I've been back behind the lens again this last week or so!! About time too! I have missed looking at life through the lens! Mustn't let so much time go by without taking photos again!
Took these shots last week in Kerry, South West Ireland (God's Country as they call it). It's my favourite place to shoot lots of landscapes. Our friends own an amazing property out there and we join them for weekends away and some madness. They have a motor cruiser too which we have excursions on to
I bit the bullet and entered my first photographic competition! (albeit partly against my will). Stoaty's gone in to a wildlife competition. As nice as the photo is, I don't think it is technically good enough because it's not sharp or clear. Believe me, these things really matter when you have a huge competition with very serious judges and are up against amazing photographers. So although I love it, it's just not up to scratch because it was taken so spontaniously.
I got my knickers in a twist the night before I sent it off. I couldn't decide how to crop it to make it better. Floyd said he didn't know, my friend didn't know either....so I just left it and it went off in all it's glory, completely unedited. The rules said you could alter it and make it sharper etc but over-editing is not allowed. So I just left it all well alone and didn't alter anything. They judge on technical ability (gulp), composition (gulp), understanding of the brief (whoops), originality and commercial appeal. The brief is animals in action, so I am screwed really!!! Here's the unedited, unclipped, unaltered stoat that I sent off.
It's a big thing for me...the only 3 people who ever encouraged my persuit of photography have passed away sadly. I think they'd be thrilled I'm trying!! I still need to try and do a portfolio for this other person who's shown an interest in my pics. I don't know where to start though or how to do it.
I think it's so easy to say 'look at my great photo' when it's of a beautiful landscape that you can't take a BAD photo of! So if I take a photo of a lovely castle by a lake and everyone says 'that's so cool', I feel a fraud, because it's not the photo that's cool, it's the scenery. I like clever photography, which I am no good at. But we live and learn and that's my goal, to be very good at it!!!
Soph x
Don't laugh!!!! ...she does!! According to Skype, Sexy Kinky XXX Girl wants to be my friend!! There are some scary people out there on the internet!!! Away w'ye!!!
Skype's great. Sod videoconferencing with Tamzin in LA!! You can take comedy pictures of yourself with the webcam and the 20 second delay in-between clicking 'take picture' and the bloody thing actually working means you're caught in all manner of poses. Sigh. Useless thing. Here I am chewing my lip and looking very unimpressed tonight. Bluddy computers....grumble!
x
Well....it finally happened. My husband has been unfaithful and is in love with another. I knew this day would come but nothing could prepare me for it. The sad truth is that I can't compete. The third party in our marriage? Well...words escape me so I will just show you a photo of her instead. The dirty little hussy...
Yes, my husband's heart now belongs to a Harley Davidson Sportster!!! He is completely obsessed and spends all of his time lovingly polishing her, twiddling with her buttons, carefully putting her to bed and murmering sweet nothings about oils and taking her out to nice places. Sigh. And when he isn't outside with her, he is on the computer searching eBay for all sorts of gifts he can buy her. I think the most Floyd ever bought me when we were first dating was a spikey plant from Covent Garden market!!!!! He has even bought her a special oxygen tent so she won't get any condensation on her little handle bars at night time!!! Seriously! Ah well....at least he is happy!!! :-)
Summer finally arrived in London - and then promptly left! But I must say it's nice to have some cool fresh air again so I can sleep at night! It's been way too hot these past 2 weeks and travelling on the tube has been unbearable!
I was in Sardinia with my friend a couple of weeks ago. Lucky me, I know. My friend Kristine and I always have a girlie holiday each year. We've been to the Greek Islands, all over France and Italy and now this year, we had 6 nights in Sardinia. It was great fun. The first hotel was a little remote for us - we stayed in Costa Verde on the northern tip of the island. A great hotel called La Coluccia. Loved the room and the huge terrace and the hotel was very smart and comtemporary - but the shower was awful. Fairly smelly and mouldy and had no light. There was no bath so you either had to wash over the basin or dive in to the pitch black, stinking shower and lather up and rinse off as quickly as possible - all the time screaming "arrrggghh!!! nooooo! it smells sooo baaaad! help meeee!!!". Hee hee!!!! Pretty awful! While we stayed there, we organised some sailing for half a day around the nearby islands. That was spectacular. We had a 45ft yaght with 2 crew and just drifted around for a few hours. Really wonderful and the colours of the water!!!! Stunning!!!!
For the last night, we stayed in Porto Cuervo, Costa Smerelda. Very smart and VERY posh! Great for people watching and for gaping at the £183 million super-yaghts!!!! My god, they were just massive and very, very luxurious!!! All the shops were designer boutiques and this was very definitely a millionaire's playground! Still, we had a nice afternoon wandering around and a nice supper at a charming restaurant overlooking the marina.
Well! I am being sarcastic but it HAS been nearly 3 months since my last post. I am ashamed of myself!
So much has been happening and it's nice to be busy, but it has been a bit mental too!
