“ Army ” I am a veteran who left the Army over 30 years ago, but have never forgotten how much my service meant to me. Today, I am still very active in the veterans community here in the UK and it is still a major part of my life. Had I not joined the Army, I would never have travelled as much as I have, and would never have met my wife of 38 years in Belize. Lady luck was shining on me back in those days. Today, I am blessed to still have a gorgeous wife who I love dearly, and with whom I share my life in Canterbury where we are just getting into the festive season.
“ Monsters in the smoke ” I think this is the first time I have used the same idea as the introductory image for a challenge, but as it is something I have never tried, I thought I would give it a go. I naively thought it was going to be pretty easy, but was wrong there, it took a while to get the focus right, then I had to get the lighting both right and where I wanted it, without any spill on the background, and then I had to get the smoke doing what I wanted. I never realised my home was so draughty until tonight! Once I got the image I wanted, I cleaned it up a bit in Lightroom, then copied it over to Photoshop, where I made a second copy and flipped it joining both together. It seems I got a monster at the bottom, and a worried face at the top. This is something I am going to use more in the future.
“ It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ” I went for a walk around Canterbury about an hour before sun rise and saw a lot of people setting up market stalls and busying themselves ready for the days shoppers coming to spend money in the run up to Christmas, there are lights in all the shop windows, and Christmas has taken over much of the City, but it also still has a sad almost hidden secret. We have a lot of rough sleepers in Canterbury who can be found in many shop entrances, many of them come to Canterbury because it is a relatively safe City and having a large student population, there is always a friendly face and some help. We do have shelters, but these two people have dogs with them, so are not allowed in. They can get fed, but cannot stay overnight.
