On 5th December Bracknell held it’s now annual santa run in aid of a hospice. As part of the entry fee you get a santa suit to wear and at the end a mug and a bar of chocolate and a couple of other goodies. It was amazing to see so many people dressed in red in one place. First they let the ‘Reindeers’ go these are the people that can run and think they will do it in under 30 mins. The they let the ’snow men’ go these should run it in between 30-50 mins and the ‘puddings’ are let loose, these will take over the hour and were followed by 2 men dressed up as Christmas puddings on bikes (I guess they were rounding up the stragglers. Below are a couple of photos from the event for more please go to my facebook photos album at 600 santas running.

photograph of some of the 600 santa claus' running in Bracknell Forest Dec 10

photograph of the 2 'puddings' at the 600 santa run

photograph of some of the santas at the end of the run

Had one of the busiest wedding fairs all season on Sunday at the Trunkwell Mansion House, Mortimer Nr Reading. The weather was excellent which seems to bring everyone out. Trunkwell Mansion House is a wonderful venue for weddings with a small area of well kept gardens and some wonderful period features within the original mansion house which make great backgrounds for wedding photography, e.g. real fire places, wood paneling. A wonderful venue for your wedding ceremony/civil ceremony and/or wedding breakfast. Below are a couple of images from the venue.

Garden feature at Trunkwell Mansion House, Mortimer, near Reading

Trunkwell Mansion House view from the garden

Trunkwell Mansion House civil ceremony room

Had a good wedding fair at the Village Hotel in Farnborough on 31.10.10. Really busy, busiest one of the year so far. Quite a nice modern hotel, though like most modern hotel not much in the way of places to get nice photographs. Here are a coupld of photographs of the outside the inside is very dark and has few windows to allow in natural light.

photograph of the outside of Village Hotel Farnborough

photograph of patio area outside the front of Village Hotel Farnborough

There was a brilliant networking event last week at Charwell House in Alton. The Mayor of Alton opened the event with a brief speech about business in Alton, this was followed by a very entertaining Bee Varga with large hoops (the guys were swarming around her stall after the starting speeches), poor Kathy had to follow that with a brief introductory speech about Charwell House, and finally a quick introduction to Alton’s online magazine for business and residents in Alton. There were about 25 stands with people displaying their services or goods, with free food supplied by the Indian Balti restaurant, free tea, coffee and dougnuts supplied by Catering 4 occasions and free cake supplied by a lady whose name I forget (sorry!). I was there to offer a special service of 3 photographs of website size taken with portable studio lighting for £25.00 plus I was taking photographs of the event. An excellent evening and below are a couple of photos from that night.

photograph of the Mayor during the opening speech with some of the attendees in the background

photograph of hoopla entertainment

photograph of hoopla entertainment

photograph of Kathy welcoming speech and a few of the attendees in the background

photograph of one of the trade stands

I am pleased to say that I won the digital Image of the year competition at Basingstoke Camera club last night (16th September 2010) with theimage shown below. DI of the year is always the first competition of the new club year and to enter you must have been a member of the club in the previous year and entered the images in at least one competition in the previous year. Up to 2 images can be enteredin the competition of the year and the judge chooses 1st,2nd and 3rd and a few highly commended images. There are usually 2 photographic competitions one for the digial images and one for prints. I only enetered the DI competition as I did not enter any print competitions last year. And my photograph called spray won 1st prize.

photograph of a horse cantering through water creating a lot of spray.

Nothing in the photograph is sharp (deliberatly) in order to give a sense of movement and show the amount of spray created. Not everyones taste but the judge last night obviously liked it! Yippee!!!

Wedding fair season has started again and the 1st of my dates was today at the Hilton Hotel Basingstoke. The weather was great so I think it pulled the people out to take a look at various wedding suppliers. The hotel had set up the civil ceremony room of which there are a couple of photographs below.

photograph of the Hilton Hotel Basingstoke civil ceremony room from the rear high angle

photograph of the Hilton Hotel Basingstoke civil ceremony room from the rear low angle

photograph of the Hilton Hotel Basingstoke civil ceremony room from the front

just found out it was hoax email , don’t you just hate them ?! Why do people do it.

see link http://www.hoax-slayer.com/plastic-cancer-link-hoax.html

I have just come back from a very relaxing week in Cromer, Norfolk. A beautiful part of the UK with lots of nature reserves and miles of beaches to walk along. Below are a couple of photographs I took during the week.

photograph of seals at Blakeney point near Cromer, Norfolk

This was a very exciting boat ride as the spray was coming over the sides and the boat was rocking about like a see-saw on the large waves and drenched everyone and I had £2K worth of camera and lens with me, trying to keep it dry was quite difficult.

photograph taken on Cromer beach using the fisheye lens

I made good use of the fisheye lens during the week. This was a very old tractor used to pull the lobster fishing boat up the beach.

A testimonial from a very happy customer:
Hi Brenda,

OUR WEDDING PHOTOS AT OAKLEY HALL 19TH JUNE -ARE FANTASTIC !

Alan and I just wanted to take the opportunity to say a very big thank you to you, for the wedding photo disc received in
the post yesterday. We are sincerely over whelmed with your professional photography. They are beautiful and tell the
story of our wonderful wedding day. We feel they are very natural pictures and you certainly worked very hard on the day to
ensure we all tried to relax for the poses you required.

We are just sorry that the registrar was late and put pressure on us with time. We were very prompt ourselves and you
encouraged us to run to your specific time scales. But in some areas, we missed the opportunities for a few extra photos
to be taken, I wanted to be at the front of Oakley Hall with my dad and bridesmaids but unfortunately was waiting for the
registrar and was very late in arriving to you. I am very thank full you gave time, in taking the photos with my mum and dad
in the courtyard before this, excellent on your part.

You have captured so many wonderful memories for us to keep for the rest of our lives. Our family and friends can’t wait
to see them on the web next week. We now have a very difficult decision of what we choose. I feel like displaying so many
of your images in our home. We look forward to receiving your video once you have completed and produced.

Alan and I had a fantastic wedding day, and all our family and guests did too.

Thank you for being such an important part of our incredibly special wedding day, we will be in touch with you.

Yours sincerely,

Lyndy and Alan

As a birthday present for my husband I paid for a trip to the Royal Berks. Shooting School near pangbourne. Along with some friends of ours who also shoot and their wifes we had a great day walking round the beautiful grounds and then a very nice barbeque with wine and beer provided. below are a coupld of photographs from the day:

photograph taken from below and in front of the gun!

photograph of the shells poping out and the puff of smoke that goes with them

photograph of husband preparing to fire at the clay