Very, very sadly my dear uncle Michael passed away a couple of weeks ago, suddenly and unexpectedly. He had been in fine health and had just returned from a trip to Florence (at the age of 84, he was always globe trotting, camping rough in parts of Africa etc, signing up to all sorts of trips abroad). So it was a sudden and terrible shock when this happened and we are still trying to move on from the loss now. Michael's funeral was last Friday, the day of my birthday. Of course I bypassed all birthday thoughts because of the circumstances. It was terribly sad at the crematorium as Michael had requested 2 specific pieces of music to be played. One was a military march and the other was Moon River. Oh how I cried. I have played that song several times since and just weep!!! But Michael would say "oh for goodness sake!" at the thought of a weepy niece, so I'll move on. My cousins were just wonderful in looking after us all and for showing such courage and compassion, amidst their own grief. My cousins's wife was just fantastic cooking for us all and making us feel so at home when they must have so much on their plates.
I was really honoured to be asked to read something at the funeral. I found a lovely poem called 'The Journey Of My Life' and read some words on my mum's behalf too. You can read the poem here as I added it to Davo's blog to mark the one year anniversary since he passed on.
Floyd and I went off on hols to the USA in April and had an amazing time. Probably the best holiday we've ever had! We flew with my mum to LA and stayed with my sister Tamzin and her husband Tom up in their Hollywood hills home. I really did not expect to like LA so much but the Hollywood hills and canyons are spectacular (which if course WOULD make everything seem so nice!). It was like being in Tuscany! Hummingbirds, coyotes, all sorts of other birds etc etc all around, little quiet winding lanes, beautiful wild flowers and trees and of course the view over LA for miles and miles. Floyd and I hired a really cool convertible car and we took mum off up the Malibu coast one day and had a great time. Just miles of deserted white sands and sparkling blue sea! We met friends for lunches, shopping and drinks too. A great 5 days!!
We then drove to Las Vegas and saw the same friends there too for 2 nights partying! We saw the Cirque De Soleil show 'Love' which was set to the soundtrack of The Beatles. It was AMAZING. I cannot express how gobsmacked we were! The show was incredible from start to finish! Our friend had managed to get some of the best seats and we were really lucky. Such a great evening!!! The next night was the Def Leppard show at the Palms hotel which was brilliant....of course.
We drove on to Lake Powell after Vegas because I wanted to photograph a famous slot canyon called Antelope Canyon there. It was right up on the Utah/Arizona border and was a very long drive. Spectacular scenery though. We had to join a tour group to see the canyon though and that was a bit annoying. They are the only people authorised to drive tourists off to the canyon as it's across desert and inside a rock cluster. The other people didn't behave so well so that was frustrating but I got some great pics.
...
...
...
After that, we drove down to Sedona and stayed a rather plush hotel for the rest of the week. We had a lovely little log cabin by a creek with a nice cracking fire each night, a fantastic award winning restaurant on the hotel grounds, great service etc etc. Lovely. We did a trip to the Grand Canyon by a small Cesna plane from Sedona, a helicopter ride to the bottom of the canyon, a boat ride on the Colorado River, helicopter back up, back in the plane and back to Sedona. Another day we hired a Harley and drove around. And I actually got Floyd to do a 3 hour trail ride on horses! Amazing!!
..
...
...
...
I have just realised that I activated a setting on my Blog so that comments need to be authorised by me before being published (as have had some weird spammy ones, which I just delete anyway). So when I logged on today, I had some comments waiting to be published. Ooops. So sorry for those of you who left them!! I shall keep and eye on things more often.
Here is the latest addition to the Denny family, meet Ptolomy (pronounced 'Tolomy' - Tolly for short!!). He is a sweet, gorgeous little working cocker spaniel puppy!! We have been waiting a while now for him to come home and we were finally able to pick him on Sunday. He was so happy from the moment we picked him up and spent the rest of the galloping around the garden pouncing on golf balls, shaking dad's slipper like mad and washing us all several times over! So sweet! Mum said he was running around the garden with a flowerpot over his head yesterday! Here is Tolly:
....
....
...
...
Sophie Foxley is a very brave 9 year old girl from Shropshire. She has been battling leukaemia since 2006 and has been charting her journey through treatment and the road to recovery via her blog Sophie's Diary. The blog became very well known around the world and tens of thousands of vistors each day were logging on to read Sophie's latest news. Fantastic!! The family have been able to raise much awareness and also money for the various causes they support. My own sister Clare's 'Quilts For Leukaemia' group made a beautiful quilt for Sophie.
Sadly, Sophie also attracted a vicious little 9 year old stalker who began posting death threats and evil messages in the comments sections of her diary blog. Such a senseless cause of emotional distress to Sophie and her family. The story was reported in the press over the weekend (eg. this story) and I am glad it has been resolved and police traced the nasty little culprit. I wish they could name and shame her. Of course they can't though. I am afraid I am not much in to forgiving and forgetting and have a real respect for people who are!
