Forty-five quid ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 11th, 1978, the renowned newspaper tycoon Eddie Shah wrote me a letter. Ok, it was actually his secretary, but he did sign it, so that counts! The basis of the correspondence was this: he was offering me a job with Messenger Group Newspapers. I'd got a job as a press photographer, at just turned 18 years of age. 

I was in! ..

That letter changed my life. I still have it, stuck in one of my many scruffy old scrapbooks ..

"Dear Mr. O'Neill, we are pleased to offer you the post .. "

Magic words, and amazing to think of the places and people and occasions they've allowed me to witness over the ensuing forty-two years. On my first day in the job - the first day - I had to photograph the captain of Manchester United! Thank you, Eddie Shah, for giving me that chance, so long ago ..

And hey, it gets better. That dream job, an ambition from the age of thirteeen, a job I'd have happily done for nothing .. he threw in forty-five quid a week as well ..

Four ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so we start our fourth year in France. Zut alor!..

The joy of gîtes ..

 

 

 

 

 

Well, goodbye guests. That's the end of the summer season for La Galerie, our little gîte in downtown SW France, and what a short season it was. Thanks to Covid we were shut from March until the beginning of July but, we're delighted to say that, as soon as restrictions were lifted, the bookings came flooding in. We had Dutch guests, French guests, Scottish guests and .. some English!!

Now, I'm saying it like that for a reason, and that being, as much as we like and need them, the English are so bloody messy! They don't seem to be able to tidy up after themselves when they leave. The Dutch? Brilliant. Same for the French, the Spanish, the Scots, the Poles and every other nationality of guest we've welcomed here. But the English? Well, they seem to think we're some kind of skivvies, put on earth for the sole purpose of cleaning up the mess they leave behind them. There seems to be a general attitude of 'leave it, we're on holiday'. Look at this photograph of the shelf in our bathroom. Disgusting, isn't it? Still, I suppose I shouldn't complain. The guests left us a great review. The gîte, they said, was .. "spotless" !

Let's hear it for the oldies ..

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A week on from turning 60 and I've already seen one advantage of my advanced years. I've been able to get an eye-test appointment a full month ahead of that whipper-snapper Lesley! Ha ..

Grateful ..

I'm going to be sixty years old tomorrow. Good God, I'm not old enough to be sixty years old and, as unoriginal as it sounds, I have to ask 'where did all that time go?'

Well, I suppose it went whilst having a great life and, at 59.9999999 I have to say I've enjoyed practically every minute of it (so far). So, I'm feeling grateful today. Grateful for everything I have, grateful for my health, my family, everyone I know, everything I've done, everything I've experienced, everything I'm still going to experience and, probably, grateful for headache tablets come Wednesday morning ..

Today's shot is probably one of my earliest photographs. This is the street I grew up on, circa 1974. The little blighter on the left is my brother James, and he's 53 years old now! Little did I know when I took this that a long and wondrous career as a photographer beckoned and, for that, I am very grateful indeed ..

Normalness ..

Dare I say there's a hint of 'normalness' re-appearing in our lives? I've had my first photo-shoot in the studio since February - the delightful young ladies above - and, last week, I had to photograph the newly-elected Mayor and council for our commune. I've also had enquiries for a Wedding and a shoot at a property ..

Good news on the gîte front too, as La Galerie welcomes new guests today, our first since March ..

Covid 19 hasn't gone away but, thank God, the stark reality of life in lockdown is starting to fade ..

Is 'normalness' a word? It is now ..

My Olympus Trip ..

I'm a bit late coming to this news, but I read the other day that Olympus have stopped making cameras. I mean, that's like saying Hovis have given up on bread. What sad news. Sad but inevitable, I guess, as the rise and rise of the 'phone camera continues ..

When I first started working on a newspaper, I was presented with an Olympus OM-1 camera, with its 'arse-about-face' shutter speed ring where the aperture ring would normally be. (Don't worry about the technical stuff. Let's just say it was very odd to get used to). However, when I was about 20 the company launched the Olympus XA camera - a little compact beauty that I immediately fell in love with. From the day I bought one I was never without it. We went everywhere together and I must have gone through about five or six of them over the following years. (Including the one I dropped down a volcano in Sumatra.) I shot all of my book 'Don't Miss This' on them. It was just so quiet and inconspicuous. And now? Erm, now I use the camera on my 'phone ..

