We recently returned from a late summer break to Skopelos, a beautiful pine covered island that forms part of the Sporades archipelago. Visiting in September meant we were spared the busy summer crowds that travel across from Skiathos that tour several of the filming locations used for the Mamma Mia! movie. We have visited Skopelos on previous occasions many years ago, although limited to days trips. This time we stayed for two weeks in the main town and port which gave us direct access to the atmospheric winding streets and alleyways. The hills around the town gave us plenty of opportunity for hill walking and cycling. For your viewing pleasure, below is a set of images taken during our stay, using a Leica CL camera with 35 and 60mm lenses.

We recently completed an 18 night trip around the Thessaly area of Greece. Starting in Thessaloniki our route took us to Pella, Kastraki, Pelion, Litochoro, Dion and back to Thessaloniki. While there we experienced a heatwave that saw temperatures rise to 49C on more than one day. As we had a packed itinerary, the heat and humidity made it a challenging few days staying on track with our plans. Here is a collection showing some of the highlights, and a more in depth travel diary will follow. All images were taken on Leica T and TL2 cameras, using 11-23, 35 and 55-135 lenses.

Earlier this month, we decided at short notice to spend a week in the seaside town of Parga. Located in the Epirus region of North West Greece, it is an area of incredible natural beauty, parts of which we explored one summer many years ago when travelling through this part of the country.

This is the first in a series of macro collections that we will be creating over the coming months, and are taken from our 35mm slide archive. Equipment used was Olympus OM4Ti camera with Zuiko 38mm f2.8 and 80mm f4 macro lenses attached to a 65-116 telescopic extension tube. Lighting was provided by an Olympus F280 flash used off camera and bounced into various reflectors. Film stock was predominantly Kodak Elite Chrome Extra Colour 100 EBX as the colours are strong and vivid - perfect for images of a world within a world. Images were scanned as 24 bit colour TIF files via our Epson Perfection 850 Pro scanner. TIF’s were then converted to high quality JPG’s using Adobe Lightroom Classic.

A long standing interest of mine has been Derbyshire’s prehistoric past. Over the decades spent walking the county, I have picked up many artefacts dating from a time long before the Roman occupation of Britain. The landscape, particularly what now forms the region’s higher moors, preserves monuments that directly relate to the flint implements and bone fragments I have gathered. Be them ceremonial or simply tools that were used on a day to day basis, they help provide a snapshot of a time so distant from our own, it gives me an appreciation of how far we have come as a species.

This year marks the beginning of a long term project to digitally archive thousands of 35mm slides and negatives taken over a 40 year period. I originally started this 20 years ago but quickly became bored with the time taken to scan images, and disappointed the results I was achieving. This was very much to do with our knowledge of scanning techniques and limited free time as the Minolta scanner used was very good, albeit very slow. It was sold many years ago and the decision to purchase another meant that we had a steep learning curve ahead as well as the necessary dudiligence to complete regarding the most suitable scanner for our purpose. We eventually settled on the Epson Perfection v850 Pro, which will be the subject of our own review as we become more familiar with it.

During the summer we spent a couple of weeks on the Croatian island of Hvar. We also took the opportunity to explore the island of Bol and port of Split while we were there. Split is an architectural wonderland that fuses many historical periods, from Roman times to present day. There is an overwhelming amount of sights to see - more than can be fitted into a couple of day trips from Hvar. The images below barely scratch the surface, but give an idea of what to expect. Bol is a far more tranquil place than either Split or Hvar and operates at a sedentary pace of life that we found most agreeable!

We took a late summer break to the Croatian island of Hvar. Staying in the main town we were central to the frenetic pace of the port, and it’s attractions. A constant stream of tourists embarking and disembarking ferries ensured interesting people watching sessions from the many cafes located on the main square.

We spent a few days in early May enjoying springtime on Rhodes, Greece. The last time I was here was in September 1989 and before that August 1984, so it was interesting to see how things had changed in the last three decades. Our base was Rhodes Town, as we wanted to be close to the history and buzz of the old and new town. An added bonus was that the location made gave us an enormous amount of subject matter as far as our photography was concerned.