A couple of new pictures of lovely Holly, who is 2 months old today. I’ll add the commentary later…

So we took Holly on her first UK tour, up to Barnsley where great grandmas and grandads were waiting for her, with chocolate biscuits, cheese & pickle sandwiches and gallons of tea. At four days old, her face is changing every day, losing the extreme chubbiness which characterised her first few hours, gradually becoming – by popular opinion – pretty much perfect:

In the picture below, just out of shot, Holly’s Mum has lifted her legs in the air, showing her bum to the world while changing her nappy. That’s Holly’s legs and bum, not her Mum’s…:

And having mastered the art of the frown, the grimace, the quizzical look and the all-hell-just-broke-loose shriek, here’s Holly practicing the big one – the smile:

They say it’s simply wind, but what do ‘they’ know…

I was sitting peacefully in our back garden, reading a book in the sunshine, late afternoon on Friday 11th September, 2009 – our due date. A date which has other connotations these days, and other, blacker memories, but for us it will now always be the day that our first baby announced that she was ready to arrive.

I’m half way through The Caine Mutiny, for the umpteenth time, when at 4pm, Marie called out to me from inside the house in a curiously uncertain voice. “Andy, I think me waters have broken…”.

Just over twelve hours later, neither of us were uncertain about what had just happened:

There she was, born at 04:36 on Saturday, 12th September 2009, our baby Holly Hiseman. I took the picture above just nine minutes after she was born…

We’d arrived at Peterborough Hospital’s maternity ward at around 21:30, after a few hours of tests and a short trip back home. Her mum Bev came with us, and her dad John stayed at our house with our 9yr old boy, Devon. By this time Marie’s contractions were pretty tough on her, but early on the trusty gas & air machine was all she needed:

And so began the long night. An epidural joined the gas & air machine, which relaxed Marie no end, but it was a gruelling few hours…:

When the final stage came, Marie gave birth astonishingly fast. The final push lasted just eleven minutes. For 45 years I’ve heard people rate their great life experiences against the moment their first child was born, and I now understand why nothing can ever top it. Miraculous, overwhelming, unreal, and brilliant beyond words.

For a long time afterwards, we – and Holly – were quiet, simply murmuring to each other, lost in the size of the occasion:

And through the next twelve hours of tests, examinations, form-filling and waiting around, Marie and Holly stayed almost supernaturally patient, quietly getting to know each other while the world around them went about its business:

Mid-afternoon it all changed, and the volume levels increased, when Holly’s big brother Devon got to meet his new sister for the first time ever:

Now, a day later, we’re all happily getting used to each other. We love little Holly May Hiseman to bits, and we’re looking forward to showing her off to all of our loved ones:

She’s beautiful.

We went on a walk to try and encourage Marie’s baby to make an appearance – you’ll do anything when the nine months is up to get the baby out. I put the little 50mm prime lens on the camera and set myself the task of finding a picture or two that captured the character of the afternoon. There’s something about using a fixed-length lens which makes you work a bit harder on the composition.

Inevitably, Devon’s innate 9 year old sense of mischief meant that, more often than not, I swung the camera his way, because he was the most entertaining thing in the park that day:

Nikon D300, Nikon 50mm f 1.8 prime lens, 1/320 at f 3.2, ISO 400, hand held no flash. Look at those eyes – not an ounce of uncertainty.

Not far behind Dev in the mischief stakes is his grandma Bev, who as has been seen elsewhere in this blog, really doesn’t care. This isn’t a dance, it’s Bev trying not to get yet another smack on the behind from the whippy stick which Devon conveniently found on the ground:

Nikon D300, Nikon 50mm f 1.8 prime lens, 1/3200 at f 2.2, ISO 400, hand held no flash.

