Saving for a Rainy Day

Bamburgh castle from the sand dunes

I’m currently reinstalling everything back onto my laptop. Great fun! After around 18 months of flawless use, the laptop finally started freezing on me in critical situations, so i decided to do a factory reset. A drastic move, i know, but it means a fresh, clean laptop ready to go soon. It’ll just take me several days to put all the software back on it.

Fortunately there was nothing on the hard drive of great value. I backup to DVD-ROM and memory stick, and now DropBox, as often as i can, but it never seems quite enough. The fear of losing digital content has increased each year as i realise how much I rely on files just being there. To complicate matters, the laptop DVD-RW would no longer burn discs due to a software issue. The factory reset has removed this problem too. Phew!

Just recently I started using an online service called CodeGuard after i realised how much blood, sweat, tears and man hours had gone into the main website redesign. The idea of someone wrecking all that work with a hack [shiver] terrified me! CodeGuard simply backup your website (all the files on your server) so you have a fall-back (or several!) should the worse happen. So far it looks like a great service.

Retrospective Book

I’m about to start on another photography book release via blurb.com that should take me most of the winter to put together. This is going to be a big project and an important landmark book (at least for me!) that completes the first phase of the Norfolk project.

Ten years ago, i decided that i needed a long term photographic project. What began as a loose kind of photography exercise in Norfolk, ended up gathering pace and direction. After ten years, it’s time for a break and some contemplation of where to take it next. I have lots of options open, plenty left to photograph in the county, and after a year or two i’ll return.

Over the next few months I’ll be putting all of the photography  together, around 80 images or possibly more, to make a retrospective book that , I think, will be the perfect way to present the first ten years of work. The majority of the photographs that have been released online have focussed on the landscape side of the project, however, the book will stay true to the original idea with a broad mix of landscape and documentary photography. I aim to release the book on March 21st 2012.

Through the Gate

So there we have it. The final Baldixette photograph taken from the roll of film shot in North Wales in 2004.  I love this remarkable little camera. It’s simple to use and importantly it  puts you firmly back into the driving seat as a photographer, delivering great results with a bit of effort. You have to think and work with the camera to get an image. That’s not a bad thing for a photographer to experience in this auto-everything world.

Misty Moored Up

An anchored yacht at Beaumaris, Anglesey in North Wales.

I love the misty mountain of Snowdonia that feature in the background of this photo. To wake up on your yacht to that view must be fantastic. I would own a yacht if i could afford one. I adore the freedom you have to move around that a yacht offers. One day maybe…

At the time of writing, I’m packing to go down to Cornwall. When this post appears on the blog, i will be boarding the train for an eight hour journey down to the South West of England. So keep an eye on this blog, the main photoblog and the other websites over the next few days for tweets, photos, audioboos, podcasts, blogposts and more.