It was quite mesmerising to stand on the front porch tonight, and watch the complete lunar eclipse. It was visible here on the East Coast and fortunately we didn’t have too much of a cloudy night.  My daughter, Janine, had her telescope out, and I just had to take some photos.  This is my best image of the nearly full eclipse.

My love of photography started with an insatiable desire to explore the world around me visually, and have some record of the beauty of it all. And from there, my original website, Planet Neil grew.  It was a way to share some of my personal photography with friends and family. With  time that website became a sprawl of writings on photography, with various galleries of images. But there were numerous images which didn’t fit a particular theme – single images that I still wanted to show.  So I had Will Keightly design a photoblog for me specifically to show off any single images that I wanted to post. So here it is, the official unveiling of my personal photography blog – the Planet Neil photoblog

To keep myself informed and inspired as a photographer, I regularly attend various seminars and workshops.  And as such, I attended a 3-day workshop in Nantucket this week, held by my friend and mentor, Claudia Kronenberg. Under the banner ‘Jump Start Your New Year‘, Claudia and her team presented an outstanding program. They covered various aspects that a photographer would need to stay at the cutting edge, artistically and professionally. Thanks again to Claudia, Brea & Gordon and my fellow photographers who attended and help make this a wonderful event!

The highlight for me was a fashion shoot at the Whaling Museum where we had the chance to work with two great models – Seth and Marie. We were allowed to direct the models, and each push ourselves creatively. These are a few of my favourite images of the day.

In trying to get myself up to speed with the technology and options around blogging, the Blogging for Dummies book looked like good entry-level reading. My daughter, Janine, gently teased me about yet another Dummies title on my shelf – but she put her foot down when I had to take her to the hospital for a sprain.  She said it would be too embarrassing if I sat in the waiting room with her, while reading a Dummies book on blogging.  So we compromised …

I have two websites on photography. The first one is PlanetNeil which I have been tinkering with for years now, continually adding to it and changing it. But for a professional looking website to market myself, I had Jodi and Holly of Connective Designs create a new website for me – One Perfect Moment. And it is up and ready.

And this is what the gallery pages look like: