged back from the station having failed to get into work; a few cm of snow and the UK rail system becomes a pile of scrap iron. So the lesson is always carry a camera, and it does not have to be a high spec camera to capture a pretty image. Gaia in the icebox.

And the second is just some tree bark, silver birch to be precise. And again a lesson; sometimes you don’t have to get the whole tree, or the whole anything for that matter; there can be interest and beauty in just a small detail.

Well it is back to work having not felt much like blogging in the aftermath of my cat’s demise. And hard work it is too; struggling with a subject that is really not my greatest forte. Yet that is good sometimes; trying to push outside my comfort zone and learning things in the process. These ar two contrasting images; the one is from dense Australian temperate jungle in New South Wales, the other from a forested area on the English South Downs… I think you can work out which is which. They both were problematical firstly in even attempting to control the contrast between the arboreal shade and the sunlit patches, and secondly in the framing … zoom back to get the feet and tops of the trees yet lose any sense of ‘forest’ or zoom in to get the feeling of crowded competition yet lose tops and bottoms. I have much to learn, yet I need to persist and the exercise of trying to blog this subject is helping to teach me.

The very first post in this blog was of my cat, Humbug. I uploaded the photograph bby accident and the thought ‘well why not’.

I came home on Monday to find her dead. She was 17 years and 3 months old. She had survived being abandoned in a garden shed as a kitten, a very virulent cancer when she was 7 that ‘should’ have killed her within months, diabetes (can you imagine the fun of giving a cat insulin injections twice a day, for several years, and then renal failure for 9 months (the vet gave her 6 months to live); yet finally she died. She was a great cat. As Muse&Mentor put it she really engaged with you. OK it was often complaints about the quality/quantity of food, sardines, water, tickles, strokes, warm laps and soft duvets … but she didn’t just stomp of and sulk, she explained your inadequacies as a servant … she was a cat. She was a great cat. And now she has gone yet the memories remain of her company, her warmth and her conversation.

And she had many adventures, from climbing to the top of a pine tree, complaining about the lack of a ladder to get down (but did it on her own anyway), to being a terror of the wildlife in the garden (as my son put it ‘you knew you were in trouble when she was coming through the cat flap backwards’) and stalking her own tail, which she never really regarded as part of her.

And these photographs (plus unapologetically repeating the original)  are taken with the only dog she would really tolerate and be a friend to, my spaniel Bella, alas also deceased a few years back. And Bella was also called Princess, because she was lovely and acted like one. So Humbug was also known as Duchess … also Little Miss Grumpy Drawers, Buglet and Kitty.

So those who are pet people will understand my sadness; others may think I am a little mad. I care not. It is a happy thing that these little creatures choose to share their lives with us, their companionship, their adventures, their love. Life is sweet.

This is hard work. Having set myself the challenge of doing a tree series I am struggling. I really am at my best with water. But the process teaches me two lessons to share. As an aspiring artist I do have to challenge myself and this series is one of those challenges. And yet as an inveterate hoarder, despite the fact that disk storage is so cheap, just looking at my tree photographs, I do know I have to do a lot of deleting. Whilst, as I have said earlier in this blog, one of the joys of digital is to be able to experiment and take lots of photographs; one of the challenges is in recognising those photographs that neither bring back strong memories of a happy event nor quite make the grade … and delete them.

This image comes from one of the worst holidays I have ever had. It was a walking holiday on the Greek island of Evia in September. OK, we were unlucky with the weather … Greece … September … should be glorious … it poured, and when it didn’t pour it deluged. Yet that was not the major problem … that was the holiday company, JustforYou (naming the guilty) with inept and drunken guides that took us on walks through back yards and rubbish tips and talked of local gossip rather than history and geography, and  a food budget they had cut so meanly so that the money given to the hotels and tavernas with which to feed us  (and it wasn’t a cheap holiday) that, rather than lovely Greek food we were offered such things chicken and chips, fish (dogfish ) and chips and a brown sloppy goop that purported to be moussaka, but wasn’t. The redeeming features were the other walkers, we had much fun and merriment laughing at adversity. Oh and one walk down a steeply wooded gorge was special, It had rained so much that I scarcely dared to get my SLR out of the rucksack; so this shot was taken on a very modest compact at the start of the walk. The rain had let up briefly and the sun was trying to shine through low cloud and mist. It failed eventually but the lighting was atmospheric and beautiful and I hope this image captures something of that day; a very wet Gaia indeed.

Landscape photography in SE England is hard work; there are no dramatic mountains, even the hills are just a straight line ridge, almost any accessible coast has been built upon, no waterfalls (well OK one small one but more of that another time), and placid streams. It is pretty in the countryside but oh so difficult or the photographer. But perhaps the photoimaginator can get something. I was walking up Box Hill and as you get towards the top there is, at the top of the scarp slope, some very dense woodland; close set trees and scrub, bent and twisted trees, too dark for undergrowth and a little creepy. Yet I tried some photographs and the base image was nothing that great but I decided to play with the ‘creepy’ and I like what emerged; much more fun than the original. There are the two fun versions and the original, just for curiousity.

Well those were the fun ones;and the original …

I am, to say the least,  far from convinced about astrology, yet it has to be said that as a Piscean (plus moon in cancer) I do seem to have an affinity with water both for recreation (scuba diving, canoeing, swimming) and for photography. However, sometimes you have to try other things, outside your comfort zone, and, as Ansell Adams is one of my photographic heroes, and he was brilliant at trees, I keep trying with trees; albeit with mixed success. This is taken in a park in St Kilda, Melbourne. So it doesn’t always have to be wilderness or even just countryside; you do have to look about you  wherever you are, though agreed, some places are harder than others. But keep looking. As is often the case with me I found interest in the detail, in this case interwoven trunks, rather than the whole tree.

Now I cannot decide whether I like this or not but Mentor&Muse really does and sometimes one has to bow to the inevitable. I suppose it was all too easy; no mountain to be climbed, no bent double to catch an odd angle, no eagle eyed observation of a photo opportunity missed by others. Not even a miracle of nature … well only partly. It was taken at Christmas time in the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. And for whatever reason, the Danes and their normal Scandinavian ideals of simple, bold design, clean lines and fundamental materials are all thrown out of the window at this time of year and their Christmas markets sell as much gaudy, tasteless crap as anyone else. It’s quite heartening really. And in the middle of the Tivoli gardens, surrounded  by the Christmas market, there is an ornamental lake with an illuminated pirate ship; like I said, as gaudy and tasteless as you can get … and fun. This is the reflection of part of it in the lake. Christmas … y o ho ho and bah humbug.

o bow to the inevitable. I suppose it was all too easy; no mountain to be climbed, no bent double to catch an odd angle, no eagle eyed observation of a photo opportunity missed by others. Not even a miracle of nature … well only partly. It was taken at Christmas time in the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. And for whatever reason, the Danes and their normal Scandinavian ideals of simple, bold design, clean lines and fundamental materials are all thrown out of the window at this time of year and their Christmas markets sell as much gaudy, tasteless crap as anyone else. It’s quite heartening really. And in the middle of the Tivoli gardens, surrounded  by the Christmas market, there is an ornamental lake with an illuminated pirate ship; like I said, as gaudy and tasteless as you can get … and fun. This is the reflection of part of it in the lake. Christmas … y o ho ho and bah humbug.