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Gallery: autumn scenes around the world
In his poem 'To Autumn' John Keats describes the autumn we all know and love, with lingering warm weather and bountiful harvests. But he also celebrates later autumn days, when winter seems just over the horizon. Both have their beauty.
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Gallery: a world of British wildlife
I’ve been fortunate to travel and photograph wildlife in many wonderful places. The Galápagos Islands, Botswana, Costa Rica, to name just three. But it’s easy to forget that we have some fantastic wildlife here at home too. That’s due in part to the animals’ relative small size and the consequent challenges in finding them.
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A stroll around Bolam Lake
In the early nineteenth century the Reverend John Beresford, Baron Decies, decided to turn a swampy area of ground on his estate into an attractive landscape with a lake and woodlands. Many landowners were carrying out similar improvements but perhaps more unusually the Reverend was acting out of philanthropy.
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Nothing to crow about
If it is the case that crows eat slugs and snails, then surely I should be glad we have so many in our neighbourhood. Our garden is plagued by snails in particular. But on the other hand, if crows do eat snails, why then that plague?!
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Gallery: seeing Newcastle in black and white
When I first started visiting in the early 1980s Newcastle did seem like a city in black and white. Once a great industrial hub it had been hard hit by the closure of the shipyards and coal mines of the region.
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Guarding the Solent
Hurst Castle sits at the end of a long shingle spit, jutting out into the Solent opposite the Isle of Wight. At its heart is a Tudor castle, built by Henry VIII to guard the Needles Passage, the gateway to the trading port of Southampton and his new naval base at Portsmouth.
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Gallery: things overlooked or unseen
By ‘looking over’ the places we visit with our cameras, that is properly looking at and seeing them, we are less likely to ‘overlook’ a great photo opportunity.
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Gallery: pick a word (July 2023)
The writer, the painter and the photographer have the power to ‘shake up a familiar scene’. Through their eyes we often discover something anew even though we may have seen a similar scene many times before.
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A stroll around Buckler’s Hard
If the small Hampshire village of Buckler’s Hard is a little busy today, it is only so with tourists. But there was a time when it would have been a hive of activity. It was once home to a bustling and successful shipbuilding industry. Here three of the warships for Nelson's fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar were built, as well as many other naval ships.
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Gallery: spreading fern-fronds
There is something very intriguing about ferns. Almost prehistoric in nature, it is easy when among them to imagine dinosaurs walking the earth. Unsurprising perhaps, as these often-beautiful plants actually predate those dinosaurs!
