It feels like forever since my last post…I haven’t written anything this year…so let’s get down to the nitty gritty of it – Happy New Year one and all.  I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and all the other shenanigans that year’s end brings. We, as ever, have been completely rammed at work – millions and millions of exciting twists and turns in the wonderful world of Barbados, and we were also lucky enough to have my family-in-law (well, some of them anyway) come and stay with us over the festive period.

From left to right, that’s my mum-in-law, Sue, my step-dad-in-law, Dave, and little Lou, who is nearly thirteen now…I have known Louis since he was a bump in Sue’s tummy, and he is all kinds of awesome.  But, like most teenagers, he hates having his picture taken.

So it’s not the best place for him to come really…what with snap-happy Ferg so close by.

But we had a great time – the guys enjoyed the beach whilst we (enjoyed?!) the office.  We had a few weddings over Christmas, and the staff parties (working and playing) and New Year’s eve (working) and everything in between.  Hence why the blog has suffered somewhat these last few weeks.

And whilst we played with some of our family, our resident monkeys started to build their own.  We have a dominant male on the resort that Sian has affectionately come to name “Morris.” We have seen him for the last two years or so – he once tried to break into the office on the off chance of finding some bananas, although he would be more likely to find coffee and muffins on my desk.   Anyway, he recently hooked up with a lady monkey on resort called “Mummy”, and the two have had a baby Sian has dubbed “Monkini.”  (This is the abridged version – but you get the gist.)

Anyway, baby has been growing at an alarming rate, and it is very, very cute to see them all playing together on the resort.  Being a nipper, “Monkini” has a wonderful curiosity with everything and Morris usually lets her entertain this curiosity as he wanders around in a circle, snarling at anything that gets too close.

But on my birthday (Christmas Eve) during the slowest game of golf ever, we pulled out of a hole to let some people who actually knew what they were doing go by, and we saw Mummy and Monkini in a tree with no sign of Morris.  He had obviously wandered off to find something for his girls, and we were able to get closer than ever before to the pair.  I felt really bad because the sound of my shutter grabbed Monkini’s attention no end – and she kept trying to jump out of the tree to investigate the noise.  Mummy gave me some horrible looks as she kept playing catch with her new baby, but it did make for some amazing photos:

This is just after Monkini jumped down towards me to see what all the noise was about coming from my camera…Mummy was NOT impressed.

We got the hint and left the monkeys to it, failed a bit more at golf, and then went home.  I haven’t yet seen the monkeys in the new year, but when I do I shall post up some more pictures as baby grows up…it really is such a treat to have such a spectacle on your front door step.

So our birthdays and Christmas came and went, we partied and played and worked hard, and now look forward to another busy and sccessful year.  I have LOADS of stuff to share with you over the following weeks, and I promise the blogs will start coming regularly again 🙂

Hit the subscribe – hit the share, tell your friends nd as always, keep on snapping.

Thanks for reading guys x

With Christmas around the corner, and being lucky enough to have our family here with us,  the warm fuzzy feeling really is in full swing!  I have been sitting on these photos since our trip home in October, and thought that now would be the perfect time to share them 🙂

As readers of this blog will know, I am a BIG family man.  Families rule.  I am always a little bewildered when, especially at this time of year, people I know are looking forward to a bit of time to themselves.  I am the complete opposite.  I am definitely my mother’s child.  My idea of the Perfect Christmas is having all my nearest and dearest under one roof, getting merry and sharing the good times – if there is the possibility of a few dogs knocking around as well then that’s an even bigger bonus.

And I am even more lucky that we have so many generations in the family.  You all know about this little guy, Ryan.  He is my 5 year old nephew who is growing up at a rate of knots, and I hear the uncles and aunties of my childhood whenever I see him: “haven’t you grown,” “you’re SO big!”…but then that’s just part of getting old I guess.

And we love coming home and playing with him…especially on the trampoline.

But as well as the young, we are blessed with the old, and when we went home last Sian and I made a point of heading over to my wonderful Granny and Grandad’s house in Clacton, Essex.  We always love seeing them, but in recent years time has started to take its toll on them.  Grandad, who was so sharp and witty, is slowly losing his short term memory, and Granny, who is a soldier and bastion of survival is getting weak in the knees and a little less mobile.  But they are still here. Still smiling. Still happy. And we love them ever so much.