Fighting cancer (whatever age your are) and fighting to just 'live' and keep your world together is one of the toughest challenges for anyone to go through. It quite literally tests every single emotion you have. It breaks you down to smithereens and tries to destroy all that you have and all that you believe in....but of course we don't LET it!!! You keep your eye on that light at the end of tunnel and eventually you break back out in to the real world again and make it back to the arms of your friends and family! And life has never been better! So to imagine what horrors this nasty little bully inflicted on poor Sophie's family, I am left speechless. It's very sad indeed that someone so young could be so evil. I hope her family are working hard on correcting this child's serious humanity issues and are prising that little pitchfork from her hand! ;-)
As my friends from Miltchat will recall, we had something similar-ish a year ago on the Miltchat forum (a forum where most members have had or have leukaemia or other blood cancers). A girl joined and told us she had non-hodgkins lymphoma so we welcomed her in to the fold and offered her endless support and friendship. Long story short, she latched on to my good friend Davo who was fighting a ferocious battle with leukaemia himself and bombarded him with messages about how miserable she was - what was the point of living? everyone hates her, she is so scared of her illness etc. Davo was being so brave about his own illness. He had just lost the use of his legs and things were very bleak in his world, but he fought like a soldier with a very brave heart...he was getting quite worried about this girl Allison's messages and didnt know how to handle her. She would post on the forum that her fiance had left her when she was in a coma and her family disowned her. Then she came on the forum pretending to be her own sister to tell us all she had slipped in to another coma. I smelt a rat and eventually caught her out because she had a Myspace page too - she didn't know I would find that and I started contacted her friends. None of her friends there knew she had cancer, let alone a serious illness! The reason? Because she didn't. She had a history of lying. Anyway - long story short, we exposed her, she apologised and has never been seen again on our forums thanks goodness!
We were all patting each other on the back afterwards (that we had found her out) but I remember how terribly upset Davo had been. He had been so ill and emotionally weak at the time and this girl preyed on that. She had hounded him with messages about her fake terminal illness, while he was battling his own. I verbally kicked this girl's ass like you wouldn't believe for Davo and for Looch (another friend Allison had also taken advantage of with her lies) but it didn't help Davo feel any better. All this girl cared about was the fact that I found out who her friends were and contacted them all telling them what she had done. She couldn't care less about all the sick people she had hurt.
I guess the point I am making from all of this is how bullies can totally destroy the soul, given the chance. Just because they get caught and slapped on the wrist by the police or a parent, it doesn't undo the pain they have caused. The solution? I don't know. Be good parents to your children and install them with a decent set of morals! Perhaps that would help. I hope so.
Soph xx
Look what I found! These piccies are from Floyd's 40th (which was in November 2006!). We hired out a big room and a bar at a local hotel in Blackheath and had live music, a drinks luge (I had the Rolling Stones mouth and tongue done! Your poured in your schnapps or vodka in the back and it trickled down the tongue in to your cup! or mouth...or ear...for some people at the end of the night...who's names shall remain anonymous!).
We had bangers and mash, mulled wine, huge fireworks display and live music! We also had a fun casino brought in and I made some special money just for the night! The casino was meant to be entertainment for those not wanting to listen to live music but unfortunately everyone went mad over gambling and the band were left playing to an almost empty room! Which is shame as the band are our very, very good friends Live N Kickin! who are Kent's number one covers band! If you ever get the chance to see them, grab it by the horns!!!
These are the bank notes I 'Photoshopped'! Bank of Wully and Bank of Flatch! Both Floyd's nicknames from The Almighty. Wully = short for Walter - he can explain where that came from! and Flatch = short for Flatuence... my, those touring days on the bus must have been such fun with Floyd! I suffer now so God knows what the poor band and crew went through!
>
>
>
Elderly people are really not all that sweet and innocent you know! They just think they can get away with more but watch 'em!!! When you're back is turned!!!....
My sister Tamzin and her hubby Tom planned to be in New York on business this week (remember, they moved to LA permanently a little while back). My devious mother thought it would be great if my dad joined them out there as he deserves a break and has never been to the US. But the idea had to come from Tamzin. So a plot was formed and set in to action. Lo and behold...a hook, some line and a sinker later...they were off!! I actually found some really cheap flights with American Airlines. Shame the Manhattan hotel cost twice as much!
I am not sure if anyone else has ever attempted this but explaining to an OAP what online check in is, US visa waiver forms, customs forms for the US, baggage allowance, rules on carrying liquids in hand luggage, rules on taking a taxi outside JFK airport, when to tip at a hotel, how mobile phone roaming works etc etc etc - as well as all the little in's and out's such as 'no dad, you don't need to make your bed and vacate your hotel room every morning...it was all quite stressful really!
Floyd is starting a website of his own! Well....that's code for 'wife Sophie is creating a website for Floyd'!!! Keep an eye on www.floydlondon.com. It should be up and running soon. I am making him write his own content though!! Just be prepared for pictures of Floyd's socks or an in depth report on his favourite marmalde....perhaps!
Floyd and I are planning our trip to the US in April - part of which will be touring around Arizona on a Harley Davidson (but how much stuff can I take as a pillion rider? arggh!). I am also probably going for a week's hol later in the year with a friend - who I usually have a little holiday with each Summer. Last year was France and Italy - the year before was the Athens and the Greek Islands. We are just doing a short break this year - somewhere in Europe.
