Think of your hero. The person you aspire to be like. They may be alive or dead but to be favourably compared with them, you feel all sorts of positive emotions. If you see yourself as a great leader maybe Gandhi, Mandela or the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Or you’re a helper, a humanitarian. Then possibly Mother Teresa or Oskar Schindler.

Of all the famous quotes that have come from Hollywood films, surely that of Forrest Gump’s mother is one of the most well-known. “Life was like a box of chocolates – you never know what you gonna get.”

Essentially, split toning is adding at least 2 colours to a (traditionally) black and white photograph. One to the shadows area and another colour to the highlights area. Usually the shadows get a cooler colour than the highlights area, which usually get a warmer colour.

Unlike single toning or e.g. sepia, the added interest of working with split toning is that, as there are always at least two colors added, contrast is accentuated as well as giving a focal point or a symbolic meaning to the image.

Seasons - or in Bob Dylan’s words, “The Times” - are changing quickly now. Or at least, I feel it. After a long, hot, dry summer in Europe where river levels fell to record lows, green grass became an illusion - unless you played golf, and glaciers in Switzerland were covered by white tarpaulins to stem them from melting into thin air, I’m now writing this wearing a body warmer and hearing the rain outside my window.

When it comes to defining words such as "success" and "failure" - what do these mean in the context of mountaineering? Reaching the summit may seem the obvious "success" definition - but what about coming back down alive regardless of whether the summit was reached? Surely that could be a success, as dying on the mountain, would, in most people's eyes, be seen as a tragic failure…

There’s a lot of scientific research papers written on the chemical structure, shape and rock origin of the stones used on traditional Italian Alpine roofs. I have to say I only realised that when I searched for photographs that others had taken of the roofs.

After a number of false starts, I’ve decided to bring PhotoStory.photos into the fold if you like. No longer out there fending for itself, it now auto-forwards any visitors to this blog page. It also provides me with a reason to create a first blog post on this recently revamped website. Why all the changes…?