This is my little brother, Thaddaeus, or Teggy, showing G and G our wedding pictures.  Unfortunately, they were not able to join us last year for big bash, and this was the first chance we had to share the day with them.

With Grandad’s memory fading, he is always looking at the photos on the mantel to keep track of who’s who.  I love the expression on his face in this shot – he had just told Teggy that he recognised our sister, Felicity, in one of the photos, and was so pleased that he could remember her name.

And who couldn’t love this shot of my granny?  When I was growing up, Granny told us quite a bit about the war, Grandad not so much…but the hardships they endured and the sacrifices they made are things that I thankfully have never had to and hopefully never will.  It was a ghastly time, and the country pulled together in a way that seems alien now…yet they are both still able to laugh and joke, and that just makes me love them more.

And they have some differences at times, but my dear old mum loves them too.

Of course, being old, Granny thinks she has the license to come out with some outrageous comments and ideas…the most recent being that she thought the new wind farm off the coast was a terrible eye sore and that it had spoiled the view…I got a brief snap of it from the car window and have to disagree…

But then with everything they have been through, and everything they have seen, I only hope this is the only ‘atrocity’ our little nephew Ryan has to see throughout his life.  In the grand scheme of things, a field of graceful wind turbines ten miles off the coast are surely a lot prettier than a squadron of bombers…

Thanks for reading guys – the Christmas blog to come next! 😉

x

So as a lot of you know, Sian and I went home over October so we could enjoy Andy and Emily’s beautiful wedding day, and also indulge ourselves with a cheeky ‘us time’ for our very first wedding anniversary.   The trip home was awesome, and my boss was kind enough to let me road test a new video camera we may be rolling out amongst the company ships in the not too distant future.

It was great, because we got to make Andy and Emily a video of their day, and I got to try out a new bit of kit.

Because said camera was new to me, I am not entirely happy with a lot of little niggly things..there is unnecessary shake where I was battling with the bizarre focusing system, there is noise where I would not expect there to be, and the thing in general is not as ‘polished’ as our usual work, using the immense D7000s we have here in Barbados….but I am happy enough with it to share with you here.  All the sharp, and artsy looking shots are by Sian, with Josh’s very kindly leant D7000 – you’ll spot them a mile off!

As always, looking forward to the feedback and sharing some adventures with you all over the next few weeks 😉

Thanks for reading guys 🙂 x

Wednesday was Barbados’ Independence day, which basically means no one can get married, and that I am able to give the team and myself a well deserved day off.  This is always good news.  Even better news was that our dear friends Mike and Jenny, who we met on our first ever contract with Colorbox aboard  the Thomson Destiny, were in Barbados the same day as a port of call on their holiday cruise.

Mike and Jenny are awesome.

Jenny dances amazingly, and Mike is a fantastic singer.  We were very lucky that they could make it to our wedding a year and a bit back, and Mike did us the honour of singing our first dance, along with a genius set.  If you want to hear the dulcet tones, (which I strongly recommend) you can hear him here. 🙂 For an even further shameless plug, BOOK HIM IF YOU’RE GETTING MARRIED IN THE UK, HE IS AMAZING! 😉 (Cheques made payable to me please Mike)

Anyways, back to the fun events of Wednesday…So we were ridiculously fortunate that the guys’ visit coincided with an unheard of day off during the week, and even more so that we got a tiny spot of sunshine during the otherwise miserable weather we have been experiencing lately.

As is now customary, we took the guys up to the Animal Flower Cave for the amazing views.  As we headed over, the short spell of sunshine was replaced with spitting rain.  I suggested we head to Bathsheba.  Luckily Jimbly insisted we head to the Cave, and I am so glad he did.

As we drove down the pot-hole ridden lane that leads to the amazing views, my heart skipped a beat as I saw what looked like a tornado skitting across the water out at sea.  We bundled out of the car as quickly as we could – I ran ahead with the camera in hand whilst Sian scrabbled to get our long 70-200 lens out.  It was awesome.

