Behind The Camera

First off: the camear is a Canon 450D EOS. Purchased 2nd hand 2 years ago. It has since been used mostly everyday from spring until autumn. A little less during winter when all the insects have gone to sleep or have lost their physical form.

As you can see, the camera is having a hard time joining me on my adventures and only too often does it make close contact with stones and brambles. Some of the programming buttons have fallen off but as I do all the settings manually all the time it doesn't matter as long as it still takes pictures and lets me zoom in.

Nothing in my photography is a set up. Its all spur of the moment snapshots, no tripods or flash. I don't think its very friendly to flash into an insects eyes, especially as I don't know how they function. All I know is that my eyes don't take well to being flashed at (in both cases! ;)  )

 

 And here we have little 'me' ... sometime in the 1970s. Clearly, I was meant to deal with animals ...

 ... such as this sweet little red squirrel, who doesn't seem frightened by the flashy 70s ski suit! Oh my!!

But my adventures haven't always been in the small big world. Having spent my childhood until early adulthood in Switzerland, my main 'stomping ground' were the mountains.  I have always had an inner urge for space, for views ... and so I spent most of my holidays with my grandparents in the mountians and later, as teenager, either hiking or skiing.

The above two photographs I took sometime in the mid 1980s from top of the 'Schwarzhorn' at 3146 meters above sea level.

Although I am not one for going back in time and I don't care much about the past, this one moment is deep inside my 'heart'. The summit was very narrow, perhaps giving room for as little as 5 people.

As I went up there early in the day with my grandparents in tow, I reach the top way before anyone else and was on my own up there. I was only a teenager then but I felt so free, so peaceful, so irrelevant, nothing in my head seemed to matter. This touched me so deeply that I didn't want to leave. I guess you can imagine why, looking at this utter beauty. To me, this was God ... if I had to describe it, right there, everywhere. I do still remember thinking that (and feeling sick when thinking about the depth of the universe!).

But mentioning views: it was one of the reasons I felt attracted to England ... the endless views!! So free!!

 

And in spring, all bursts into life, everything is green, lush, colourful and the air is filled with the scent of all the flowers, the buzzing of all the insects and the birds sing-song.

What else did I do ... well the list is endless. I do have a great admiration for music and have been, among many things, a music teacher for the best part of 5 years, but that is a long time ago.

Right now, I live everyday as it comes and wherever life leads me, there I shall go. :)

Meanwhile, I hope you do enjoy the adventures in a small but still very big world, from their perspective!

Thank you.