Albums have been created in various categories that should be self explanatory. The site has  updates as and when time permits. Recent additions to the site include our views of The Lake District National Park

Watch this space for new items............ As and when time permits

My interest in photography started when I was at secondary school and has continued over the years (don’t ask how many) with breaks in how much time I have spent on it for family reasons. This in turn had stopped my use of the bathroom as a dark room and some of my interest was lost for a while.

Changes in life style have permitted photography to play a more prominent roll in my life, largely kicked off by places we have visited, my passion for diving and to record the underwater World we visit along with Jo introducing me to her passion for walking in Mountains and valleys. Taking photographs to share with friends and remind us of the breath taking beauty of this World we share is a natural inclusion for us.

Now the big change for me is using a PC to edit the photos instead of the dark room, lets face it nobody wants the bathroom converted into a darkroom for a day at a time, nor being able to open the door for five minutes or more to converse with the family are prohibitive, but I still want to use any of my film cameras as the basis for my work. So I have invested in a negative / transparency scanner to give me the options I want, along with a compact digital camera to compliment the overall system. I still prefer the quality from transparencies for viewing, so I’m continuing to use film for certain purposes using my brick of a Mamiya TLR or Nikon's as the fancy takes and now a Fuji Finepix delivering 12.3 million recorded pixels in RAW mode for underwater use in an Ikelite housing. As for the different technologies, film and digital, I think they both have there qualities and we use both film and a digital cameras (The best film - digital analysis I've read to date).

The next step for me was to use the web to share the photos with family and friends, but its not just family and friends, it’s the world, it therefore needs to look right even though I’m learning to use photo and web editing. The learning curve goes on, from the variations in results from different films, to balancing the scanner to the monitor to the printer. Then there's the challenge of getting to grips with photo software (not the easiest pieces of software), I haven't got into changing the skies on my landscapes, yet but I know a man who can...  The best quote I have seen to date comes from Eric Cheng in the March 2005 issue of Dive magazine, "Too many digital shooters rely on post processing to make their photographs look good when, in fact, they should be working on their photography skills instead". No doubt he got plenty of replies to that. But then the same can be said for film users, as it is all too easy to get carried away shooting in the excitement of finding something unusual, not stopping to thinking about what we are taking, myself included.

As for now, I am torn between the digital and film SLR's as I still find the quality of projected transparencies unbeatable if you don't believe the capability of the film / scanner combination look at these three images from the same 35mm frame at Silverstone World Super Bikes 2004 taken at over 100MPH:- Zoom, Zoom, Zoom! However the convenience of instant results let me "Tweak" the camera settings in the field to refine the results thereby raising the constant learning curve. Then on the other hand the opening page taken at Cadair Idris using a  15mm lens at  200 ISO - Both systems have there purpose and place, so I try not to put blinkers on.

Now to top it all there is the HDMI output from my laptop into the TV producing stunning results to show friends and family! Another nail in the coffin lid for film...

The Coolpics (I know, it's corny) that have been uploaded to the web site have been reduced in size and quality (50Kb ish) in order that they open fast enough even on slower connection speeds, so no apologies for that.