A New Beginning

Right, I'm relatively new to this whole Blog thing, I've never done anything like this before and I don't know how, or even if, I'm going to get on with this but what the hell, I'll give it a try anyway! So I suppose I should start by introducing myself; I'm Rob, an amateur freelance Photographer from South Wales UK. My main area of work is in live music events and promotional photography for bands, when I'm out shooting for myself I'm mainly a Landscape enthusiast although lately I have been doing a lot more portraiture especially using off camera flash units. I have been doing a lot of experimentation with off camera flash and have started using it on Landscape shots as well. In the words of Joe McNally: "It don't got to be human to light it!"

Canon EOS 40 D | Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM | Canon Speedlite 580EX II 1/1
w/ 1 1/2 CTO | 1/30 th sec | f/2.8 | ISO 400 @ 200mm

That's who I am and what I do, but what am I doing here doing this? I will try not to ramble on too long but basically I decided today to take a break from Flickr. Maybe I'm just being apathetic or maybe I'm just missing the point but it seems to me that Flickr is poisoning the very values of photography. Now I don't mean to generalise because I realise this does not apply to every single Flickr user but it seems to have given rise to a culture of comment whores chasing after an explore. People that sit at their computer after uploading an image clicking refresh on their homepage waiting for the next comment; I know, I've done it myself. Sad I know, but I have since realised that I was missing the whole point. This will not be a break from photography, quite the opposite, I hope to spend much more time with my camera, but for the time being I will be leaving Flickr well alone and will be using this as an alternative outlet for my thoughts, ramblings, learnings and of course, images.