Instow Beach...

... was a glorious place to be yesterday evening, a slight nip in the air still, but a wonderful golden light from the setting sun, gave everything a magical glow... the sands here are clean and soft, with just the right amount of "give" to make walking on them a pleasure. I was (naturally!) taking photographs of various marine subjects, when a little way off I saw a woman dressed in red, with what looked like three white rough haired labradors...

They dogs were in fact Maremma sheep dogs, and their charming owner, Penny, told me all about them. They are not used for herding or controlling sheep as in the UK, but for guarding them against wolves in the hills of Tuscany. These dogs form a bond with the sheep that they guard and work without a human interfering! They live withe sheep in the hills and are intelligent enough to know when things are getting dangerous for their flock, apparently. Despite their docile appearance and sweet nature, clearly these dogs are bred for bravery... My pic today shows them posing for me on the beach!

There I was...

... enjoying a quiet bit of pro active photography in the countryside, when I got a call from my colleague, John Robertson, aka JR. "Can you get me to Sywell aerodrome and wait for an hour?", he asked....well of course I could but why would I want to wait when there was a chance of a flight in a Cessna 4 seater!!!?

So less than an hour later, I found myself strapped into the rear seat, snugly sandwiched between my camera bag and the window, en route for Bedfordshire.... a 20 minute flight! Much better than the 3 hours I endured sitting in a jam on the A14 only last week. I can't talk about the reason we were flying around for a while, but it provided me with some great opportunities for unusual views of familiar places. These will all end on my Alamy stock library I hope!

Today's picture shows us about to land back at Sywell, on their new all weather concrete runway - brilliant!

Later I managed to capture the fun pic of the stick man and the balloon - pure luck that I saw the situation developing as the ballon was being blown along the ground towards the painted figure on the ground... a little patience and the shot was made!

Oops...

... nearly forgot to say happy St Patrick's Day!

What a strange business

... being a photographer is! On Tuesday my colleague John Robertson and I were in London's Portobello Road, a most fashionable and trendy area, full of coffee shops, antique stores and street vendors, taking photographs of "Pop Princess" Gabriella Cilmi - a lovely,talented girl who hit the charts with Nothing Sweet About Me, a few months back. Gabriella has a new CD out this month and is also off to Australia for the Melbourn GP so photos were required for the papers down there. By contrast on Friday JR and I were in the slightly less fashionable surrounds of Burscough,near Ormskirk in rural Lancashire to take "dramatic" pictures of new lorries for a PR campaign. I have chosen to put the pic of Gabriella here rather than one of the lorries!!!! On second thoughts... some people like lorries so there is a lorry shot, although NOT the ones that we were being paid to photograph! I just like the colours!

St David's Day...

... and I thought that some nice daffodils would be a good pic for today! But fate had another idea and I found myself photographing a fairly major fire right next door

As I was packing up my car to head off to the woods for some spring flower pictures, the distinctive smell of burning rubber filled my nostrils. Then I noticed the smoke drifting from the top of my neighbour's garage doors...

My first action was to check that no one was at home, then I placed the plam of my hand against the garage door - it was red hot, so I dialled 999 immediately

The fire brigade turned out and sprang into action - levering a gap in the garage doors to see inside, they sprayed a wall of water before shutting the door again. My neighbour's car, a TVR Griffith was inside and burning, and the flames were already licking the roof inside the garage

More fire engines turned out, so eventually we had 4 in attendance and the cul-de-sac was closed off while they did their best to control the fire, which was threatening the upstairs bedroom over the garage

After an hour or so, the fire was extinguished and the full extent of the damage could be evaluated. It doesn't look like the TVR will be going anywhere soon...