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Mary Balogh is the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Slightly novels: Slightly Married, Slightly Wicked, Slightly Scandalous, Slightly Tempted, Slightly Sinful, and Slightly Dangerous, as well as the romances No Man's Mistress, More than a Mistress, and One Night for Love. She is also the author of Simply Love, Simply Unforgettable, Simply Magic, and Simply Perfect, her dazzling quartet of novels set at Miss Martin's School for Girls. A former teacher herself, she grew up in Wales and now lives in Canada.
Mary Balogh, very concise overview: 752 works in 3,045 publications in 10 languages and 106,572 library holdings #pricelessaudiobooks, #marybalogh, #marybaloghbooks, #marybaloghnoimperio, #marybaloghquote, #marybaloghsecond
Just finished reading The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. The movie of the same name is only the first half of the book...and it's the second half that's incredibly powerful. I felt sick and then I cried and then I was filled with a very durable sense of hope. Great book, on balance. Second time reading it.
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I don’t usually brag. In fact, I like to pretend I’m a mostly humble person. Right? Right?!!
Well, your answer doesn’t matter because I don’t feel like being humble. Not today!
This photo may be seemingly innocent. Nothing special is going on here. My friend Uzo is across the ping pong table from me, watching a riveting match between Jeremy and our other friend Daniel.
Except the cool thing was that I had just bet that I could catch the ping pong ball flying by and not only catch it in the shot but catch it right over Uzo’s face. I didn’t even try twice! I got it the very next shot as it zoomed by. Just call me the Annie Oakley of the shutter button. Or how about the SLR Sniper?
Yeah I know, it’s not even in focus. But look, Uzo’s holding two yellow balls, the photo is off kilter, and it just screams art. Well maybe I did that on purpose. Yeah. That’s right. Suck it, René Magritte. I do it in real life.
Okay I’m not that cocky but it’s fun to pretend like you’re the biggest winner when a little bit of luck combines with a modicum of skill. :)
And… you know how I said nothing special was going on during this game? I lied. I think special is a good word to describe the following.
Love all my friends, haha.
Please ignore the incorrect white balance on this, the flash was bouncing off a bookcase. This is a shot I took for somebody to look at this, for some work that might be done on this. I'll get some better shots of this later on, when I can photograph this in morning sunlight.
This parasol, which dates from either the 1850s or the 1860s, is now a bit of a mystery to me and my contact in Illinois who restores these. She's never seen one that joins quite like this before and she's very experienced in her field. So I've got a call out to another contact in San Francisco who teaches parasol history and recovering - if I hear back from her, perhaps she might have the answer to our join-hinge-chain-sheath-thing problem.
The ivory finial and rib tips on a parasol of this age usually point to this being an example imported from Europe - which would make this a little more rare than most parasols. This was just one of the lucky eBay scores I had over the past two weeks - more to come along soon. This came from central NY state, from a dealer who thought this was a child's or doll's parasol - when in reality, the 29 or 30 inch length says otherwise. When it arrived I was surprised at the fineness (and flimsiness) of the handle, and it came as no surprise to me when somebody mistook this as a child's parasol.
We made our annual trip to London in November. We travel down by coach from Slaithwaite and stay at The Cumberland Hotel at Marble Arch. It’s actually a weekend ladies shopping trip that is run as a fundraiser for Slaithwaite Brass Band – I’m the only bloke that goes every year! We decided ( the two of us) to stay down in London until Thursday this time as we wanted to see weekday London and be able to explore a bit further afield on foot. We covered up to 16 miles a day, which is tough going on crowded pavements with hundreds of busy roads to cross. I photographed anything that looked interesting but I bent a contact in the CF card slot, fortunately I had quite a few SD cards with me and the 5D has dual slots so I was able to carry on using it. It’s currently at Lehmann’s getting fixed.
With it being close to Christmas the decorations are up everywhere so there was plenty of colour at night. In Hyde Park the Winter Wonderland was in full swing, we’ve never bothered going to it before but I went twice at night this time. It is massive this year, I couldn’t get over how big it is and the quality of some of the attractions. The cost and effort involved must be phenomenal – it was quite expensive though. It was very difficult to photograph, with extremes of light (LED’s) and darkness and fast moving rides into the bargain. I think I have some decent usable stuff but at the time of writing I am only part way through the editing process so I don’t know for sure.
