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10:10:10 -  Svalbard

Svalbard is a place I will never forget, for it is beautifully wild and rugged, a quiet and contemplative place, cold yet strangely welcoming.  It so reminded me of my beloved Scottish Mountains with snow clad summits protected by sharp challenging ridges.  Almost the whole island is mountainous, surrounded by bare rocky slopes, sometimes  moorland or bog, but all of which really made me feel at home.

I was staying aboard an absolutely stunning ship called the Noorderlicht.  Life on deck was bitterly cold but worth it for the view and possibility of a wildlife sighting, but below deck the wooden beams and comfortable furniture nestled in a small but cosy warm environment was where I got to know the other 17 guests on the trip in a relaxed and friendly manner.  This was one of the best aspects of the trip, not to mention the fantastic gourmet food we were served.

I had been invited aboard to help guests with their photography.  Most guests had not booked with photography in mind, as my inclusion was a late advertising attempt by Aqua-Firma to simply fill the last remaining spaces that threatened to go unfilled.   It worked, and to my surprise of the 18 guests, 6 were really keen photographers, including a talented Italian photographer, Federico Sambolino who has now uploaded his images to his website and well worth a look.

In terms of photography the trip started well with a visit to a Hornsund bird cliff (no birds though!) and onwards to the Paierlbreen glacier with kittiwakes dancing in front of a blue-green-cyan ice wall.   Some of us enjoyed experimenting with slow shutter speeds here, hoping to get a more arty look (see my Arctic Birds gallery).  We then saw our first Polar Bear.  This turned out to be frustrating as the tour leader (Robin Buzza) and crew wouldn't approach the bear closer than 100 metres.  Too far away for the cameras!  This was because they didn't want us to interfere in any way upon the bear's natural behaviour!  We would only get closer if the bear came to us we were told.

The photographers were disappointed.  We were surely going to get a better chance for a photo in the coming days?   Well, as it turned out we didn't do too well.  Most bears seemed to have moved northwards with the sea ice, which lay just to the north of Svalbard by now.  We saw only 4 other bears in 2 weeks, all of them in the same place feeding on a submerged dead whale just off shore.  Again, the guide and crew held back so we could only watch, or photograph the bears as specks in the frame (I was ok as I had a 600mm lens plus teleconvertors, but most photographers had much less zoom power, especially those with instamatics!).  Requests to board a zodiac were declined, which seemed strange as I have often seen photos taken from zodiacs with bears as close as ten metres away.

So to compensate for this, our efforts were directed at the landscape.  Here is where Svalbard is a winner!   We saw some spectacular light during our voyage, be it the dark stormy clouds over the mountains or the sweet golden light as the sun set each evening, with the midnight sun often giving some very weird light indeed!   Combined with the often abstract landforms this made for a really pleasing photography trip.

Each day we would land and be taken by Robin to a historical site where he would recount in detail the dates regarding Svalbard's whaling past or its base for exploration to the North Pole and the search for north-east trading passage.  We saw  lierally thousands of whale bones still stacked were the whalers of the Edwardian and Victorian Era discarded them, preserved in the oft frozen air as though they were unceremoniously dumped yesterday.  These gave some of the more abstract and urban photographers a chance to excel!  Being on land also gave those not too enthralled with whaling history, a chance to look about and take some good photos of plants and other macro subjects at their feet (the only time we could do this for stopping wasn't allowed on walks!).

Beluga Whale Bones and Whalers Hut

But after 14 days of whaling sites, dates, quotes from old journals, and witness to the sheer amount of rubbish and filth left behind by exploitative explorers (who all had payrollers with commercial gain paramount) I did feel uneasy.  After all, I was there with the impression I would be seeing and helping others to photograph wildlife, as it said in the advert!  But the wildlife was incidental to this tour as it turned out.  Worse, the boat crew shared no passion for wildlife.    I had no sway with the guide or crew about bettering the photgraphic experience for the guests.  I was sad for those who had become frustrated with the lack of wildlife, and especially the rule about Polar Bears on the trip.  Showings of David Attenborough some evenings just doesn't compensate (films being about the only passion for wildlife our guide seemed to have).