Sorry, Olympus, but it's been one hell of a trip ..

Father's Day ..

It's summer 1961, and a good-looking 28 year old proudly holds his one year old son for the camera, their smiles captured forever.

The 28 year old was my Dad. I'm the little nipper in his arms. I wish I could put my arms around him now .. 

Have a nice day!

My blog today consists of this one single picture. I think the headline in the newspaper sums up my thoughts perfectly. Showing you this old picture of mine means that I now don't need to write about Covid-19, or racism, or unemployment, or recession, or Chinese aggression, or Dickhead (Sorry, every time I try to write T.r.u.m.p my computer spellchecks it back to Dickhead), or kids with knives, or corporate greed, or scum raping women at illegal Manchester raves, or people dumping statues into the sea (That'll definitely erase things from history .. not!!), or the UK Government, or people suing their date because they got a cold-sore, or North Korea, or Assad, or, or, or ..

Have a nice day! 

Watch it, Grandad ..

Writing about Wedding photography yesterday reminded me how I would always meticulously clean my cameras before photographing someone's Big Day. It was a little ritual I had. The sensors, the viewfinders, the lenses .. they all got the (pre-Covid) deep clean ..

So, after writing my blog, I took out all my gear and decided to give it the once-over. And then came my Grandad moment. I looked at my first camera body and realised I couldn't remember how to open the back. And then it dawned on me. It was a digital camera. One does not open the back of a digital camera. Gone are the days of blowing dust from your open shutter and checking there were no broken fragments of film stuck to the sprockets. My, how I laughed ..

I always fretted if I had a long gap between Weddings. It was important to keep 'up to speed' with all my camera gear. Three or four weeks without a booking meant I got rusty, in my opinion. I wonder how rusty we all are now, seeing as we haven't done 'normal' things for so long ...

To illustrate today's blog, a shot from the early 80s, when people would latch themselves onto each other and 'row' along the disco floor to the song 'Oops, upside your head'.

Hmm! Did I say "normal" .. ? 

Mind the gap ..

It's a frustrating week of 'Would have, Should have' this week. For a start, we should have had family over here for a holiday, but Covid's put the mockers on that. And, if things had been normal, I would have been going to an air show a couple of hours from here next Sunday. Most annoying of all, I would have been photographing a wedding this week, but all plans got put on hold and now it's not going to happen. Ironic in the week that lockdown got a little easier on us, with bars and restaurants finally opening again and larger groups able to get together for the first time in ages ..

Still, we're going in the right direction but I worry that people will take things too far and we'll all be back to square one. So, please, as they say on the Underground .. Mind The Gap!

My Dad ..

It's the morning of Saturday May 23rd .. 2009. The morning my Dad died. Eleven years on and I still miss him so much. I have so many good memories, like the night he won this giant bottle of Bell's whisky in the pub raffle. Once it was finally drained he used it to collect loose change and, when it was eventually full, he donated the money to charity. He was nice like that, my Dad ..

On yer bike, China ..

First bike ride after the end of lock-down yesterday .. and wonderful it was, too. Just waiting for the achy legs to kick in now. By sheer coincidence, I dug out this shot the other day - a kodachrome slide from a trip I made a long time ago. I know China is a dirty word at the moment, but this is a picture from Canton and I look at it now with a sense of dismay, that a country can have as many cyclists as it has and still pump out all the pollution it does. How depressing to hear that pollution levels are on the rise again as things there get 'back to normal'.

I don't want normal anymore, thank you very much ..   

Look, don't touch!

What was it like before the pandemic, Grandad? I've heard there was a time when people could go into pubs and clubs and sit next to each other .. without masks .. and they could shake hands and kiss and hug and not be afraid of catching anything! Is it true, Grandad? Is it true?..

 (A shot from my archive: The Talk of The North club, Eccles, circa 1977. That's my grandma, trying to hide from my camera!)

