Whimsical Musings of a Loon

Photography is one of my passions, and today whilst on a long walk with the dog up Caerphilly Mountain, I stopped at a style that overlooked Cardiff and wished I could master capturing the view. For years I have tried, and I have never quite achieved to replicate the oddly part-picturesque-part-M4-induced-city-scape exactly how I wanted. I will continue to try every time I trample past, but it did make me ponder over what was my actual favourite image of all time. Growing up, it was press images of sporting moments that captured beautifully split-second action, that got me fascinated photography. The images, perhaps, of Wales scoring a try in a rare victory - they were such exciting photographs -  the excitement in the players' eyes, the mud, the emotion, the faces of the crowds; you could sit and pour over the image and live it for much longer than you could watching the replay endlessly on TV. As I studied photography more, I saw the power this medium had for lettin...

Twenty four years ago this month, I was sat in the back living room of my childhood home watching the TV. It was early tea-time, just having got back from school. I was filling my ruddy pouches with ribena and crumpets. This scene wasn't a rarity, given how many hours I used to spend with my eyes attached to the screen by visual telebox adhesive, watching Australian soap operas, learning and mimicking the accents to annoy my siblings with. But what was about to happen in front of my eyes was one of my earliest and most vivid childhood memories, and one that has haunted me ever since. There came a sudden change in tone by the presenter, and the BBC kids' show Newsround - one of the main staples of my early televisual diet - appeared with breaking news. I can still hear the tinny, 1980s retro dot-dash-theme tune that sounded like it was created on a fisherprice keyboard accompanied with bongo drums. The Space Shuttle appeared on the screen. It was a familiar sight of sorts. For ...