So it is that I have now parted company with Aqua-Firma.  It's a valuable lesson learnt.   I hope I've revealed some insight for you if you are considering a photography trip not just to Svalbard but anywhere - Pay the extra to go with a company who understands your photographic needs and will do all they can to get you in position for lighting and wildlife presence, and give you the patience that photography requires.  Don't make the mistake of falling for what it says in a brochure either - for this is the age of spin and exaggeration.  Ask other photographers for recommendations based upon personal experience.

Svalbard is a stunning place that could be made all the better for guests searching for wildlife and photographs with a well thought out itinerary.  If I had any money I would love to charter a boat for photographers for what would be a truly memorable trip.  Watch this space.

Click here to see my photos from the trip.

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07:07:10 -  Svalbard Workshop

I've teamed up with Aqua Firma to invite you on board an amazing Arctic Sailing ship to join me on a wildlife photography holiday to Svalbard and the Arctic.   We intend to circumnavigate the islands of Spitzbergen and Svalbard using an icebreaking schooner.  This is the small window of opportunity when the sea is ice free around the islands.  We will visit remote areas rarely explored by other photography tours.

This elegant ship carries 20 passengers in warm, comfortable surroundings with great food and hospitality.  As well as me being there to help with your photography, there is a guide onboard who is one of the best in the Arctic and whether sailing or hiking on land, their passion and knowledge of this region will be infectious.

We will leave the UK on the 11th August and return on the 27th August.  The cost of the trip is 2,990 plus airfare to Longyearbyen

We will get opportunities both onshore and aboard to photograph Polar Bear, Walrus, Arctic Fox, Svalbard Reindeer, Orca, Arctic and Pomarine Skuas, Ivory Gull, Glaucous Gull, Brunnich's Guillemot, Whales, seals, arctic flora and much more.  Most of the animals will be unafraid of humans allowing us very close approaches as we venture onto the Tundra or out on a Zodiac - a large inflatable raft.   We will also be visiting towns and other sites of historical interest.

You will not need "professional" cameras or big zoom lenses to photograph the wildlife here.  Wide angle and medium range (300mm) telephoto lenses will be very useful, as will a tripod, beanbag, polarising and graduated neutral density filters.  I will be on hand to help and encourage you get the best from this trip and hopefully avoid the usual pitfalls on a trip of this sort.  We will look at and learn from each others photos every evening and discuss what we expect the following day.  Laptops with imaging software such as Photoshop would be very useful to bring along.

The temperatures you will encounter will not be as cold as you may imagine.  This is the summer when the ice is melting with average temperatures of 4-6 Centigrade - a common enough temperature in the UK between November and March.  And in case you don't realise, there will be round the clock daylight!  I think we will get tired!  For more info on Svalbard click here.

Aqua Firma is a very well respected adventure and wildlife operator.  The trips are created using the help of professional scientists, conservationists, photographers and explorers. For more information please take a look at their website, which includes telephone numbers and booking forms for this trip.

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26:06:10 - What a year so far!

I've now been back in the UK for just over a month but I've hardly been in the house.  Partly because my time is rapidly looming to becoming a full-time daddy - my partner is soon to return to work and my job doesn't earn enough to employ a nanny etc (and even if it did I wouldn't want Indigo to be parted from me) - but because the weather and breeding successes of our birds this year are brilliant.

The redstart project was good, with several of my workshop attendants getting shots of this beautiful bird.  As these youngsters began to fledge I switched my attention to Goshawk, an unbelievably fantastic bird.  I have long been watching these forest phantoms without much success of a photograph.  I really need to be near a nest but thanks to the ridiculous and petty licensing rules we have in the UK I have found it too tough to go and find one "by chance" (photographers need a piece of signed paper to go near a nest, wheareas anyone else can have a rave and drug party under the nesting tree without so much of a warning letter - yes, it happens here in the Forest of Dean!).  Because of the alledged disturbance to the nesting birds these rules are pretentiously enforced in this country, so instead many photographers go abroad to disturb them, because no such rules apply there.  Anyone thinking of sending me an explanation needs to answer why disturbance is allowed everywhere except in the jurisdiction of a stealth taxing UKplc (in fact, any legislative "ACT", or Advanced Corporate Tax, is a voluntary "rules and penalty" game)!  Are these rules for the good of the bird or just the revenue and elitist tendencies of UK authoritarianism?