And this is Devon brandishing his whippy, bottom-striping stick having wrestled it back under his control. Oh God I hope he doesn’t turn out to be a boring pen-pusher later in life, this photo proves that – when he was nine, at least – he had all the good-natured fizz you could ever want in a person:

Nikon D300, Nikon 50mm f 1.8 prime lens, 1/1250 at f 3.2, ISO 400, hand held no flash. All images shot in colour and converted to Mono in Lightroom, then finished off in Paint Shop Pro. My usual workflow. I’ve got all the books, magazines and DVD tutorials, and Photoshop CS3, but you know I still think you can produce great post-production effects without going to the extravagance of Layers etc. For a photo blog, at least. I take the easy route because – at the moment – very few of my pictures ever get printed.

I guess Devon has to grow up some day, maybe we’ll look back on these images when he’s a stroppy teenager (there are already signs…), and we’ll wonder why things had to change.

What with a baby on the way, hospital trips to sort Devon out, oh and a bit of work, it’s not been a photo blog summer. So I’m just going to put up a sequence of one-off photos which have absolutely nothing to do with each other at all, except that they were taken by me. So let’s kick off with an experiment I did one summer’s evening:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 20 secs at f 4.5, ISO 200, on a tripod no flash. This was a long-exposure test I did one evening after watching the farmer cut the big field behind our house. It was a lovely peaceful evening and I decided to play around with some of our garden lights.

And now for some mugs:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 50mm, 1/320 at f 2.8, ISO 200, hand held no flash.

And here’s Marie’s bump, 8 months in, August 2009:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 52mm, 1/20 at f 2.8, ISO 1600, hand held no flash. Practising low-light, slow-shutter handheld photography with my best lens, the hefty Nikon 24-70mm 2.8, ready for when the baby’s born.

This is a shiny Mini on a wet early evening stroll around Stamford:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/30 at f 9, ISO 800, hand held no flash.

Here’s our future ASBO trying to look tough:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 95mm, 1/13 at f 5.3, ISO 250, hand held no flash.

And a wall somewhere in deepest Rutland, lovely high resolution shot that I got about right:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 24mm, 1/160 at f 9, ISO 200, hand held no flash.

This is our beloved stray cat Lucy, moments after she first appeared in our lives – sitting atop our secret garden (pre-decking), half-chewed ear, crying out for food (which we gave her):

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 200mm, 1/4000 at f 5.6, ISO 400, hand held no flash.

And to finish, here’s Marie and her family, on Grandma Anne’s birthday a couple of years ago, in a reet good carvery somewhere in West Yorkshire:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 at f 4, ISO 200, hand held with flash.

Haven’t had much time to do this blog recently. Although I’d much rather be a film star, a rock star, or a pro footballer, or still better a golfer earning millions on Tour (with a great big Winnebago, with a 42″ pop-up flatscreen, home-schooling my family and teaching the kids how to hit a spinning 30yd chip onto an immaculate sloping practice green as the sun sets over Arizona, crickets chirruping and a giant freght train mournfully whooping its way through the distant canyons), I’m slowly waking up to the fact that I am, in fact, one of those English slightly desk-bound guys who makes lots of phone calls, has lots of meetings, and gradually pulls together deals which – in theory – make business people money, and hopefully entertain / assist the general public.

Having never got lower than 3 handicap (5.4 as a proper grown up), I’ll even need to take a serious sabbatical from the business world before I’m fifty (still five years), if I’m to step out onto the seniors circuit. I’d still fancy myself to get there, if I took two years off – golf and me go way back, and I have the smarts and the good hands, and I love to practice. But that would be bye-bye to a business career which, to date, has looked after me and my family pretty well. And so, in the spirit of backing myself to the hilt and gambling on the future, which I have always done, I’ll probably continue to wheel and deal for the clients, and for my family, for a few years yet before I set off to chase the big sunsets, with clubs in the boot.

