I recently retired from the dive centre 'Davy Jones Diving', just before my 70th birthday.
I decided to mark the event with three personal challenges ... to do a bike ride of 70 minutes, then to take 70 great photographs, and finally to do a scuba dive of 70 minutes.
Throughout July and August I have been snapping away with different cameras. I got my solid, heavy Nikon D5200 out of the cupboard and relearnt how to use it. An old fashioned digital SLR, it still gives great results. I used the smaller Canon G-16 for the underwater photos, but also for some of the land photos, and then a few pictures came from my Samsung smartphone or the Go-pro. The result is many fotos, which I have arranged into a collection of special types (underwater, macro, portrait), or into 'stories' where the pictures try to tell a particular story.
Calm Arinaga
For 350 days of the year, Arinaga is a calm, laid-back town and then for the annual Fiesta the town wakes up.
Here are a selection of photos taken to reflect the calm side of Arinaga - when the fiesta is not in the town!
Fun in the sea
In a town with the sea near us, how many ways can you have fun with the water ?
Pinchos Night
Every Thursday night in summer and autumn, is 'Pinchos' in Arinaga. Several of the bars offer a drink and sample of food at a fixed price of about €4.00. You can try local seafood, morcilla dulce (sweet black pudding) cheese, meat and other dishes. In summer there is a live band on the main streetand locals stream into Arinaga from all around the surrounding towns. A great place to meet friends and enjoy the food and drink on offer.
The Vará de Pescao!
The highlight of the annual fiesta in Arinaga is the Vará de Pescao. Our sleepy town welcomes 30-40,000 visitors from local towns, and almost everybody adopts the dress code of the fishermen - blue jeans or trousers, white shirt and straw hat. You meet your friends, you eat the freshly barbecued sardines, you follow the parade of the boats and in the end you enjoy the fireworks.
A walk around Bramley
I was born and lived for nearly 20 years in Bramley, Leeds. What is it like today ?
Get close with macro
I took these photographs using macro settings in the garden of our house in Bramley
Diving in Gran Canaria
I took these photographs using macro settings in the garden of our house in Bramley
Windsurfing at Pozo
I cycled down to Pozo one Sunday to see the PWA Windsurfers, but the winds were light so all the action is on the shore. These were taken with my Canon G-16
Portraits
I wanted to try a form of photography I have never really practiced before - getting portraits which capture the soul of the person. Here are the results of some of my experiments