Anyway, when you have lived and breathed in the Goshawk's realm for as long as I have it is just a matter of time that I got my chance.  I didn't need to be "near" a nest (what is near or far?), just patience and knowhow and the right contacts and things start to happen.  Many hours in a hide and a bounty of roadkill squirrels later I have something like 14 "good" goshawk images in the bag.  YET, not one good one of the adults!  I am in such awe of the psychic ability of these birds to know where I was hiding, when I even just thought about them, that they kept "just" out of reach behind a branch or simply knowing when or where not to land.  This is a long project and I really need to focus on next year now to get the adult.

On a different but still successful note I want to announce my BIG workshop I will be running early next year.  It will be in the Antarctic with a British company called Aqua Firma.  I will put more details here as I get them - dates, prices etc.  I am so excited to be going to one of the world's truly wild places.  I wouldn't otherwise be able to afford to go on my own so this is a great opportunity for me.  I hope you can join me.

Now maybe I am counting some eggs here as well, but I have once again reached the very final stages of the BWPA (British Wildlife Photography Awards) contest, and can't wait to see if I have been selected as a winner.  Again details will be posted here asap.

Things do seem to be better in good weather don't they?

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10:06:10 - Parents!

It's been 3 months since I posted anything here or in the galleries, the longest stretch of nothing since I started this website.  The joys and added duties of being a parent is mostly the reason, not to mention processing all my images from my time in Spain and adding a few of these to the website.  Please check out the newly fledged European Wildlife galleries I've created and  hopefully will be added to over the next few years to create a fully mature collection of European wildlife.

   Since I returned back to the UK at the beginning of May the birds have been in full swing too starting their own families.  Always a brilliant time to go out in the Forest, listening to the song in the tree tops, excitedly awaiting the sight of a bird visiting its nest.  Now I have never been any good at finding nests, so when I do find one I feel particuarly priveledged to witness a private and probably anxious time for these parents bringing up their little and vulnerable offspring, dashing around for their food seemingly without any time for themselves.  Among the families I have been watching are pied flycatcher, redstart and peregrine, three of the more famous residents of the Forest of Dean.  One particularly difficult parent (but usually inquisitive) was a whitethroat who managed to elude me for many hours of chasing around some scrub here in the Forest.  I gave up with just 2 images as a record (see warbler gallery).  I will be back for him later perhaps?

 I have just uploaded some images of another bird I discovered on a nest during a drive through mid Wales in late May.  The whinchat is a small and sprightly little bird I have wanted to photograph ever since I photographed them badly in Oban a few years ago.  No nest photos (I think the worry for the parents would be too much had I approached the nest deep in some moorland grass), but by keeping a distance and observing their dedication was really enjoying.  I only visited them twice for a couple of hours each time before I left them to it.  Below is the male keeping his eye on me.  Check out the other images in the Wheatear & Chat gallery.

Also close by was a Wheatear nest.  This was during a workshop I was running so didn't have much time to get my own photos but I did get some great shots of the male on a post (check it out in the same gallery above).  Well actually, my client got the photo for me as I was on the wrong side of the car!!  Thanks Alison!!

I have now been to this part of Wales a few times this year, each time on a Workshop Day out to include the red kites at Gigrin farm.  Workshop bookings have been up for me this year with most of May and June fully booked.  I have had a great time meeting and chatting with so many great folk and hope that those I gave projects too will contact me when successful so I can visit them.  I have been really pleased with the images we have been getting.   I used to get nervous with these workshops but I now realise that anyone who wants to learn about wildlife photography are almost always charming and good company and thankfully understanding if a particular location doesn't get the desired result or weather forecast!  Its's a useful lesson, when target species don't show or we miss that all important shot.  All part of the joys and frustrations of wildlife photography.  I do still have spaces left in July and August for workshops if anyone is interested.  Send me an email if you want to photograph red kites, wheatears, swallows etc on one of my Welsh workshops.  Please go to my Workshops page to find out more.

