New Black and White Images

I have added some new images on the Dave Butcher Photography web site. They are the last few scans that were done for my new book City Light. Included are Wellington in New Zealand, Sydney, Washington DC, San Francisco, Buxton, and Manchester.

There are one or two more on the web site.

Manchester Trinity Bridge

Buxton Turner Memorial and Town at Night

Washington Memorial Flags at Night

Wellington Carter Fountain at Night

San Francisco Transamerica Pyramid

Sydney Strand Arcade

All of these are in my new City Light book, out in March. I should have the cover design soon and will post that when I have it, along with more information on what is in it. At the moment it looks like there will be 119 different black and white photographs and the sub-title will be 'Cities of the World and Buxton'. Buxton is my local town here in the English Peak District.

Home Sweet Home

We returned home from our USA trip on Saturday. The United flight from Denver to Washington was fine but the Virgin flight from Washington DC to London Heathrow was cancelled. We only found out a few hours before we were due to go to the airport; we had checked-in several hours earlier. No reason given. At the airport we were at the front of the queue that developed and Virgin said all the right things but it took so long to get sorted.

Unfortunately, BA and Virgin didn't seem to understand what paperwork was needed to make the change so 2 hours later we were still waiting for our bookings to be transferred. Eventually, most of the Virgin passengers were transferred to equivalent BA flights.

My back was aching by the time we left the plane in London. BA Business class seats are not flat like the Virgin ones, which is the main reason why we fly Virgin on long flights.

A quick diversion to visit Jan's parents and pick up our things left there at Christmas, then Jan drove us home by mid-afternoon Saturday. My back was really aching so I went to bed to rest it for a few hours. It was nice to be home.

It's 4 days later and I'm still trying to get over the jet-lag. Feeling tired at the wrong time of day and not sleeping at night. Walking to Buxton for a day in Gallery in the Gardens yesterday seemed to help tire me out so that I slept better. Over 3 of the 4 hours walking the 12 miles over the hills were in the dark in continuous heavy rain, much of it in low cloud too. Not the best day for walking but a good day to test the new head torch that I bought in REI Boulder!

It's a Black Diamond Spot head torch with a 90 lumens main beam.  The bright beam lit the ground even in fog, rain and in the dark so that was a success. It also has a red beam which I thought would be useful for me finding things and changing film when doing night photography. Having to find a street light or similar to let me see what I'm doing can be a bit limiting and I thought a red beam would be better than bright white as far as retaining night vision, rather than the usual spots in front of the eyes after using white light.

Today I'm continuing to catch up with orders received while we were away.

Washington DC Photos and Breweries

Just waiting at hotel for shuttle to airport.

Have taken 12 rolls / 120 negatives in Washington DC. Managed to avoid arrest taking photos of the White House but stopped from using tripod. Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and several other monuments and statues. The reflecting pool was a building site.

Cold and windy yesterday, my main day for photographs. The flags were impressive in such strong wind.

Also walked around Georgetown, very stylish old buildings and an old canal.

Quite a few night shots, they also hid the mess from lots of building works going on. Reminded me of London!

As luck would have it we also found 2 brew pubs. The Capital City Brewing Co. had a very tasty porter but the food could have been better.

The Chophouse Brewery had 2 good Stouts, an oatmeal and a bourbon one. I stuck to the oatmeal one so that I was capable of walking back to the hotel. The food was good here.

Fly to Denver for the ski and snowshoe part in a couple of hours. Looking forward to seeing our best friends Rob and Annie again in Boulder. Hope they have built up to spending 3 weeks with us!