A Christmas present .. for the future!

It's October 25th so ... Ho Ho Ho!

Yes, ONLY two months to go until Christmas so, in true keeping with the capitalist meaning of it all, it's time to start plugging my Portrait Photography Gift Vouchers. I'm really pleased I'm able to do it this year, now that I'm up and running again with a studio, and my Christmas wish is that it really takes off in 2019. I also hope I can gain a reputation as a quality restorer of old photographs.
Spread the word, folks. Spread the word ..

Sun down ..

From our garden I get a great view of every sunset throughout the year. I also get a great view of a huge mast, which was added to the horizon in Spring to measure whether it's breezy enough to warrant building wind-turbines on the site. Two nights ago the sun had moved far enough over to set right behind the mast and, like a giant 'solstice' marker, I feel that we are now 'on the other side' and winter is on its way. As an interesting aside, I photographed the next night's sunset with my camera-phone (or is it a phone-camera?) and was amazed to see how much the earth has turned in just one 24 hour period. The sun set completely to the left of the mast. The blown-up quality is rubbish, but you get a good idea of how far over it has already moved.

With the clocks changing this weekend this will happen just after 6.30 in the evening. The dark nights have definitely drawn in ..    

Be realistic ..

You'll have to indulge me in this blog as I revel in the fact that, today, I mark exactly forty years as a professional photographer. Forty years! OMG ..

Yes, this day in 1978 I turned up - 18 years old - for my first day with Messenger Group Newspapers in Sale, South Manchester .. and I haven't stopped clicking since. I well remember that day, which started with me being taken to choose a motorbike (I hadn't yet taken the driving test) and ended with me photographing the captain of Manchester United. And boy, the famous people certainly racked up over the years, as did the list of amazing events and places the job took me to. I was once chosen as the sole photographer to cover The Queen at an event in London, and have met people as diverse as Mohammed Ali and Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Saville and Max Clifford. Assignments have taken me from Altrincham and Runcorn to Sri Lanka and Libya and I've covered countless parties, celebrations, launches, gigs, show-openings and book launches. It's been amazing ..

You can click on a few images of the teenage O'Neill, including an 18 year old me with Princess Anne - my first Royal job - and, one of my favourites, me up a 300 foot chimney, scaled without ropes or any nudge towards safety whatsoever!
Those were the days ..

My school careers teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I left school. "A press photographer," I said. "Be realistic," he replied. So glad I proved him wrong ..


  

Stars in your eyes ..

The night sky is one of the most amazing things about living here in France. On a cloudless evening I can look up and see The Milky Way stretch right over our house - something that was impossible to do in the light-polluted skies of the North West of England. In fact, constellations are actually harder to recognise here because of all the extra stars I can see. It's amazing ..

Last night I thought I'd try to capture some of the magnificence but, not being a technically-minded astro-photographer - or a technically-minded anything, come to think of it - I took the simple route to star photography by laying an old camera on the ground and pointing it upwards.
Folks, this is the result ..

Merry Christmas, everybody ..

Cars!! Aaaaagh!! And road-works!! Aaaagh!! And effing Christmas!! Aaaaaaaagh!!
Oh boy, am I glad to be back in rural old France ..

I nipped over to the UK this weekend to see family, have a swift Guinness or eight with my pals and do a spot of er, plane-spotting. There's a pub at the end of the runway at Manchester Airport which I've been going to since I was a teenager in the 70s. It's the best place to get close to planes short of actually boarding one, and it was great to be back there after a year away. Getting to the pub, however, was a different matter. There are bloody roadworks everywhere! And cars. There are cars everywhere! From my bedroom window alone I could see 18 cars parked up. The roadsides are full of them, the pavements are full of them and there's a never-ending stream of them up and down all day long. And Christmas! Christmas is everywhere! Bear in mind it was still September at the weekend, so what a shock it was to see Christmas displays at the three large shops I went into.

Do you know the only thing that wasn't there? Seeds. I went into Wilmslow garden centre with a long list of seeds we'd like to plant in our garden. There were none. They'd all been "put away" to make way for the Christmas displays. So God help you. Do not go into Wilmslow Garden centre for seeds. You will be thwarted!

Oh boy, am I glad to be back in rural old France ..