If you think I was staying in and working on a day like this — you obviously don’t know me very well. This picture is taken from around 3,000 feet up, on Skiddaw, fourth-highest mountain in England, yet with almost no wind today it wasn’t even particularly cold. A glorious day: can the rest of 2019 be like this please?
One reason I didn’t go out yesterday was because there’s always today. Start as you mean to go on? Perhaps. Happy New Year.
So how do I feel at the end of 2018? Well speaking personally it’s not been a bad year but then again nothing has really been achieved in my life; jobs and projects both work and personal have just been going on all year without reaching any real resolution. But I did have a couple of very nice summer holidays in August (Channel Islands, Berlin). My favourite photo of the year? This one from the football at Flint on January 27th did get used in the Flintshire Chronicle the following Monday (Headline: “Pride in Defeat for Heartbroken Flint”) and was a real right-place-right-time moment; it also epitomises my year’s non-league footie habit. So I’m going with that one.
And today’s shot? It’s been a while (2015 to be precise) since I could raise it to go out on the evening of 31st December, so there wasn’t much to depict. But feel free to compare this with the shot remaining on the “About” page, showing me on day 1, 26/8/11, and evaluate what the passage of 2,685 days has done to yr. humble blogger. Wherever you are and whatever you might be doing in 2019, Happy New Year.
OK, it’s Manchester, not New York… But it is The Producers. So it’s Broadway really. All together now… “Springtime…”
No one, for once, told me I couldn’t take photos during the performance so I got a couple. I’m quite pleased with this one, which is one of the few photos from which I have not cropped even a pixel; and considering the symmetry that’s worth noting.
Yes, there have been a lot of football matches in my 2018 — 55 to be precise. But they can be fertile ground for photography, particularly on a beautiful, sunny day like today. Huddersfield Amateur were the hosts, playing in the ‘Argentina’ kit and winning 4-0.
Sat by the river, as I often am, and pointing my camera across it to take random shots as I often do, this guy walked into view at just the right moment. I have no idea who he is, but the shot works for me (in black and white to mitigate the impact of the bright yellow ‘CCTV’ sign in the background). I have often speculated about how many such random photos I appear in, in the background perhaps, all unknowing. Maybe there’s a universal rule that applies, like everyone appears as a stranger in twelve photos in their life, or something similar.
On how many otherwise boring and photograph-free days has a heron down on the river saved the blog post. Today was one of those days. Handsome beasts, always…. and damn, are they patient.
In the UK Boxing Day (or St Stephen’s Day, or whatever) is traditionally a day for sport, and we were amongst 413 people enjoying the football at Clitheroe FC on a very mild and pleasant afternoon. So were these two — but their levels of enjoyment are less palpable.
The post-dinner Christmas Food Babies were walked off beside the melancholy greyness of Morecambe Bay. Clare serves as the model for the second time in a week. I hope you had a happy day, wherever you are, whatever you were doing.
A beautiful, sunny day today, a welcome change from the grey crud we have otherwise had for some weeks (it feels like that anyway). To distract from the prevalent Christmas theme, here’s a curlew walking on the sands at high tide. I like this shot not only for the bird itself but the strange bubbles all around it, probably caused by some kind of marine life only infrequently covered by water; most of the time this bit of the world will be sand.
Being 42 