Eek, well here goes... The scary first blog post.
I have written blogs in the past, but not for a while. It's like a diary and we've all looked back on the first pages of the diary wincing in embarrassment...so most of the blogs have gone. Deleted.
Now it's time for some earnest sharing of my love of the mountains, taking pictures, making scenes and a few experiences of where I have been or stories behind the photographs. Keeping it simple, hopefully.
So to launch, here is my first picture I'd like to share with you.
Grounded fledgling yellow hammer in Bill's hands.
Working with Brecon Beacons Holiday Cottages I am often in some really beautiful houses and gardens and meet some lovely and interesting folk.
Last week I was shooting "Sylvie's Shepherds Hut", I've been here before to shoot the cottage, "Maggie’s Barn" so I know Bill the owner, but he is as interesting and as sweet as the first time you meet him.
He wears a blue/grey RAF pullover and similar coloured trousers. His hair is white like old father time and his eyes are piercing blue. He is small, but weirdly strong and the twinkle in his eye says his mind is fully active and still curious about the world.
Bill has created an arboretum, an impressive collection of really rare plants and trees. He has over 200 bird boxes and a man made lake stocked with brown trout that he will teach people to fly fish on. He taught me about recognising different birds nests in the space of half an hour.
A really interesting man.
We shot the shepherds hut on a hot and humid afternoon in the mountains above Talgarth, and Bill walks up with a little bird in his hands. He says in his lilting Welsh accent "Look here now, can you tell me what bird this is?" I say maybe a wagtail or a green finch? "Noo, not quite... It's a yellow hammer, a fledgling I'd expect-fallen outta the nest or just got stuck on the ground. I'll put 'im somewhere safe"
We talked about plants, birds, fish, the views, stories of the panthers that are loose in the black mountains of South Wales, my new house and what to put in my garden.
I left Sylvie's Shepherds Hut that afternoon a lot wiser with a bigger heart, a cutting from a plant Bill's mother had invented and a varigated horse raddish in a pot.