Anyway, must go now to catch up with my redstart family.  I have a friend who has asked to film them so I want to make sure they are still there and haven't fledged yet (they will fledge very very soon).  Afterwards, I need to tend to my youngster and give the mother a much needed rest!  Parents!

wild boar piglets 10 June 2010

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11.11.09 - Indigo

It is with deep feelings of pride and joy I want to let everyone know about the arrival of my baby, Indigo.

Tiny hands like rosebud petals

Opening, closing as they grow,

Downy head upon the pillow

Shows a hint of golden glow.

What a masterpiece of beauty

Is the tiny baby there,

What a trust bestowed upon me

As she grows in beauty rare.

She has already been to photograph the seals at Donna Nook with me!

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27:09:09 - British Wildlife Photography Awards 2009

RUNNER UP - British Wildlife Photography Awards 2009

I was delighted to be awarded the overall runner-up at the premiere of the British Wildlife Photography Awards (BWPA) - a celebration of British Wildlife and photographers.  The above image of a male and female blackbird fighting to the death in the heavy snowfall in February this year (2009) claimed not only the winner of the Animal Behaviour section, but went on to be the overall runner-up.  I had promised to keep the news quiet since late July about the win, but was genuinely surprised on the night to get the second prize.

I took the image at a slow shutter speed looking into a low sun filtered through the trees. The image is almost full frame in width but cropped off the bottom to make square.  As the birds jumped I had to pan upwards with them.  It was taken in the recent snowfall in February very early in the morning.

The whole night of the awards was excellent, held at Hoopers gallery in London.  Lots of well known UK photographers were there either to watch or receive awards.

There was 80 photos on display and will now form a tour around the UK.  I have another 2 photos in the exhibition (commended images):

Collapsed Honey Bee (Animal Portraits)                                                              Wild Boar and Piglet (Animal Portraits)

I do feel proud to have got 3 photos in the exhibition, especially considering I only entered 9 images. I am particularly pleased with the competition rules for not allowing any form of image manipulation!  Well done to the others who are in the exhibition as the quality of photos and the number of well known professionals who entered made it tough.  Also thanks to Maggie Gowan, the organiser, who told me the entire thing was done for no profit (next year she hopes this will change!).  Having been a past runner-up in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards, and having been to that award ceremony, I can say that the quality of images and potential to make new friends on the night was definately comparable.  I'm sure this competition will have a good audience and following in the coming years.

You will soon be able to buy these prints framed by going to the Showcase Gallery page.  Just give me a day or two to get that ready!

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19:08:09 - Codex Petition to Downing Street

If you are appalled like I am at the Codex Alimentarius proposals as outlined in a previous blog (here), particularly the potential changes to Vitamin Supplements, please sign a

 Downing Street petition here (UK).

or to the Head of the FDAs Office of Nutritional Products (USA)

People are getting ill in greater numbers than ever before despite modern medicine.  Disconnection from nature and all things natural is the cause.

This has been the ONLY way you; the demos, the people, is given the slightest voice on this process since 1963.  You really need to contact your MEP or Member of the European Parliament (if you know who this is!).   You can also support the Alliance for Natural Health, and the Natural Health Federation, who are fighting this in the shadows for you.  This Codex will be passed at the end of this year.  You are invited to attend the Codex meeting (try and find out how), but you are not allowed to speak.

"Politicians don't see the Light, they feel the heat.  Be vocal and persistent.  Write letters and join together to protest"  

Scott Tips, 2009  Natural Health Federation.  Personal communication.

People laugh when I mention Codex Alimentarius down the pub, they think it's a joke (it's their conditioning).  Please Google it if you've sniggered (lazy man's link here).

"Our challenge is to demonstrate that no corporate strategy can be effective against the universal desire to retain the  

basic human right to food and health FREEDOM".     Ian Crane 2008

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12:08 2009 - Light in Dark Places

So far, August has been a very low energy month.  Have you felt it?   I need to look up if any Astrologers can explain it.   There seems no reason for it at all.  Life is wonderful.  I was notified of yet another success with my photography yesterday - the fighting squirrel photo has been awarded by the American media corporation MSNBC as one of the Best 40 Photos of 2008.  Incredible!

