Busman's Holiday
The 'busman's holiday' saying has been traced as far back as the 1890's & means spending time off work doing the
same activities one does in their job so a bus driver taking a driving holiday,
or me spending my days off with a camera in my hand - luckily I blimen' LOVE my job !!!
I am a child of the 70's so grew up outdoors, making camps, games & no doubt 'trouble' with the other children who lived down my road (we were 'the Paradise Road gang'). When my friends weren't around or I just fancied time with my own thoughts, I was as happy with animals & plants as I was with children my own age. I would spend hours watching the family dynamics of the snail population living underneath the ivy & vinca on our rockery (and realising that is where they preferred to live after bringing them into my bedroom in an open topped 'Blueband' margarine tub as they quickly (or as quick as a snail can be), made for their escape).
Do you remember the botanist, David Bellamy? He had a great kids show in the 1980's (if anyone can remind me of it's name as after a frustrating google search i cannot find it). He was so excited and enthusiastic about plants and I have a recurring memory of him going 'inside' plants right down to their cells in typical crude 1980's graphics or plastic models to show plant cells 1000's x their size, so we could explore their make up. Again I've tried to google these models but cannot find anything, so unless anyone else can collaborate my story, it is possible I've made the whole 'cell models' thing up! But even so, it obviously captured my attention and thus, a square metre patch of my back garden suddenly felt as large as a universe when I sat and looked long enough and close enough. (Think 'honey I shrunk the kids' film too).
I still enjoy my own company and when my husband comes home from work he'll as likely find me laying face down on the lawn looking at insects as he is to find me editing photos I've just taken of the intricacies of a leaf or flower petal. Isn't the world magnificent! I therefore expect I'm not the only 'people' photographer who started out by taking photos landscapes, plants, trees & insects.
As my camera skills got better over the years and I bought the right kit to achieve the kind of results I was after, I tried to capture the wonder I saw into photos. Don't get me wrong, I am NO landscape, plant or wildlife photographer by any true sense of the word - you won't find my photos contending to become part of the annual BBC Countryside calendar! But that's not why I take them. First and foremost they are for my own satisfaction.
I decided to create this web page as much as a collection for myself as for you to look through. Like millions of us, so many digital photos get left on a memory card or hard drive, so collating some of my favourite images is my way to giving the images life away from their permanent existence in storage. These images were taken for me so I'm not trying to sell anything. Simply enjoy (or not ;) the results of my busman's holidays