Later research proved that it was a water spout that we witnessed.   It was remarkably hard to expose for the spout.  As is often the way in photography, your eyes are so much better than even the mighty sensor of our wonderful D700.  Looking out to sea, it was very obvious to the naked eye, but there was very little contrast in the skyline, and no amount of underexposure seemed to make the spout ‘pop’ as much as it did in real life.  I was also greeted with an incredibly mucky sensor when I came to process these photos.  No matter how careful we are with changing our lenses, out here where there is so much sand and wind, it is inevitable to get crap in your sensor…an occupational hazard I guess. 🙁

As such, the pictures are a little less sharp than I would normally like – This is a classic example of me out of my comfort zone! Low light is fine, harsh sunlight with lots of contrast, I can deal with…but flat skylines with little contrast in them are clearly an area I need to improve upon.

And unfortunately time was not on our side.  As soon as I had popped off a few frames, the spout disappeared from the skyline, and a very hot and sticky sun reared it’s head back out for us.  We were so very lucky to have seen the spout at all!

We had to get Mike and Jenny back to their ship before it sailed onto the next port without them, so we had just enough time for a group snap before jumping back into the car and heading for the port.  This proved to be another wonderfully smug moment for me – always having the massive tripod in the boot paid off once again.

So a massive thanks to Jenny and Mike for making the 4000ish mile journey to come and see us – it was wonderful to see you both again, and as always seems to be the way, the fact we had visitors meant we saw another part of Barbados we otherwise wouldn’t have.  I was also made privy to the fact that Mike’s mum is a reader of my blog too…which is massive news.  This one’s for you Mike’s mum, thanks so much for reading – make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss anything, and thanks for giving us all such a lovely chap 😉

And as always, thanks for reading guys x

Hi guys, sorry, no photos today…but there is a cheeky video 🙂

Sian, Jimbly and I were shooting a wedding a few days back, and I was on film detail.  We were at a gorgeous resort called the House, and the wedding was scheduled quite late – 4:30PM…this makes life very difficult for us, because by 5:30, the sun has set and you have no light to play with…none.  So James did a great job of conducting the shoot quickly enough for us to get everything we needed in the small time window we had.

In between rushing from the sunset on the Beach, and a cake cutting shot in the hotel, we came across hundreds of red sand crabs.  They were just your ordinary, run of the mill crabs, knocking about and raising their comedy pincers in defiance of the hulking humans as we point and coo.  But one crab, James noticed, was very proudly carrying a lollipop stick.

And we thought this was hilarious.

In hindsight, and watching the video back, I am not too sure the comedy will come across, but rest assured – we all had a good chuckle at the sight and hope you do too 🙂

Massive blog in the pipeline by the by…we witnessed a weather phenomenon the other day which I cannot WAIT to share with you all…so please keep posted and I’ll hopefully share with you all over the weekend 🙂


Thanks for reading guys 🙂

As is now appearing customary, I start with an apology for the delay on things.  Work is getting really exciting – loads and loads and loads of stuff on, and with the world as it is at the moment I can’t grumble for a second.  There are thousands without jobs, so the fact that mine is depriving me of a privilege like ‘blogging time’  can’t be a bad thing.

So, a quick update.  My cousin Den came out to visit us last week, which was awesome.   We got some dives in that made me wish I could take my camera with me…but having already spent well over $3k this year on the camera, I thought an underwater housing would be the nail in the coffin with my very-understanding, but-only-human-after-all wife.  We dove (dived?) the Stavronikita, or Stav to the locals, and it really was up there in my top 5 dives of all time…

Den also insisted that we go sea fishing.  This is something I have always wanted to do, but we never get around to doing it.  One of the best things about having motivated guests is that we actually have to wander off resort (shock horror!) every now and then to go and do touristy stuff.  I will blog about the sport fishing properly soon, but in the meantime here are a few snaps of Den’s big catch.  A beautiful ‘Wahoo’

By the end of the week, we were all pretty knackered.  Work had been busy, and Den was keen to get as much in as possible.  On the last night of his stay  we were treated to a beautiful sunset and it only seemed right to have a lazy game of catch whilst we were bathed in the beautiful soft light of magic hour.