I think my low energy level is due to my mind, body and spirit sinking slightly back towards the mundane reality of the Matrix - the false sense that money, position and ego are what is needed to survive in this world.  I know it's wrong but when the Matrix starts to win.....

I gotta tell you though, I've gained nothing in terms of financial gain from these awards.  As I've said, the image was selected by anonymous forces (Zuma Press), and has since been used to promote these forces in THEIR business, not mine.  But on the surface of Matrix land, it seems great.  Go back to sleep Dave, you are but a battery slave helping keep their inorganic heart beating!

But I can't help dwelling on the fact that earning even a small living from wildlife photography has got very desperate. I can't take a chance with travel to take photos any more in order to keep expenses low.    In fact I have now gone a whole year of working at home, with the exception of just 2 journeys outside of the Forest of Dean.  The climate doom-mongers will be proud of me as my expenses for travel are almost nil, and so therefore, is my carbon footprint.  Something to be proud of: Yippee!

As the propaganda of a recession started to get press coverage, prices for images fell to an all time low, with newspapers in particular (the new rulers) driving down the prices, encouraging an all out battle between agencies competing for their business.  The newspapers are basically telling the agents what they will pay, and not the other way around! At the same time, a new internet market is developing called Microstock (see link) which is making matters even worse and making photography look cheap and ridiculous, a commodity like a grain of rice.  Earning even a poor man's living from stock photography is dying.  The flood gates have opened and sad wannabees, like deluded X-Factor failures, cram the virtual shelves of "photos for sale", hiding the good stuff in a pile of crap nobody wants to sift through.  Many of these photos are being sold at under 1.  And now the traditional agencies believe they have to compete with this trash, and have started matching these prices!  Unbelievable and unnecessary.

But the place I love to be is out there in the unconditional outdoors that is the natural world. It is still there.  I shouldn't be so glum.  I can adapt and Wow, as David Bellamy would shout,  life is still great - if only we could all "see" it, including the politicians, the yobs in the street, the willful polluters, animal killers, hate groups....  If we let it, it is the invented fears this machine drowns us in that destroys our free will and our dreams.  So don't let it.

The best things in life....aren't things.      Art Buchwald (b. 1925)

We need to leave Plato's cave now.

The free man can only live for himself and is powerless to change the world of the prisoners on his own. Would they lock him up again if they could?  Put him in a mental home?  Will social services lock his children up under a Kidscape "correction facility" to aid the control of him again (and his children who may be like their dad - free and properly educated).  Is he becoming a danger to their illusion, as well as to the manipulators agenda? (Is this the proof?)

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.  Plato (c300BC)

Are photography awards just a prize offered out for blind men, so that the organizers can keep their control, influence and power?  They too play a game amongst their own peers (who may also be blind to a lesser extent).  Sometimes what seems like a great thing isn't.  Are there fruits to this experience?  Yes!  Do I have to get back in the cave to make good?  Maybe?  Can I do it?  I can do anything....

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29:07 2009 - The Squirrels get First Place!

THE BEST OF PHOTO-JOURNALISM AWARDS 2009

"My" Squirrels have been awarded FIRST place in the Natural Environment (still photos) category of this prestigious international competition run by the NPPA (National Press Photographers Association).   Now in its eighth year, the BEST of PHOTOJOURNALISM (BOP) is the world's largest photojournalism contest.  Founded in 1946, the NPPA claims to attract the best in news photography, news video and multimedia.  This year there was 53,000 entries submitted by 3,700 press photographers from 147 countries.

The photo has gained quite some acclaim in 2009, appearing in many newspapers and magazines across the world, so this is the icing on the cake.  I am obviously delighted and humbled that the judges liked my photo so much (click the image to see the other winners).

...the strange thing is, I never entered the photo.  It was picked out from the anonymous ether by anonymous forces!  I definitely believe in the power of coincidence!  Do you feel it yet?