Leaving Lock-Down ..

Freedom! Erm, apart from the weather ..

Today is the first day we in France are being allowed to move around more freely and, wouldn't you know it, it's blowing a gale and pouring down.

It's also the day my Lock-Down Landscapes project must come to an end even though, ironically, the weather of late has been too good to come inside and actually design any. So, you can thank the horrible conditions for the fact that I've actually been indoors this morning and it gives me great pleasure to present to you my final three montages. All were shot in, or from, our garden, apart from half a dozen that I photographed on our permitted one-kilometre walks ..

God, imagine only being able to walk a kilometre from your home. Yes, they've sure been weird times. Let's pray to God that people are sensible and we never get a restriction like that ever again ..

Ten out of ten ..

It's the tenth of May, 2010 ..

I'm pulling into a pub car-park, heart-thumping, about to meet - in person - a girl I've met on-line.

Her name is Lesley, and she's lovely.

______


It's the tenth of May, 2020 ..

I'm in France, with the girl I love.

Her name is Lesley, and she's lovely.

_______


Our tenth anniversary. Wow!

Oh, the picture? Well, she'd kill me if I put up a picture of herself. These are Lesley's grand-daughters. What? I'm going out with a grandma?..

;-)

x

Ten years into the future ..

I had the most lovely surprise yesterday ..

"Just wanted to say hi .." said a message I received. "Ten years ago today you photographed our wedding at Manchester Town Hall. You probably won't remember it as you've done hundreds but you did make our day and we've got lots of captured memories thanks to you."

Well, of course I remember it, and what a lovely message .. and how absolutely wonderful of the couple to think of me on their wedding anniversary. It really made my day ..

'Future Everything' said the poster that I posed them by all those years ago and now that we're in 'the future' it just reinforces the importance of a good set of Wedding photographs. It makes me feel great to think of all those 'hundreds' of couples who now have a set of my photographs in their homes ..

Happy anniversary, Judi and Chris ..  

Rain! Hurrah ..

A month ago, our garden was flooded. Spring was only just making itself felt and I feared for our poor old flower bulbs, underground and underwater. Four weeks later and the ground is rock hard. Weeks of winter rain has drained away, leaving the soil as cracked as the Kalahari. Nobody seems to have told the plants though, and they've all been coming up like crazy these past few weeks ..

And now, rain again, and nature is being rewarded for its no-nonsense approach to life. (Hey, it's been doing it for years.) I can't tell you how happy I am to see the skies darkening again, and we've been getting some great thunder and lightning to spice up the party ..

Of course, another aspect of nature is still darkening our lives at the moment. Confinement continues, but I hope my lock-down landscapes bring a little sunshine (and rain) into your day. Don't forget, I'm here if you have any photography questions that need answering ..  

Lock-down three ..

Lock-down Landscape number three .. the same number as the amount of weeks we have left inconfinement. Yeah, right ..

But what? A Jumbo Jet? Well, yes .. I've included it as it's currently as wonderful a sight as the fresh Spring leaves or the horses grazing just beyond our gate or the farmer sowing a new crop in the field by the side of us. The sky above us is normally a cross-roads for aircraft, demonstrating just how inter-connected our little world is. We get planes travelling up from Spain and Morocco to Paris or other parts of Europe, or from Rome and the UAE heading for the USA, and even South America heading for China - but, at the moment, there's barely a thing in the sky. It's working wonders for the reduction in pollution, and playing havoc with my plane-spotting ..

Still, I won't complain. People are going through hell at the moment. My thoughts are (as always) with you all today ..

For Joan and Alan ..

Time for Lock-down Landscape number 2, my new series of shots taken from, or within our garden ..

Sadly, since my last blog, two is also the number of deaths I've heard about, of people I know back in the UK. How sad. RIP Joan and Alan ..

President Macron has told us that the confinement will finish on May 11th. Personally, I think that's a bit too optimistic, and I'm sure I'll be shooting my landcsapes for quite a while yet. Don't forget, I'm here to answer any photography questions you might have about shooting landscapes and flowers ..