We set off at around 8.15 am every day and stayed out for at least 12 hours. The weather was poor for a day and a half with drizzle and very dull grey conditions, fortunately we had some pleasant weather (and light) along the way as well. Being based at the end of Oxford Street – Europe’s busiest shopping street – meant that I did quite a bit of night shooting on there. Although I carried a tripod everywhere I only used it once and that was during the day! Because there is always a moving element in almost every shot it seemed pointless using a tripod. I would have got some shots free of movement – or I could have gone for ultra-long exposures to eliminate people and traffic but it would have been problematic I felt. In the end I wound the ISO up and hand held – fingers crossed.
We walked out to Camden Market and Locks but it had been raining and we were a bit early as many were only just setting up for the day. We tried to follow routes that we hadn’t used before and visit new places. We paid a fortune to get in St Pauls but you can’t use cameras. This something that I fail to see the point of, ban flash if you want but if you are going to encourage tourism why ban cameras when there is nothing in particular happening in there. It’s a rule that seems to be applied arbitrarily in cities around the world. Fortunately we could take photos from the outside of the dome, which was real reason for visiting, and we had some great light. Expensive compared with a couple of euros in some famous cathedrals. I’ve wanted to walk to Canary Wharf for a number of years and this year we did. We crisscrossed the Thames a few times and tried to follow the Thames path at other times. We covered around ten miles but it was an interesting day. It was also very quiet for the last four or five miles. We got there about 12.00 and managed to get a sandwich in a café in the shopping centre at the foot of the high rise office blocks before tens of thousands of office workers descended from above. It was mayhem, packed, with snaking queues for anywhere that sold food. We crossed to the other side of The Isle of Dogs and looked across to the O2 Arena and the cable car, unfortunately there isn’t a way across for pedestrians and it was around 3.00 pm. With darkness falling at around 4.30 we decide it was too late to bother. We made our way back to the Thames Clipper pier to check the sailing times. They sail every twenty minutes so we had a couple of glasses of wine and a rest before catching the Clipper. Sailing on the Thames was a first in 15 trips to London. The Clipper is fast and smooth, the lights had come on in the city and there was a fantastic moon rise. It was nigh on impossible to get good shots at the speed we were traveling though and there were times that I wished I could be suspended motionless above the boat. Again, hopefully I will have some usable shots.
We felt that the shopping streets were a little quieter, following the Paris massacre it was to be expected, I might be wrong as we were out and about at later times than previous trips. I think I have heard that footfall is down though. It was good to get into some of the quieter backstreets and conversely to be stuck in the city business district – The Square Mile- at home time. A mass exodus of people running and speed walking to bus stops and the rail and tube stations. It was difficult to move against or across the flow of bodies rushing home.
Whilst the Northern(manufacturing) economy is collapsing, London is a giant development site, it must be the tower crane capital of Europe at the moment. It was difficult to take a shot of any landmark free of cranes, it was easier to make the cranes a feature of the photo. It’s easy to see where the wealth is concentrated – not that there was ever any doubt about it. The morons with too much money are still driving their Lambo’s and Ferraris etc. like clowns in streets that are packed with cars , cyclists and pedestrians, accelerating viciously and noisily for 50 yards. They are just sad attention seekers. From Battersea to Canary Wharf we walked the Thames Embankment, the difference between high and low tide on the river is massive, but the water was the colour of mud – brown! Not very attractive in colour. We caught a Virgin Train from Kings Cross for £14.00 each – a bargain!. We had quite a bit of time to kill around midday at Kings Cross so I checked with security that I was OK to wander around taking photos, without fear of getting jumped by armed security, and set off to photograph the station and St Pancras International Station across the road. I haven’t even looked at the results as I type this but I’ll find out if they are any good shortly. Talking of security, following Paris, there was certainly plenty of private security at most attractions, I don’t know if it was terrorism related though, I can’t say I noticed an increased police presence on the streets. It took us three hours and five minutes from Kings Cross to being back home, not bad for a journey of 200 miles. I can’t imagine that spending countless billions on HS2 or HS3 is going to make a meaningful (cost effective) difference to our journey. Improving what we have, a little faster, would be good. There are some bumpy bits along the route for a mainline and Wakefield to Huddersfield is the equivalent of a cart track – and takes over 30 minutes – it’s only a stone’s throw.
