2020 has been a very strange year so far. It started ok and I had a number of holidays booked where I would be able to explore new cities and photograph some great scenery.

Then came Covid-19. From early in the New Year Italy started to have issues and I kept watching the news each day to see if I would still be able to go to Florence and Pisa in March. At the end of February Italy was put in a nationwide lockdown and my trip was cancelled.

Shortly after, my Ice Hockey trip, to photograph Great Britain at the IIHF World Championships in Lausanne, Switzerland, was also cancelled, and along with the normal photography my day trip back to Chamonix on the picturesque mountain railway was gone.

On the 23rd March, we were placed in a UK lockdown, with travel highly limited and the new norm of working from home and life in a lobal pandemic.

Summer music festivals were cancelled. Sport was cancelled. Carnivals across the globe were cancelled. Summer was spent in the back garden and doing DIY indoors.

As we hit August, restrictions were lifted slightly, but facemasks are no the norm in all indoor spaces. I started with a trip to Cambridge mainly just to have a change of scenery from my back garden ! Plus, I knew if it was busy I could take the backstreets and still see interesting bits to photograph. Then at the end of August when I had a week off work I took a trip to Normanton on Rutland Water on a sunny Monday.

The clouds made for some great shots with the Canon Eos 5DMk2, especially over the small church on Rutland Water. At the end of my week off I took a trip to London to see the Electronic Exhibition at the Design Museum, and also the see the Andy Warhol exhibition at Tate Modern on the Southbank.

The day started sunny, but when I got to the Southbank the clouds were amazing. Full storm clouds, but not flat – instead they had great texture, and although they looked menacing it never actually rained. I just had my small Sony Cybershot point and click camera, but the shots show that you don;t need a big SLR to get some great photos.