Haddon Hall Spring Showcase

We are getting ready for our first art and designer craft show of this year.

It's the Spring Showcase of Peak District Artisans at Haddon Hall between Bakewell and Matlock.

We set up our stand on Wednesday and the show is on Saturday and Sunday.

We will have quite a few new originals and silver prints. There will also be 37 other artists exhibiting, some of the most talented in the Peak District so lots to see and all high quality.

I've been struggling with my bad back today, it's been letting me know I'm overdoing it. Too much time spent in front of my computer scanning and editing new images.

Hope to see you at the weekend.

St Neots Here We Come!

Jan is driving us down south as I am giving lecture to St Neots Camera Club tonight. The lecture is Lake Light, 7.30pm start at the Bowling Club. It includes photos of Chicago, New York, Lake District, Dutch windmills, Hamburg, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Utah, Colorado.

Come along if you're able to.

We used to live in Sandy just south of St Neots when we first got married. So it is familiar and interesting to see the changes.

Jolly nice day here in Peak District. Hope it holds for photo course we are running here on Saturday.

Focus on Imaging 2012

Focus on Imaging is over for another year. It was good to see so many friends old and new at the show. We hadn't exhibited for 2 years so it had been a while.

Ilford Photo / Harman Technology kindly invited us back on their stand for the 5th time in 7 years and gave us a lot of space to display photos and sell books and courses. We are very grateful to them for this generous support. They also printed my poster of show offers as well as generating QR bar codes for my web site. I hadn't even considered these as useful until this show. For example, I took a photo of the stand on my mobile phone which included the QR code as a small part of the picture. The phone immediately told me it had found and recognised the bar code to my web site link and would I like to click the link. It was very fast and more importantly it worked, going straight to my web site home page! I will use these at shows throughout the year to help customers look at my web site.

Jan took these 2 photos of the stand one morning before the show started. The QR code is on the end of the counter next to where I am standing.

This one shows my shot of St Paul's from Millennium Bridge London printed at 1 metre by 0.5 metres by Ilford Lab Direct from my negative scan.

The show was good for us, we sold lots of books and some courses.  The low price for books certainly made a difference but don't expect this all the time! We needed to make some space for the new book, City Light, which will be available from February 2013 and officially launched at Focus 2013.


We actually packed up and were away from the NEC by 6.20pm. Jan went for the car when the show finished and for some reason the security gates were open so Jan just drove straight through and up to the back door of the show. Couldn't have been easier. Home by 9pm, including a take-away! Last bit of the drive it was snowing.

Focus on Imaging Setup Day

Jan is just driving us down to the NEC at Birmingham for the Focus on Imaging show http://www.focus-on-imaging.co.uk . We are setting up our part of the Ilford Photo stand. They have generously given us space for 7 large framed hand prints and space to sell books and courses.

The show opens tomorrow 4th and ends 7th March. If you're coming along visit us on C2.

Staying with good friends Peter and Sally in Kenilworth which we are really looking forward to.

New Home for www.davebutcher.co.uk Web Site

We have moved my web site from UK2 to Pipe Ten on the recommendation of Andy, who built and looks after the maintenance of my site.

Over the last year or so we have had a lot of problems with the site being unavailable and UK2 admitted it was the age of the server that was at fault. Working through the options we decided to move it for improved reliability and better customer service.

The move was done yesterday without any down-time. We are just ironing out out some teething problems with the way it displays and expect it to be fully working shortly.

All of our emails were moved too, including the old davebutcher.net ones which mostly seem to be used by spammers! We are pretty sure all emails are working properly. If you have any problems use mono@davebutcher.co.uk to let me know or a message through Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin if all else fails!

I hope you haven't been inconvenienced by the move but we are looking forward to greater reliability from now onwards.

Dave Butcher

New Images of Glasgow

I have added 16 new images of Glasgow to my web site.

These were all taken in October 2011 during the ICHF Crafts for Christmas show in the SECC.

We are doing the same show again in October this year so hope to see you there.

View Bells Bridge to Clyde Arc bridge

Glasgow People's Palace Winter Gardens

Glasgow Merchant City

Tradeston 'Squiggly' pedestrian bridge over the River Clyde

Tradeston 'Squiggly' pedestrian bridge

Glasgow School of Art

To see the rest either visit my Recent Gallery in the next few weeks or click this link to see just the Glasgow images.

Dave Butcher

Old Hall inn Whitehough Beer Festival

I finished mounting and framing the last 2 pictures of 7 for the Ilford stand at Focus on Imaging, starting next weekend at the NEC.

Time to go for a walk!

As luck would have it I happened to know there was a beer festival at the Old Hall Inn Whitehough, just the other side of the hill. We headed off and made it there at 3.15pm.

We actually started in the Old Paper Mill, a sort of extension to the Old Hall Inn. I started with Brampton Impy Dark, not a memorable pint, a bit bland.

Next over to the Old Hall Inn and Summer Wine Barista stout. This was a good one, shame it was only a half, well I do have to pace myself!

Then followed Saltaire Triple Chocoholic, Thornbridge McConnels Vanilla stout, Titanic Chocolate and Vanilla stout, Hook Norton Hooky Dark and Hopback Entire stout.

Now the difficult bit, walking back over Eccles Pike. Despite it being dark we made it home without mishap. Practice makes perfect!

Buxton Gallery in the Gardens

I'm in the Gallery in the Gardens in Buxton Pavilion Gardens today. This is the gallery for High Peak Artists, there are 39 of us exhibiting here.

It was a wet and windy 6 mile walk to get here, but at least it was daylight all the way. It will be dark for quite a bit of the walk home.

Come in for a chat if you're passing, I'm here until 5pm.

I sent Andy, my web man, 12 new photos of Glasgow yesterday. Hopefully they will be available to view in the next day or so. I will drop some in here too when I have a moment.

New USA negatives

The photographs that I took in the USA in late December and January are now captioned. That means I can now print the contact sheets to see what I have and select those negatives to scan and add to the web.

Locations include Washington DC, Colorado including Steamboat Springs from the ski runs and aerial shots from a light aircraft. The flight was courtesy of Jack, a very kind friend of a friend, who has his own plane.

There are also photos of the Grand Tetons and the local ski area to them, Jackson Hole.

We also skied several areas in Utah, including Park City, Deer Valley, Alta and Canyons.

Will try to start scanning and editing for the web in the next week or so.

Now, after a day in the Gallery in Buxton, I am walking 6 miles home over the hills, mostly in the dark. Home by 7pm.

A Walk in the Clouds

As planned we walked the hills today. Unfortunately, we spent the entire 4 hours walking in the clouds, no bright spells at all.

Just up the road Combs Reservoir had interesting snow patterns on the surface. Light was a bit ordinary but I did take it on the mobile on return as mist had thickened to add more atmosphere.

Snow was between 4 and 15 inches deep, mostly 4. Mist thickened through the day.

We went round the reservoir towards Combs then up Ladder Hill and across to the Goyt Valley before heading home.

Took a couple of reminder shots on the mobile but nothing on the proper camera.