We are still in lockdown here in the UK, This lockdown seems to be so much more difficult than the previous two. Perhaps it is because we have been under some kind of restriction for a year now. Perhaps it is because the British weather is doing its worst. It’s cold, windy, rainy, dank and miserable, apart from about half an hour one day last week. For just thirty short minutes the sun broke through, and I made a dash outside to see whether I could collect some new shots for my A Good Half Mile project.

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.

We are still deep in lockdown here Dear Readers. The Delightful Mr F and I have not gone completely stir crazy as yet, but with the vaccine being rolled out at an impressive rate, we hope that we will be able to leave our immediate surroundings soon. In the meantime, I though it was about time I shared my lockdown project. It’s called “A Good Half Mile”.

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.

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.