Which is why I am far more likely to be found taking photographs of Boston, Lincolnshire, than Boston, Massachusets: 

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 22mm, 1/80 sec at f 18, ISO 200, tripod no flash. I took a week off before our wedding, in spring 2008, and on the fourth day I’d headed off to find some boats to point my camera at. Above, a few Boston fishing boats are moored on the muddy banks. In the Middle Ages (bear with me) Boston was England’s second most important port. Nowadays, it’s been nicely described as ‘an unfortunate backwater’, stranded by being ignored by the motorway system, occasionally visited by trains en route to exotic places like Skegness or Nottingham. But, it has some photogenic boats, and I’ve tried to do the scene justice in this picture, by giving it a painterly look in Lightroom, and a ‘happy finish’ in Paint Shop Pro. This was actually a lovely, warm, breezy day, and I returned home that evening a very relaxed, chilled out fella.

Bev Oakley, mother, international playgirl, up for owt:

Nikon D300, Nikon 50mm f 1.8 prime lens, 1/125 at f 4.0, ISO 500, hand held no flash. The scene: outside our house in Stamford, British summer time, 2009. Just for a change, the skies went dark and it started pelting it down. Ten minutes of really heavy, big old thundery rain.

Having spent most of the day decorating our hallway, Bev looked outside and thought: I’m having some of that. John’s thinking: wet T-shirt show. Marie’s thinking: Mam, don’t.

Sometimes you look outside, and the world’s gone pink. At 9pm last night we noticed this, climbed off the sofa and went outside to see the latest special effects display in our back yard:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, 1/25 at f 4.0, ISO 640, hand held no flash. That’s Marie looking west across Rutland. We built the decking just for moments like this. Marie is eight months pregnant in this picture, our baby girl is still in there somewhere, and note Jesse the cat on the table - looking for yet more moths to catch. He’s on about three a day at the moment.

This picture is more or less untouched out of the lens – I just brightened up the decking a touch in Levels, but the colours are unchanged, and outrageous. “It feels like our own private sunset,” said Marie.

Each July we try and get together for my Mum’s birthday. This year I went alone (Marie headed north to see her brother Craig, whose birthday is on the same day as Mum’s – July 26th), looking forward to a day with a bit of variety, with a few different photographic challenges. Mum’s 76 this year (2009), and in mid morning I arrived at the house which big brother Mark shares with Tracey. More of the house later – it’s a bit special – but here, we see (from left) Tracey’s Mum Iris, the birthday girl, Mark and Tracey in M&T’s rather nice ’second living room’. If this was the 19th century, or if we were posh, it would be called the drawing room. Think of it as a living room without a TV in it: 

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, 1/80 at f 4.0, ISO 400, hand held with flash. I added a bit of vignette in Lightroom to embellish what was already rather a warm, painterly scene. Lovely colours in this one, it took me several gos and different settings before I got this scene right. Luckily we had time: we’d all just been fed, and Mum was opening her prezzies before we headed off to where Mark and Tracey work, BAE Systems in Rochester, Kent. They were holding an open day there, and for the first time we were going to have a look at where they’ve been working for years, creating mysterious war machines under the official secrets act.

And above Rochester, soon after we got there, one of the very best war machines ever made was being thrown around in the sky: 

Nikon D300, Nikon 70-300mm VR lens at 110mm, 1/2000 at f 4.5, ISO 400, hand held no flash. This is the mighty Lancaster bomber, ‘City Of Lincoln’, one of only two left flying. For ten minutes it made a series of thunderous (it makes a magnificent noise) low passes above the airfield at BAE Systems, while we all cricked our necks in awe. When one of these things flies directly overhead, with its four engines hammering away and that big twin-fin tail, for many true Brits it’s a lump in the throat moment. It’s 66 years since the immortal ‘Dambusters’ raid, one of the defining moments in our country’s modern history, and the Lancaster represents so many important things to those of us who care about where we came from: bravery, ingenuity, craftsmanship, defiance, and glory. What a sight.