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06:06 2009 - David Bellamy

It seemed no coincidence that I ended up seated next to David Bellamy for a whole weekend at the recent International Alternative View Conference in London - dining, drinking, and enjoying each others company.  No-one knows who I am, everyone knows David.  I am a silent voice doing my bit, he is a public one doing his.  I didn't even know his views or his battles before I met him.  But we had so much in common regarding our views on global warming, the personal insights into how politics and conservation really works, and the personal persecutions we have suffered due to our "knowledge" and persistence to speak out against the orthodoxy.  No-one else at the conference seemed to have much clue about ecology,  the long debates about wind turbines, rainforest clearance and so on, but especially the wonderful natural world we all live in, but very few "see".  I am hoping that you do also, as you have an interest in visiting my website of images of this world.  I thank you for this interest from the bottom of my heart.

David and I are both passionate it seems about seeing the good side of humanity, and furiously rebel at how the media never show us these things that are happening in "our" collective reality and physical world.  The spreading of negative energy to lock us into a subservient prison of the mind, a prison-planet, was what frustrated us both the most.  We can deal with debate, facts and figures, and even crackpots and politicians (we have both had our fill of them!) who are deluded.  But when you know something is right and good, but the media and its corporate sponsors twist and turn at every chance to keep peoples minds, those you love, locked inside their pessimistic prisons, the media tiptoeing unwaveringly and without remorse through the pages of justice and honour to stay clear of them, selling us their sick thoughts and even the pills to take, we both hate it.

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.     Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

David Bellamy was once a well regarded celebrity bringing us all the joys of discovering nature.  He has no less than 35 scientific "letters" after his name, has travelled the world many times around, setting up conservation projects that no-one else has dared to do.  He truly believes in the natural world being at the heart of humanity, if only we could all acknowledge it as both beautiful and all essential to our physical and mental survival.

But when he questioned the new politically motivated movement that the planet is warming at an alarming rate due exclusively to mankind burning fossil fuels, he lost his jobs with the media (who once loved him) and they turned against him using pseudo-intellectuals such as George Monbiot.  Some conservation charities that he Presided over for years (eg Wildlife Trusts) disowned him in an instant.  There was an immediate attempt to smear and ridicule him.  Could you cope with this?  How brave is this man?  Or is it stupid to you...must keep the money coming in even if it means lying and deceiving your beloved family, friends and the whole of mankind?

What is it, in our society and individual minds, that makes us SO need to belong to the "consensus reality", that we all KNOW is a result of the media, political spin and dishonourable individuals who infiltrate well meaning organisations such as the WWF, RSPB, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, YET we so happily turn on those who reject that fake consensus?  Is it some psychological need to bond via hating a common enemy?  This is a proven fact and often employed by certain military and geopolitical organisations (The Committee of 300 and Tavistock Institute being the premier examples).  But surely we can rise above this brainwash; or is that only a few of us are immune to the hypnosis that most of our friends, relatives and colleagues can't see?

So here's to you David Bellamy, a not so lone voice of reason, in a world of madness and fakery.

Prof. David Bellamy and Dr. David J Slater at the Alternative View Conference, May 2009.

There were so many more heroes I personally met at the conference and I would love to mention them also, such as David Halpin (see link), literally fighting in his 60's against the brutality of Israeli and Anglo-American policy against the Palestinians. And Dr. Len Horowitz (link), investigating how and why we have all been poisoned and damaged by Vaccinations over the last few decades.   But his main message is an uplifting one.  Maybe next time...

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08:5 2009 - Naturally Human

Life is the only miracle I have ever subscribed to, and whether it's the work of an omniscient god, or a freak of evolution, it still feels very miraculous.  Just how did life change by simple evolutionary biochemical steps from a primordial single celled bacterium to a sentient complex being called a human?  Just doesn't seem enough time nor the probability that it could have occurred (and I speak as a Doctor of Geology here).  Many scientists try to explain evolution, speciation, adaptation and so on, but I don't think they tap into their own instinct to realise that it just simply cannot have occurred the way they have been taught.  They simply repeat what they have read in a book.  It is difficult to "feel" evolution at work or to gain an emotional understanding of it, and that is why science often feels cold.

