Photography: is it for me?

I recently decided to take up a new hobby: Photography

With an impending holiday in August, cruising for 8 days around the Med (Majorca, Sardinia, Italy and France), what better opportunity to take some fantastic photographs to look back on? Apart from getting some photos of family and friends who are going, I'm hoping that I'll be able to get some fantastic photos of the white, sandy beaches in Sardinia, and whilst we're in Italy to get the Colosseum and all the fantastic architecture on camera.

Out I go to buy a camera.....£300 budget and came back with this little beauty, a Kodak Easyshare P850, capable of zooming up to 12x:



I've had it for three weeks now and have used it twice, and haven't even read the manual......I'm determined to get better, but learning what all the settings do isn't going to be fun...I think it will pretty much be a point and shoot as most of the settings seem to be easily changed at the press of a single button, with settings for every environment you could possibly imagina - even fireworks!

I was enjoying practicing on the Medion 6.36 digital camera I was able to use, and took some photos that I was quite happy with for my first ever shots on a digital:

Garden Project

Lately, I've been helping Mum to change the back garden at her house. It was originally divided into two sections, one directly behind the house that was gravelled a paving slabs, and the other half behind the garage which contains a big acer, some tree ferns and a few other bigger plants. It's been quite a large project really, mainly because directly behind the house, there is a big empty plot which up until 4 years ago, used to stand an old nursing home.

The perimeter of the plot had large fir trees (40ft+), which caused havoc in the back garden where all the muck fell from them and made the paving quite slippery, it also got mixed in with all the gravel making it discoloured and look really untidy. They blocked out all the light to the houses as well. So a few weekends back, five of us (two neighbours included) decided we would cut the trees down directly outside both the houses. It was quite satisfying to see those giants tumble down (or not so much tumble but be pulled!) One neighbour stood on the 10ft wall directly in front of the trees and was sawing away, and the rest of us stood in the plot waiting for the signal to start pulling on the rope that was tied around each tree. I lost count of the amount of times we fell over, and I also lost count of the blisters on my hands once we had finished. We then had to drag all of the trees that had been felled over to the middle of the plot to minimise the fire risk right next to the houses, and make it easier for the chipper who was coming during the week to get rid of them. So that was what started it all.....

Three weekends later, we start on the garden. Emptying all of the pots (I'm talking 30+ pots) and stacking them under the kitchen window to keep them safe, then collecting up all of the large pebbles that have been dotted around next to the pots in piles and loading them into the pots. One question, what the hell are those horrible little jumping critters which live under garden pots? Anyway, the next thing to do was knocking down the dividing wall which was made up of decorative blocks that you can see through sections, I've no idea of the name but I have to take a picture soon to see what they are...then taking down the trellis' that covered half of the second garden. Thankfully I was able to take a saw to it and lift the top piece of and then knock down all of the side panels, hard going, but rewarding to see how much light was now streaming into the garden. There were a few other bits we had to move out - three parts of telegraph poles which had been cemented into the gravelled area in an arty fashion, four big pieces of granite which some pots were on top of, raking the gravel out, etc.

Last week a family friend started on a stone circle in the middle of the gravel area:


in this colour/style slab:

and around the circle will be 'mellow cotswold' gravel:


He's also putting trellis along the back wall, plumbing in a water feature and then we have to paint the back wall next weekend, and put together the garden table and chairs..........

The beginning.....

So, this is what blogging feels like....

I've not really done this before, apart from the odd statement or two on another webpage I have. I'd like to think I have something interesting to say, but in comparison to some blogs I have read, this will be mind-numbingly boring to anyone who reads it.

Anyway, we'll give it a go, at least there is a delete button!