Sometime last year, I am not sure when since last year has now blended into about three hundred near identical COVID lockdown days, I came across a photography competition. I rarely enter competitions, but this once caught my eye as it is was being run by the lovely people at Fujifilm and there was a chance to win a special edition Fujifilm X100V.

I took this photo during a workshop with Kevin Mullins on the 31st January this year. COVID-19 hadn’t really made it anywhere close to the UK, and this poster from the previous day’s news seemed of little importance. I only took it because I was trying to “warm up my creative eye”. As it turned out, it was probably the most relevant photography I took all year in terms of documenting what was going on.

And so the lockdown continues, and I can’t see it being lifted in any significant way for sometime to come. My daily walk takes more or less the same route, with the same cheery wave to the same runner on the opposite side of the same street, at the same time. I always take my camera and have noted a pattern to what I am photographing.

Well Dear Readers, what can I say? Life is very topsy-turvy* at the moment isn’t it? I hope you and your family are all safe and well.  I know it feels like a lifetime ago, but on the 31st January, you would have found me on a train heading to London for a Street Photography Workshop with Kevin Mullins.

… and then there was rain.

For all my best intentions for getting a grip of 2019, 2019 seems to have got a stronger grip on me. I went for a whole three weeks without shooting a single frame, between work, travel for work and the fact that I forgot to take my camera when I was travelling, August was a complete wash out.

with apologies to Emily Dickinson and Kate Atkinson.

Well, it has been a while hasn’t it? I do apologise. I have been out shooting as normal but blogging time seems to have been at a minimum recently.

The Delightful Mr F and I decided we needed some sea air to blow away the cobwebs, and generally give us a lift. So, this morning at 04:30, we got up, grabbed our camera gear and headed for the coast.

Last Monday morning at 0620 you would have found me waiting for the 0640 train to London Waterloo to attend another Light and Land Photography workshop. I had had a moment of indecision in the station car park as to whether I needed my thermal bobble hat. I decided to take it, and believe me if I hadn’t I would have been purchasing yet more emergency head gear. It was so cold, bitterly, biting to the bone, fingertips numb, cold all day long.

It has been a while since the sun has deigned to shine here in the UK. It has been a gloomy horrible start to 2019. Checking the weather last week I was stunned to see actual sunshine forecast. The Delightful Mr F pointed out that this might be the only opportunity to shoot with decent light before April, so off I went to London to work on my Monopoly project.

In a surprising turn of events, I ended up with a day off. I looked at the weather forecast and it was predicting rain. How bad can it be I thought? For goodness sake, I am British, a bit of rain won’t be a problem. How wrong I was Dear Readers. Having arrived at Waterloo Station, I headed down the South Bank and the Heavens opened.