You still use an OM1?

 When I wander around a town with camera in hand, I often ignore views and buildings because, well, they're a bit ordinary. But then our local paper runs features on its website where they dig out twenty photos of the town centre from the 1970s, and it's fascinating. Just ordinary shots of ordinary buildings, but the pictures capture the time, and we all look at them and remember.  So, in future I will try to take a few "ordinary" pictures and hope they mature into something worth looking at.  As a start, another regular feature in the local paper are the stories of pubs closing without warning. A local brewery, Sam Smiths, own about 300 pubs, mostly across the North of England, with another cluster in and around London. The northern branch of the business is run by Humphrey Smith, and while his idea of what a pub should be might appeal to some, it doesn't make life easy for the people running them. No television, no music, no phones, no electronic devices, no swe...

 The arrival of a new baby into the family is a big cause for celebration, even more so when it's your first grandchild. Of course, it is also a fine opportunity to take some photos - these moments simply have to be captured. Everybody says "they grow up fast", and it's true, so getting images of the first few weeks was something I was keen to do. It's probably true to say that of all the pictures I have taken, and will take in the future, these are the ones which will be looked at the most in 10, 15, 20, years from now. Daughter Sally gave birth to little Stanley at the end of August, and spent the first few days in a hospital room with hardly any light at all - a couple of flourescent tubes, and a small frosted window covered with a net curtain. Still, I managed to get a couple which passed my test of "worth keeping". I just opened the lens right up, took the shutter speed as low as I dare, and crossed my fingers.  After that, Stanley has been snapped ...