I love photography so much! I love the creativity and control of the camera, finding new things to shoot, working out the best angle and lighting. Thats just how my brain works.

I am quite a contemporary photographer, I will always spot a nice idyllic shot, be it landscape, flowers etc. I always try to shoot colourful things, and if I cant then I go b&w.
I am always fascinated by texture and patterns, and so thats mainly what I keep my eye out for.

I dont take a lot of photos of people, be it down to lack of opportunity or it not being my style. I would like to take more creative studio shots of people though.

I do like to edit my photos on photoshop, I love colour selection and being able to bring certain colours out of the shot. I dont really see it as cheating to make the photo look good, but another skill set that compliments the skill of composition.

I think the biggest thing Ive learnt about taking good shots is, CREATING THE OPPORTUNITY
The only way to get a good shot at a Church event is to move around and try different shots. Giving yourself time to just go out and take pictures of what you can find is so valuable!

I think photography is a mix of opportunity and skill.
Create the opportunity, grow the skill!

I got into photography when I was 16. I got my very first digital camera for christmas. It was a really crap 6MP compact that i found on ebay for like £30.

I quickly got bored of that as my creativity increased, saved up and bought a Fujifilm S8000, about 2 months later. My fuji was a bridge camera (compact camera in an SLR style), it had a massive 18X zoom on it. Absolutely loved it!

From then i joined the photography team at church, but when shooting events I quickly realised that my camera performed really crap in the low lighting. So I sold that, saved up again and bought my first DSLR. As I didnt have a lot of money i looked for the cheapest DSLR on the market, which happened to be the smallest DSLR in the world!
It was the Olympus E410. Although it only cost £240 and it had a small sensor, it was incredible!
The picture quality from it was remarkable for its price, easy to use and quick. And best of all, because it was so small, it was so easy to carry around, it would fit inside my coat pocket when I went out!
For any first time DSLR buyer, I would recommend that!

But because I didnt want to get into the Olympus market for buying extra lenses, I sold that and bought a Sony A200. All because the lenses for Sony cameras are a little cheaper and easier to get a hold of.

I own a Rubiks Cube and it has become a regular toy of mine! I had always seen them in shops when I was a kid but never managed to get my hands on one!
Then finally one year I asked my girlfriend to buy me one for Christmas, and she did! I still claim it to be the best Xmas present I have ever received.
Instantly I tried to solve it, I spent ages on it, but never really got that far. I realised that I needed some help with it!

So I cheated and looked at the handbook, it took many attempts doing hundreds of turns trying to copy the intsructions. Eventually I solved it. It took about 10mins the first time I think.
Me being me though I wasnt satisfied, I wanted to be able to do it off by heart and faster, so I kept practising. My times dropped, 10mins, 6mins, 3mins, 2mins until eventually I got down to:

STILL MY PERSONAL BEST: 66 SECONDS!

I havnt really kept it up recently so I havnt broken the 1min line yet! Fortunately, solving it is like riding a bike, you never really forget. You really just use the main simple sequences to solve it because they are easy to remember and you can do them faster.
I did try to remember loads of algorithms (sequences) for different patterns, but realised that time was lost in trying remember them. So rather than trying to remember and perform one sequence I did 2 simple ones instead, which worked out to be faster. Lubing your cube really makes a massive difference too, I just rubbed vaseline inbetween the pieces and you can go mega fast!

I took my cube into 6th form to show a mate how fast I could do it, and loads of people took an interest. I ended up teaching people how to do it, its like we formed a little Rubiks Club, which was extremely nerdy! I showed my mate how to do it, he practised loads and eventually got faster than me, that ticked me off!

Hopefully one day I'l break the 1min barrier,
Il let you know when I do!

I love my church entirely

I was born and raised in Masham, North Yorkshire.
The proud home of Black Sheep Ale (lovely!)
I really do love that place, it will always be home to me

I lived in Masham for the first 16 years of my life, it was all I knew. You know your home when you know that you have set foot on pretty much every square metre there is in the town, and you can remember every single detail of every street.

I always remember the fairs and events we had in Masham, how we would wait eagely for them to come. We had the Sheep fair, where there would be a few rides and stuff, and then hundreds of different sheep in pens! People would walk around admiring the size and variety of the sheep, looking back I do consider it a bit weird!
Then there was the Steam Rally, we had loads of old steam engines come into town and sit on a field, with loads of rides too. That wasnt bad, the rides were good for kids my age, and there was a centre arena for entertainment.
Then the legendary Burn Valley Run! Growing up I always thought it was a marathon, but then later realised it was just a 3 mile jog up round Swinton Castle and back! I ran that countless times and got a medal each time (only for taking part, Im not a great runner)

As teenagers we would always play the game Tracking in the evenings. When it was getting darker, we would split into 2 teams, give the other team 3 minutes to run, then we would chase after them. We would walk all around town for hours, trying to find the other team and catch them. Usually I got caught first because I was the youngest, but its suprising how fast you can run when your adrenaline is going!

I think I will always miss Masham, the environment, the events, the friends, climbing trees, building dens and tree houses.

I love skateboarding its one of my passions in life.
I havnt been into it as much lately because of the business of life. I started skating when I was about 10, me and my mates all had a skateboard and went out regularly. But because I grew up in the rural town of Masham, there was never much to skate. We spent all our time skating curbs, crappy stair sets and flat ground.

There were always a few spots around town though that we liked to skate, like Danby's animal foods, which had a really mellow flat bank, and a manual block. The Black Sheep brewery wasnt bad either, it had a few nice big ledges and such. But mostly we skated the market place which was smooth flat tarmac.

After a few years a skatepark was built in Bedale, about 10mins drive away. It wasnt that good, so we started to build our own ramps. There was this little tarmac playpark amongst the houses nearby that we basically turned into a full-on skatepark!
We built about 7 small ramps and spaced them out in the park. I remember we even named the ramps, like Lil-Joe and Big-Joe which were 2 flat-banks! Those were the days!

I remember this one time we set about building a vert!
For a group of young lads this was a large task, but we did it.
The funny thing though, is that it was only about 5 foot high somehow, yet it went vertical. This meant that it was really whippy and hard to skate. We amounted to be able to just roll up and down it! That was one of the best ramps we ever built, until someone put their foot through it! Other acheivements were a massive funbox, giant kicker ramp, and my own amazing grind box! Which my parents still have I hope.

To say I only had curbs and small ledges to skate as a kid, I actually got quite good. I liked to skate everything really, from mini-ramps to stair-sets to flatground!
I really like tricks that just look good and just seem to flow.
One of favourite tricks once I learnt it was a lipslide. You have to have a good ollie and be good at boardslides, but once youve mastered it, they look really good, really clean and fat!
Although my older brother Jesse did film a lot of our skating, not much of it is up on the web, but heres me at Prissick Skatepark-

My little brother Jake got really good at blading, until he quit it for skating. People would always just watch him because he pulled off really big tricks at such a young age. Now though, he is nearly as good as me at skating, especially on ramps, he just seems to pick things up really fast. Heres a compilation I put together for him-