I had the Nikon set on Continuous High mode, and rattled off 135 frames, having no clue what the results would be. Rarely for me I used Manual mode to freeze it in flight: I guessed a few settings, pointed the long 70-300mm VR lens at the sky, and hoped for the best. The shot above caught the steely light just right, and again I added a wee vignette in Lightroom, and tweaked it a bit until I got the above effect. I think it’s one of the best action pictures I have ever taken.

Here’s a more classic in-flight shot:

Nikon D300, Nikon 70-300mm VR lens at 110mm, 1/2500 at f 4.5, ISO 400, hand held no flash. Exactly the same settings as the picture before, taken just three seconds beforehand. This was the Lancaster’s very first fly-past, and I got the two best pictures within the first three seconds… Overall they were mostly right on the money, in fact.

Inside one of the BAE Systems buildings, all we really wanted to do was find the amazing helmet which Mark’s team have been working on for years. Here it is, held by Mark and his highly proud Mum: 

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 24mm, 1/100 at f 4.0, ISO 640, hand held no flash. This is the helmet worn by pilots in the new Eurofighter Typhoon. The plane cost the UK well over £20 billion to develop, against an initial budget of £7 bn. I like to think that Mark’s team contributed wholeheartedly to several billion of the overspend. Good work, bro. It’s a clever piece of kit, one of the better boy’s toys.

Here’s Tracey wearing one he made earlier:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, 1/20 at f 4.0, ISO 3200, hand held no flash. Tracey is also a key part of the team at BAE Systems, and the two of them work just feet apart deep within one of Britain’s more secrets-laden buildings. They’re both pretty high up the chain of command, and are probably spies really. The above pic was taken in a very gloomy room, I didn’t want to use flash as it would’ve bounced off the helmet’s visor, so instead I pushed the ISO way up to 3200. Still a great result in near darkness, the D300 is a really top camera in low light. Once again the Sigma wide-angle lens showed how good it is under pressure, too.

Back out in the sunshine, after we’d toured the factory where they make the secret weapons, we headed back to the car. On the way, a man was parking a tank on a lorry. These things are very heavy, and if he’d slipped off that flatbed, I’d have been flattened. That wide, wide-angle Sigma lens lets you get VERY close…I could have reached out and touched this thing. On reflection, I was probably a bit too close, but it’s a striking picture: 

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, 1/1250 at f 5.6, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Really very, very close. Great colours (I usually have the D300 set two stops up from middle on Vibrant setting), and a litle darkening of the corners in Lightroom afterwards.

And now to Mark and Tracey’s house, which is frankly awesome. This is the River Medway, taken from the bottom of their garden: 

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, 1/160 at f 16, ISO 200, hand held no flash. What a thing to have at the end of the garden. If it was my place, I’d have built the jetty by now, and had a boat moored up there. M&T have left it wild, so you can’t really stand on the riverbank without ducking through the undergrowth. But when you do, it’s very pretty indeed.

Turn around, and look back up the immense garden to the house, and you get an idea of how big their plot of land is:  

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, 1/1600 at f 4.5, ISO 200, hand held no flash. They also have a great big veggie garden, and all sorts of other stuff there. It is without question the best building a Hiseman has owned in living memory. Mark and Tracey (who is a Jackson, still – none of us are sure why they haven’t got married yet) are solid gold ‘Dinkies’ (Dual Income, No Kids). With a couple of fine salaries, and no PlayStation habit to fund, they’re looking good…

Happy Birthday Mum, another year closer to a letter from the Queen. Good sunny, fresh air sort of day with the family, a great way to spend a Saturday.

We just opened the mail, and discovered – to our total surprise – that our little boy Devon has won a poetry competition, and is to have his poem published in a book.

To say we are proud – and moved – would be the understatement of the year. Here’s his sweet poem, called ‘Silence’:

Words by Devon. Created as an image by his very proud Andy Dad. To be published by Young Writers in Poetry Explorers 2009 – Lincolnshire.