In the last few years, many tens of millions of people have been moving away from organized religion into a more personal and spiritual sense of being.  The human race seems to be waking up and rejecting the cold science of education or the dogma of religion.  This quantum change in thinking could indeed be part of the same miracle that brought us life in the first place (link).  It could be part of a grander divine plan, with humans playing a pivotal role in the change of the universal consciousness and energy field.  We started life's journey as material substance, both in an evolutionary cosmological sense, and also at the more recent intimate level of your birth and arrival into this time frame.

Star Children  11:11  A Time to Wake Up.

Many Eastern religions have had yogis (link) and so on, all having tried to explain the sense of place of the human in nature and as an evolving spiritual energy force both collectively as a world society and as an individual.  It isn't a new concept, but a concept largely dismissed by increasingly brutal and totalitarian religions and political movements.  But surely, there must be a moment in our lives when consciousness is delivered into the material substance?  This happens more than once and can occur throughout our lives - but only if we allow it to enter.  We have free will.  But has it been corrupted?   The miracle of life was usurped by science and religious teachings, all aimed at ridding you of your compassion to yourself and to life itself.  You became a chemical collection of cells and hormones, and then you die. You are also born with sin and require redemption through an intermediary called the Church or Mosque.   Many people think like this, and they tend to control the rest through taking power, money and influence upon themselves.  More spiritually minded people would rather marvel at all the things Mother Nature has put into our world and our immediate consciousness.  This is the balance, the Yin-Yang or duality of human nature on a collective level.  Both are crucial, but the balance is the most important.  Which type do you think is winning in this see-saw game?   Is humanity in need of more nature or more money?

Watch this video.  It is very clever and outlines both sides of the debate.  We in the west will tend to agree with the materialist on the left due to our indoctrination and also learned logic, yet we also want to support the man on right.   But remember, both men quote only what they read.   They take their thoughts from others and create a bias in their own minds.   But it is the same mind (same actor playing both parts).  Are we schizophrenic?  One uses logic and selfishness, the other uses compassion and fear.  Here is the hidden power of psychological social engineering and control.  Divide and Rule.   We become the slaves of other men.  This is bad.

What we should do is rejoice at our differences and a balance will ultimately be maintained.  Some greater NATURAL force is at work that is good.  Hostilities should end today, the 8th May, a significant enough date.  Humans are as diverse in consciousness as the nature surrounding them and dwelling within them.  Don't be trapped by what you read, but become "Illuminated" and nature will flourish accordingly. 

No-one can tell you the truth - you have to discover it for yourself.

This, I know, is our true and truthful nature.

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27:4 2009 -  Swine Fever.

If anyone read last months update on the Wild Boar here in the Forest of Dean, you may have frowned upon reading a prediction of mine - that an invented disease scam is imminent.  Well it took just 23 days for this prediction to creep into the newspapers.  I'm not going to reveal how I know this, but you may now want to take notes.

The prediction I made in March was a lead up to a final meeting by the Forest of Dean Councilors, who were calling for the Wild Boar to be culled.  As it happens, the meeting gained much support for the Wild Boar, thanks to a talk by Martin Goulding and an eminent ecologist called Dr Peterken.  The science backed up what people instinctively know - the Wild Boar are natural ecological assets to the Forest as well as earners of potential tourist revenue.  Some councilors were not happy.

Within a week of this meeting, a very strange event occurred.  A photograph, allegedly one from a Defra experiment at a Boar Baiting station here in the Dean, was leaked to the press.  It showed a boar eating raw meat.  How strange that just as the Wild Boar were getting more friends, they hit the headlines as being a possible source of disease like Foot & Mouth!!!!!

Now, just one week after this local scare, the national press go full steam ahead on promoting another Piggy issue - Swine Fever or H1N1 Bird Flu.

Please take notes now :-):  This H1N1 virus was produced as a bioweapon in a laboratory using DNA from human, pig and bird flu-infected tissue.  Some of this tissue was from stored virus samples from the 1918 "Spanish Flu" pandemic (this is the bit that gives this particular flu its approximation to the  H1N1 virus type).

