Featured Image of the Week

This week's Featured Image is being posted a couple of days early as I will be on a well-deserved cruise with my family in the Eastern Mediterranean next week.

I fear we have set a very high standard for our children when it comes to Spring Break vacations. You see, living in Europe we've always had such easy access to places I only read about as a kid growing up. So my children think that a normal Spring Break trip is a cottage overlooking Loch Ness in Scotland or touring Italy by train. Oh, what have I done...LOL!

This image was taken on just such a trip and Jill and I were able to escape one evening for a walk around Rome one evening. Our walk took us along the Tiber River and as we passed some trees we happened upon this wonderful sight of St. Peter's dome hanging in the night sky was the river quietly flowed beneath our feet. One of the most iconic images of the trip and the image I always think of when I hear the word Vatican.



As my Featured Image of the week you are able to purchase the base print for a reduced price for this week (actually 2 weeks due to our holiday break!) only from my preferred top-quality printing e-commerce partner ImageKind. Normal matting and framing prices apply. To see this image at my ImageKind gallery page please click here.

Please check back next week to see a new Featured Image from my image collection of "Unique Imagery From Around the World".

This Week's Featured Print

This week's image comes from some when we were fortunate enough to live on a working farm in Norfolk county, England.

Norfolk lies in an area of England called East Anglia. Named after the homelands of the Anglo-Saxons in northern Germany it is, at least where I live, not nearly as flat as has been described. Rolling I would say is a good word to use. It is peppered with WWII airfields and if you remember the opening sequence of Memphis Belle then you have a good idea.

Looking out of our kitchen window we often saw the sun setting behind the infamous English hedgerows but, as happens in a land acclaimed for it's magical light, all the pieces fell together this evening. A quick step out of the front door and voila' a little slice of East Anglia captured to help us remember just how blessed we are to have lived here.



As my Featured Image of the week you are able to purchase the base print for a reduced price for this week only from my preferred top-quality printing e-commerce partner ImageKind. Normal matting and framing prices apply. To see this image at my ImageKind gallery page please click here.

Please check back next week to see a new Featured Image from my image collection of "Unique Imagery From Around the World".

Things you can't do anymore

Earlier this week a friend of mine were talking about things we did while kids that aren't allowed anymore. Despite growing up worlds apart (he in England and me in various parts of the USA) lots of things were the same: fishing, rock fights, riding bikes all day and building clubhouses on "common" property. Kids are kids no matter the place.

In doing a bit of research for an upcoming trip I learned with great sadness that is is now forbidden to feed the pigeons in St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy. When I took my family there on holiday my wife was amazed that this was something that ALL the family wanted to do (and if you travel with family you know what a rarity that is!) and to say we dropped a bit of coin to support the local bird food vending economy would be an understatement.

I know the world is changing and is certainly not the place of my childhood. I certainly can understand the public health implications of the move as well as the effect they have on the historic architecture of St. Mark's (just as I can understand I would not let me children wander as we did when I was young), but it is sad to know sometime in the future I'll be talking with someone and say "Hey, remember when you could feed the pigeon's in St. Mark's? That was cool.".

I'm afraid to say it....

Knowing what sometimes befalls a person when they make bold statements about things so I cringe when I think that I about to let this phrase loose on the world...

I think spring is here in England.

Flowers out all over the place, birds that have been gone are back (big babies, tough it out like the rest of us I say) and a general warmth that has been lacking is slowly creeping back into the ground. I do enjoy spring....

My first Featured Image

Today I start what will be a (hopefully) regular feature of my blog: the weekly Featured Image!

This week's image comes from some time ago but still to this day remains one of my favorite images I've ever captures. While living in Alaska there are often strange weather occurrences due to the fact that Anchorage is surrounding on three sides by mountains and the remaining side open to Cook Inlet leading to the Ocean.

On this particular day we had a weather front move through that brought with it lightening. No that doesn't sound like a big event to most of you but lightening is a rather rare event in the city. As the front pushed through there was a very definate line where the air masses were meeting and it happened that as it was passing overhead the sun was setting and grazing the bottom of the clouds. Throwing open the window I quickly was able to capture and entire roll of images before the moment was over.

It was a tough wait the next day as my friends at Photowright Labs processed the slides and when I saw them I was not disappointed: 36 glorious glimpses into the combination of clouds, sunset and sky lay before me. The image seen below was the pick of the litter, eventually earning an Honorable Mention in the Alaska WILD photography competition and going on tour across the state of Alaska as well as being hung in the International Photography Hall of Fame.





As my Featured Image of the week you are able to purchase the base print for a reduced price for this week only from my preferred top-quality printing e-commerce partner ImageKind. Normal matting and framing prices apply. To see this image at my ImageKind gallery page please click here.

Please check back next week to see a new Featured Image from my image collection of "Unique Imagery From Around the World".

The summer of change...again.

Well it's that time again, time to start thinking about packing up our home and moving 1/2 way across the planet. Again. Out time living in England is coming to an end and this summer we'll be experiencing a new climate we've never experienced before: the desert.

Yes, three years in Tucson, Arizona.

So expect a flurry of posting activity as I try to get caught up on images that have been captured but not yet processed. Frantic trips to see what I thought I'd have time to see but alas have not yet done (a familiar situation I fear). Say, for example, the Jorvik viking festival in York.