Earthy

Due to a quirk of the site, I celebrate today not quite two years of continuous blipping but I guess it's close enough. I've given up quite a bit of myself here through my words, and indirectly through my images, but I've never given you a self-portrait. I thought this was a good moment to fill that hole in my oeuvre, not that my face should come as a surprise since I've been blipped numerous times by other people here.

I got the idea for this shot a week or so back and I'm very happy that I managed to pull it off this morning. There were no test runs. A quick profile taken first thing, a run up to the Cow and Calf rocks on a cold and windy morning, just catching a few minutes of sunshine at the perfect time before a shower came through, and then processed on the train going into work. I had this in the can before 9am!

Each day's blip is a normally a complete surprise to me. Until now, it's always been a shot that's appeared naturally from the unfolding of the day - and I love waking up each morning with the anticipation surrounding that. This is the first time I've ever had such a clear intent. It was rather satisfying to be able to make the image that was in my mind's eye. I probably wouldn't have even attempted this if it wasn't for the inspiration of Mr.John (King of the Anniversary Blip) and Tangentine (Queen of the Self-Portrait). I thank you both. I can only imagine that I'll be doing more experimentation with such ideas in the future.

I could write reams about this whole experience but as this is the blip anniversary rather than the real anniversary I am going to limit myself to talking about you, the community. I blip primarily for myself but I know that I only continue to do so because of you, the many virtual friends and even more virtual strangers I have following me. I feel very privileged to have such a large audience for my journal.

But that, of course, brings along its own problems. For most of this second year of blipping I've found it impossible to acknowledge all the people who have been kind enough to award hearts and write interesting comments. I've been tempted to turn comments off a few times but I know how frustrated I become when my blip friends do that to me. If I see something that engages me I want to be able to make a comment, without any expectation of an acknowledgement. I'm assuming that you understand that my recent lack of banter is nothing to do with indifference and everything to do with the current demands of my other, oh too real working life!

If you are one of the people who regularly comment without any reciprocity from me, or are a new subscriber whom I've not got around to saying hello to yet, I apologise to you humbly, but I also hope you will stay with me. I will catch up with you sooner or later and in the meantime I hope I can inspire you on your photographic journey here as others have inspired and indeed continue to inspire me. I've come a long way since my humble first few blips. This is the most amazing place to foster your photographic eye.

Finally, it's wonderful timing that blipcentral have today provided this means of recording our blip family tree. I hope everyone gets involved in this. It's an idea I suggested myself over a year ago now and it's fantastic to see it become a reality. I can't wait to see this tree take shape and hopefully see who all my blip descendants and relatives are. I suspect I may have more than I know about!

Finally, finally, a big thank you once again for being such an integral part of my journal and for providing the fuel to keep me blipping without a break. I still can't quite believe I've done this. And without an emergency blip in sight. Nor an appearance by either of the two cats that live with me! I'm rather proud of that achievement. You are all amazing. This whole community is awesome.