As travelling is not on the agenda right now and as I am also not able to do any portrait shoots, I decided to revisit the images that I have taken during my photography holidays over the years!

The first photography holiday I ever did was to Venice in February 2006 to photograph the Carnival. I had been looking for a way to combine travel & photography for some time and happened to find a company called Light and Land!

I read the website, got the brochure & then decided to try a short trip to Venice. I had absolutely no expectations of what I would see, who I would travel with or what I might be photographing. It even took me 24 hours to realise that I was travelling with the owner of the company, Charlie Waite, who also happened to be a renowned landscape photographer! I had a tripod but no head and a film camera that I barely mastered.  I was already at that point the only person still with a film camera – everyone one had gone digital! At first I felt completely out of my depth and kept asking myself what I was doing there! However after a very short time I realised that I had fallen on my feet in choosing to travel with Light and Land. There were about 12 of us in the group, the majority of whom had travelled at least once before with Light & Land – which was clearly a very good sign.  We all got on really well together, no matter the age, walk of life etc. We all had a passion in common – photography.

By the end of the 5 days I was hooked! My enthusiasm was further helped by kind encouragement from Charlie, who took me under his wing and helped me to start getting my head around my camera and photography. As he couldn’t see my images before we left Venice, he asked me to send him a CD with 6 images on it once I got home. I did and he returned to me the 6 images printed on fine art paper – several of which I framed. This was such a kind gesture and rounded off beautifully this wonderful experience.

Later that year I set off of another trip to Vermont in the USA, for yet another amazing adventure and have in the meantime done 18 photography holidays (if I have counted correctly). So I have some material for a few blog posts to come!

It is really interesting for me to look at the images I took during my first trips and to see how my style has changed since. I will freely admit to having done some editing on the images in this first post:-)

I hope you enjoy virtually travelling with me to lovely Venice, which must currently be a very different place to how I remember it from my various visits. As a photographer, I would so love to be able to go back there right now to be able to capture it from a different perspective!

With my thanks to Light & Land and of course Charlie for having set me off in the right direction during this particular trip!