I am
passionate about history...
I always have been, & always research the local history of any area I find myself living in!
I have been researching my family history for the past 22 years... heading for 23, now!
I
seriously am addicted to history now I'm living in London! Every corner you turn, every
building you enter, every person you speak with is a new story or a new
slice of the history of this beautiful & amazing city!
The River
Thames is the beating heart of this place, too...
I still
have to pinch myself from time to
time... I just can't get over the fact that I live in the city where
Dickens created such amazing characters as The Artful Dodger, Fanny
Squeers & Lady Honoria Dedlock, Where William Shakespeare trod the
boards & became the Bard...
Where Henry VIII had 2 of his wives
executed & broke with the Catholic Church. Where Queen Elizabeth
refused every suitor & Queen Victoria & Prince Albert had 9
children... where Punch & Judy were first performed & where
Samuel Pepys wrote copious diaries... Mozart played here, Anna Pavlova
danced here & Wordsworth wrote here... People of a generation before
mine lived through conditions which we would find unimaginable today...
sending their children away to keep them safe, & working, living,
doing everything as normal in the face of nightly bombing raids which
saw thousands die & tens of thousands become homeless night after
night after night...
The history of this amazing city gets under your
skin... I am just so lucky!
I received my first camera when I was a wee
child... along with a black & white film. The camera was actually an
old one which had belonged to my Dad, but I loved it & took lots of
photos of my family with it...
Later, when I was 17, I spent a whole
summer working for a lovely family in their stationary shop. I spent all
my earnings from that summer on my Pentax SP1000 camera & have
taken so many photos on it that I have no idea how many thousands... it
travelled to the UK with me in 1995 & to New Zealand in 1989, even
the Philippines in 2003/4.
It took me a while to embrace digital
photography - but once I did, I did it with passion!!!
Now I tend to photograph every experience, even if it's just walking to the shops... I like to capture the world from my own personal viewpoint!
As a footnote, it took me a while to realise that my Grandfather, Jack Arthur Ritchie Martin, was also a photography buff... he snapped pictures of my Grandmother, Helena, as well as places, family, events & holidays... I just wish he'd written more about them on the back or put them in albums with notes attached... It is lovely to know that we shared a passion in common, though!