A bit of a different day for me today. I had no plans at all, bar taking Laura into work in the morning, but an early call ended up seeing me spend almost all of the day with Dave, which is a nice thing to do when we're out of work.
Lots of choices of photos, including the art gallery, the library roof, the University campus, the Victoria Building or even my pedometer showing a step count of 25,500 and counting!
What I've gone for, because I like the shapes, is a rack of hire bikes outside the students union. The fact that the rack was huge and fully populated means that the bikes are either massively popular or massively unpopular. Not sure which way to go on that yet!
Our late winter break in Tenerife was a bit different this year. The weather was forecast to break the day we arrived – and it did! Rain wasn’t the problem it was gale force winds – the same winds that caused the dust storms in Africa that caused the pollution and sand in the UK. We have witnessed gales in Tenerife before but this was worse than we’d seen it in the past . The palm trees were bending, the sand drifting like snow and the sea was raging. We usually walk around 150 miles on a ten day break but for five days we just walked with a brief spell on the beach, then the gales came back. We covered 22 miles some days and totalled 192 miles, not bad for a beach holiday. In some of the photos it looks stunning but look at the tops of the palm trees, like inside out umbrellas, the beach beds are empty and the waves were up to ten feet high and smashing thirty feet in the air. For five days everyone stood taking photos of the sea. For two days all boats stayed in harbour, only the big ferries sailed, there wasn’t a thing at sea, not even the surfers, we’ve never known that happen before. To add to this jellyfish in their hundred were washing up on shore and there was a severe risk of a burn from them. Even when red flags were flying and flags warning about the jellyfish were up the occasional nutter would go in the water and some people took staggering risks with their children including one couple with a baby, dangling it over the waves, just to get a photo, playing chicken as monster waves crashed in.
One day I had to catch my club sandwich as it went flying from my plate in the wind, empty glasses slid off the table and seat cushions went cartwheeling down the pavement. A couple of days were dull and cool but the menacing clouds made impressive photos, the sea was like a boiling cauldron. We did have days of beautiful weather as well, the second half of the holiday was normal sunny Tenerife. I haven’t hired a car for ages on Tenerife, it adds a degree of hassle to – what is supposed to be – a sun and relax holiday so again we didn’t go up El Teide. Next time perhaps. I took my racing bike once just to cycle from sea level to 8000 feet nonstop – twice! it’s a seventy mile round trip and a long drag to the top. On the way home we had to make an emergency landing in Dublin, fire tenders with foam jets pointing at us, unfortunately I was facing the setting sun and couldn’t take photos as the sun was shining straight through the window. Seven and a half hours on the plane, not much fun.
To see more about the history of J B Schofield & Sons Ltd and their plant and vehicles look here: www.jbschofieldandsons.co.uk/
A day trip to Lincoln - most of the way was very flat but Lincoln city has quite a hill from the shopping centre to the cathedral
I've been a bit busy this past week doing some Photoshop work for two other photographers in the area (a GREAT way to break out of the typical Photoshop routine, btw), and I was just asked by one if I'd ever done a "Duotone" conversion to an image...
Nope... Not until now...
On display here is my first attempt at duotoning a photo. The picture is one that I took over in India a few years back -- I was working in the Himalayas up near the town of Darjeeling -- and I thought that it would be a good candidate for some tone manipulations.
Though I've gone a bit cheesy with the split colors, it does kinda' hint as to what can be done just using some of the basic presets in Photoshop. If anyone out there in Flickrland © is willing to share a few duo/tri/quadtone hints, well, I'm interested in what you've got to say.
Matt
Looking a bit unloved, still has Coniston Coaches legals on it , and , does the Leyland Tiger next to it belong to Conistons too ?
A bit of playing in post with an old prop at the club.
Added a bit of texture and analogue processing...
()Handheld on the 50mm with ambient room light)
Bit of aircraft spotting today with my Grandson Harvey. At RAF Fairford. This is my shot of the day.
Just some of the results of testing and salvaging hardware from a teetering pile of hard drives that had been lying about the house. I now have more small gauge screws, rare earth positioning magnets and disk platters than I'll ever need.
Bit of an illusion you sometimes see in photography as this was her own bag she was slipping her hand into!
Bury St Edmunds Suffolk December 2025