![[42/52] Green Woodpecker](https://farm7.static.flickr.com/6234/6254149303_0432490798.jpg)
Week 42 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
Green Woodpecker (probably male) this morning on our next door neighbour’s lawn. This is the third or fourth time I’ve seen him visiting in the last 2-3 weeks. He spends a lot of time (I watched him for 45 minutes one day) covering the same area, so it must be very rich in ants.
Taken at a range of 20-25 yards from our study window with my biggest lens and still this is a small crop from the middle of a frame.
Week 41 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
Girls from the next door ladies hairdressers having a break outside the barber’s shop at Rayners Lane, Harrow. They’re there, drinking coffee and smoking, every time I go past; they never seem to do any work. How do they make a living?
Week 39 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
Just haven’t got down to even picking up a camera this week, so here’s one from the archives.![[39/52] Small Footless Child with Dog](https://farm7.static.flickr.com/6170/6204092081_2c93892dab.jpg)
Yes, this me, aged about 8 or 9 (so around 1959/60) with our dog Sue. It looks like our back garden, is clearly summer, and was likely taken by my father with his Box Brownie.
Horrible!
![[38/52] The Old Warrior Sleeps](https://farm7.static.flickr.com/6175/6171570785_2752769f1e.jpg)
Week 38 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
H the Cat dozing on my desk after a hard night down the rat mines (in his dreams). He’s rising 13 (we don’t know exactly), not as agile as he once was and is beginning to feel his age. Much like the rest of us!
Week 37 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
As Noreen has reported on her weblog, yesterday we went to Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire in search of some of her ancestors — and just to walk the streets they walked. The Meades line was an unexpected find for Noreen, both in that they come from somewhere way away from Lowestoft but also because they are a family of stonemasons.
This is the gravestone of Noreen’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, Richard Meades, in the churchyard at Chipping Norton. He was the stonemason responsible for the work to rebuild the church tower in the 1820s. It is Richard’s stone, William MeEades who eventualy moved to Lowestoft.
Chipping Norton (or “Chippy” as the locals know it) itself is a delightful small Cotswold town built out of the local golden stone and on the side of quite a wicked hill — hardly surprising as it is supposedly the highest town on Oxfordshire. And the fact that it is on the side of hill has resulted in something quite unusual: the parish church (St Mary’s) is in fact lower down the hill than most of the rest of the old town — the main street is at about the same level as the top of the church tower.
More photos of Chipping Norton over on my Flickr photostream.
I’ve been somewhat lacking in the last few weeks in keeping up with Kate’s Listography. The spirit has been willing but there just haven’t been enough hours in the day. Why? Well see my previous post, and consider that I’ve been working a minimum of 6 hours a day, 7 days a week, for at least 6 weeks on Society/conference business.
But better late than never here’s my response to Kate’s Listography from last week. These are some of the things I did this summer …
Organised and ran an international literary conference. I think I hardly need say more.
Completed and released my photo book – a month earlier than planned. I don’t expect it to make me tons of money. I did it because I wanted to; it was fun; it was for me.
Wrote an academic paper and submitted it for publication. Not because I had to for work or anything, but just for the sheer hell of it!
Drank afternoon tea with an Earl. Yes, a real Earl. No names, no telling. Just a pleasant cup of tea and a chat, tête-a-tete, while he signed some books.
Ate too much fish and chips – several times. Well who wouldn’t?
Glamorous? No. Mostly damned hard work!
![[36/52] W8 Postbox by kcm76](https://farm7.static.flickr.com/6088/6124180045_1b5f0e9b55.jpg)
[36/52] W8 Postbox, a photo by kcm76 on Flickr.
Week 36 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
Hexagonal Victorian postbox in Pembroke Gardens, London, W8.
I love Victorian postboxes. They are always so ornate and much better designed than the modern ones.
Translated into 1960s colour using PaintShopPro.
[Fanfare of trumpets!]
It’s here! The first spin-off from this blog, my new photo book, is available at last. Yes, it’s been a well kept secret and been in gestation for quite some months, but eventually it’s here.
Here’s (some of) what I say in the Introduction:
I am fairly sure I took my first photographs with my father’s Kodak Box Brownie although I don’t know how old I was. But I do have a series of old 620 roll film images of my parents and I on holiday at a nudist club when I would have been around 9 or 10; and as the series contains one of my parents but not me, it seems reasonable to assume I took it. And I know had my first cheap camera by the time I was about 12.
I’ve been taking photographs on and off ever since. And that’s now 50 years … But this book is not really designed as a celebration of my 50 years taking photographs. It is intended only as a collection of images I like from the last few years …
I do not pretend that these are world-beating images. Nor would I claim to be an especially good photographer. I’ve had no formal photographic training, but learnt the basics at my father’s knee and by going to camera club with him as a teenager. It was more difficult then: we didn’t have cameras which did everything for us; exposures had to be calculated; every shot cost us real money to develop and print; and you had to wait days or even weeks to see your successes and failures. Like the rest of modern life photography is now cheap and instant.
My approach to photography has always been to take what I see; what interests, intrigues or amuses me. It is about trying to see things and make them into a picture …
Available now on Blurb. Not yet on Amazon, but it should be eventually.
Week 35 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
Rainbow seen from our study window. Should I be measuring the quality of the summer by the number of rainbows we’ve had this year: rainbows are probably inversely proportional to the goodness of the summer. If so then this has been an awful summer. But there have been lots of good rainbows.
![[35/52] Rainbow by kcm76](https://farm7.static.flickr.com/6207/6100529083_2c12d4fd0e.jpg)