Thanks for a blast Den – I have finally caught up with my sleep now!  Oh – and the pictures we took of the moon that night down at Fowl Bay…I was pretty happy with the final result – hope you like it too! 😉

Thanks for reading guys…more adventures to come 🙂

x

Tedders and Mel

So, a few months back (all the way in February!) my awesome brother, Ed, and his wonderful fiance, Mel came to visit us as we settled down in Bimshire.

I insisted they have a quick studio shoot and walk around the gardens before they went home, and they have had to wait all this time for me to finally get round to editing them…so really sorry about that guys.

Anyway, I am sure they won’t mind me sharing my favourite shot of the day with you all – this was taken on the tried and true D80 on the kit lens, so apologies in advance for the fluffy nature and high noise…but I was extremely pleased with the REAL lens flare I got – hope you agree?!

More adverntures to come when we finally get on top of all this work, thanks for reading guys, and hope you have a great weekend

xxxx

Hey guys, nearly on top of everything now, so business will resume as normal in the next few weeks.  As some of you know, one of the reasons we came back to the UK was to celebrate our first year wedding anniversary.  After Andy and Emily’s wedding (film to come – promise we haven’t forgotten about you guys!) Sian and I headed over to Hartington Hall, where we got married on the 10th October, 2010. (10/10/10 – so no excuses for me to forget!)  It was lovely to see the place, and we were really spoiled because a lot of friends and family came to see us, and share a wee mini reunion.

Amongst these wonderful travellers were Lucy and Duncan, and their gorgeous baby girl Edith.  When we saw her last, at the wedding, she was a few months young and tiny tiny – the youngest of our guests.  Now she is a lot bigger, and getting a wonderful smiley – sometimes a bit bulshy, but all round amazing attitude.

This is the happy family at the wedding last year...look how tiny she is!

As always, a million things on today, so I can’t stay long – but I wanted to get the pictures up now to share with you all, as I finally begin to conclude our trip home, and can get back to exploring Barbados with you all – armed with a new book and loads of info, I am really excited about the months to come – so stay tuned!

Until then, I give you Edith, Duncan, Lucy and the horse…and a guest appearance from Jenny – keen eyed spotters will remember her from previous posts such as these.

 

Enjoy – and hope you are all having a great weekend 🙂

Following from my previous post, you all know that Sian and I stayed with two of my best buds Will and Eddie in Will’s house out in Carlisle a few weeks back.   And, while we were there, we fell in love.

Not with each other – I have ensnared Sian for over 11 years now and am fairly confident she has done all the falling she can for the time being.  But we met Will’s dog, Lois.

And she is all kinds of awesome.

Although only with her for a few days, it was very obvious to us how this (let’s be honest, beautiful) Labrador has made our dear friend Will’s life so, so much better over the last few months.

Poor Will has had a tough time of late, and seeing him in his new home with his new dog, Sian and I were both utterly relieved and immensely happy.  She truly is man’s best friend.

And she adores Will.

We had a late train home on the Saturday night, so Will kindly offered to take us out to Corbridge via a rather splendid butchers.  With the car heavily laden with a ridiculous slab 0f fresh silver side, camera gear and a dog, we set out along a fantastic Roman Road that ran parallel with Hadrian’s wall.  And what a day it was.

Upon arrival in Corbridge, Lois leapt to attention, only to drop her smiling eyes at the site of a famous kitchen shop that Sian and Will found fascinating.  After the obligatory walk around, we fetched the intrepid traveller from the boot of the car, and to her disgust, put her on the make shift lead Will had fashioned from a strap he uses to attach his canoes to the roof of the car.  Lois doesn’t need a lead, but the general public do tend to get a bit antsy when they see a pooch roaming free on the pavements.

We bumbled around the beautiful town of Corbridge for a few hours, and then headed down to the river bank to let Lois (and Will) have a play in the river and stretch the legs.

There is a beautiful bridge in the town, which Sian later quipped was probably how the town got it’s name.  She imagined the Scots seeing it from afar and saying ‘Cor! Bridge’…you may have had to have been there, but I found this hilarious.  Anyway, I felt obliged to get a snap of the said monument, but I’m afraid I rather let the squad down on this one with an average at best attempt – but I had to share it none the less in order for the narrative to make sense.

There were some ducks chilling out in the fast moving water, and in an homage to my dear mum who reads this blog religiously, I thought I would give her a snap of one…she freaking loves ducks.

And then Will found a stick which Lois quickly became very fond of.  Casually throwing it into the running river, Lois had no qualms jumping in to rescue her beloved piece of dead wood.  It was amazing how strong she is, and how well she fought the fast moving current.

We then retired for some ginger ale and olives whilst Lois ran around the trees, like the middle class tourists we are.  Watching the river run by, and enjoying the sun on our backs…it really was a lovely, lovely day.

At this point, I already knew that I would be writing a blog about the day, and the sheer awesomeness of Lois doting on Will – and I knew I needed a portrait of them together to tie the whole thing up.

They say that you should never work with children or animals…but I was working with a soggy dog and Will.

Believe me, this is much, much harder.

But I think I got there in the end:

I love these two shots.  Lois dotes on Will in a way I have never seen in a mutt before.  He looks left, she looks left.  He shows interest – she shows interest.  He laughs, she wags her tail.  They really are inseparable…and both are happier for having each other.

Even Sian started to see why people like dogs so much – which is a big step in the right direction for this canine lover.

So we headed back to Carlisle station to catch some fish and chips and the train, but not before we stopped off at the local paper mill (factory?!)  to capure this magnificent site:

Thanks Will.  And thanks Lois.

We had a great time

x

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A post!! It feels like months since my last, and to be honest I have really missed not sharing with you all here on what is fast becoming my personal diary  more than anything else.  But I hope you have been well and will allow me a moment of egocentricity as I think that maybe…just maybe, some of you have missed me posting too?

Or not.

Anyway, as I am sure you have all gathered, Sian and I had a very brief trip back to Blighty a few weeks gone, and I have finally got round to editing some of the pictures for you all to see.  As you all know, we do love our jobs out here in Bim, but there is an awful lot about old Liz’s Kingdom that both Sian and I adore; and coming from the evergreen flora of  the rock we now call home, we were utterly delighted to be treated to a good old autumnal country walk with one of my best friends Eddie, up in Carlisle.  We took Will’s dog Lois (MASSIVE POST TO COME) as he taught kids drama at William Howard – a secondary school in Scaleby.

Truth be told, I’m afraid I didn’t really listen to where it was we were going.  Will and Ed had discussed where the best place was to go for a walk, and after many hours of being shown various routes on Google Maps, I lost interest and let my best man do all the navigation.  We got to – wherever it was-at about eleven thirty, and all of a sudden the hours of Google maps and concise directions seemed more than worth it.  We wandered down through a valley to be met with this beautiful bridge – the water fiercely running down the fell.  Lois, the awesome, decided to run through the gushing water, and we all felt our hearts leap a beat at the thought of her getting washed away (it really was fast)

But she was hardcore and just took it all in her stride.  She soon got bored of the ‘random-people-who-have-put-me-in-their-car,-brought-me to-this-strange-place-and-are-now-calling-my-name-incessantly-game’ and came back to the river bank.  But only when she was good and ready.

And as we climbed the steep valley on the other side, we were treated to the stunning views that only the north of England can offer, all tinged with the tell-tale signs of decay as Autumn slowly sweeps in over the next few weeks.

At this point I would like to quickly apologise – we have just bought a couple of AMAZING new lenses (EVEN BIGGER POST TO COME) but they are both massive, and as such we have no filters that will fit them at present…so all grads are done post, which I think is, upsettingly, fairly obvious.

As we got to the top of the hill, the view opened up.  There were a few houses dotted around, which sparked the question why anyone would ever want to live there – slap bang in the middle of nowhere.  I quite liked how this image captured that utter isolation that we were disparaging…but it must appeal to someone – because the houses are there…

We then found the obligatory ‘dead tree’, surrounded by stone walls and wheat growing wild.  I actually really like this shot – a lot more than I did when I was composing it:

And by about this time we realised it was three and we had not even turned back yet! So we upped the pace and got back in time to greet Will home from his hard day’s toil, kick off our boots, and drink some posh cava…it truly was a magic few days.

Massive love to the boys for looking after us – and I very much look forward to filling you all in on all our other vacation shenanigans soon.

As always guys, thanks for reading 🙂

 

Ferg x