US Disease Control officials "detected a virus with a unique combination of gene segments that have not been seen in people or pigs before, according to an Associated Press report (link now removed by AP).  As this release states, Swine fever in humans is rarely, if ever caught from pigs.  Furthermore, pigs don't seem to have caught this cold yet, which is also very suspicious - we should really be calling this human flu that may mutate to infect pigs!!.

Video Added 26.06.09:  A news report 25th June 2009.  The truth will always prevail... Read between the lines of the daily news "hog" washing.  The UK are now to set up anti-viral drug distribution centres and swine flu testing clinics - the foregone manipulated conclusion:- Enforced vaccinations and/or enforced taking of the psychoactive nerve agent Tamiflu or some other expensive drug that does nothing to stop you catching the flu or stop the spread of flu, but does make you sicker in the longer term (read this - sorry, link now removed by the Daily Mail).

And for those who will dismiss anything as conspiracy crackers unless its in a sweaty broadsheet, read this from the Independent (date 30 June 2009).

And Yahoo News and Sky News and many others over the last 10 years if you care to research this uncover the Tamiflu scandal and lie.  The government, WHO, and big Pharma are poisoning your children ON PURPOSE. The side effects of Tamiflu are now being described as the new disease to scare you: The idiotic puppets at the BBC and ITV and CNN etc call it "Suspected Swine Flu", as the symptoms are similar, but the after effects are much worse. Now do you understand why it affects children and not the elderly?

But we are being led to believe the piggies are somehow implicated.  Are there even experiments ongoing on Wild Boar in the UK to infect them with Swine fever?  The use of baited meat perhaps?  Mmmmmmm.  (I have been informed of the official response from Defra, to be released soon to the press, that an officer did in fact bait the boar using meat, but without permission from senior staff.  Do you believe it?  I will keep an open mind).

Research this topic folks.  You will soon learn a few other interesting facts.

After the last Bird Flu outbreak, investigations discovered that Flu vaccines were contaminated with the deadly avian flu virus which were then distributed to 18 countries by the American company Baxter. The Czech Press (at least) asked whether this was part of a conspiracy to provoke a pandemic.  Since the probability of mixing a live virus with vaccine material by accident is virtually impossible, this leaves no other explanation than that the contamination was a deliberate attempt to weaponize the H5N1 virus and distribute it via conventional flu vaccines.  Spreading bird flu would create an instantaneous surge of demand for bird flu vaccine.  The profits that vaccine companies such as Baxter International, Novovax, Gilead and venture capital firms backing these companies, could reap out of such a panic are astronomical.

However, this is not the first time that vaccine companies have been caught distributing vaccines contaminated with deadly viruses.

In 2006 it was revealed that Bayer Corporation's hemophiliac injections were contaminated with the HIV virus. Internal documents prove that after they positively knew that the drug was contaminated, they took it off the U.S. market only to dump it on European and other world markets, knowingly exposing people to the live HIV virus (watch news clip here). Government officials in France went to prison for allowing the drug to be distributed. The documents show that the FDA colluded with Bayer to cover-up the scandal and allowed the deadly drug to be distributed globally. No Bayer executives ever faced arrest or prosecution in the United States.

Do you also remember in 2001, Britain's Foot & Mouth disease was traced to a government laboratory, Pirbright, which is shared with an American pharmaceutical company.  Even Pirbright themselves at the start of the "outbreak" tried to suggest that Animal Activists stole vials of F&M from their high security military installation!!!  (Read about the latest court case against Pirbright here - sorry, link now removed by Farmers Guardian.)

And remember the debacle over the Anthrax outbreak in the wake of 911?  After all the vaccinations had run out, it was found to have provably came from a US military / CIA / pharmaceutical installation called BMI or Battelle Memorial Institute (and connected to Pirbright, UK)!  When things like this are discovered, the press go silent.  Why?

And the last time there was an outbreak of swine flu in the U.S., guess what?  It too originated at an army base (Fort Dix, New Jersey).

Do you still think these diseases are natural?  No, they are profit making exercises for Corporations and a sinister way of controlling populations by 1. Fear, 2. Disease, 3. Martial Law.  This is the New World Order at work. (Read this document).

Solution: DO NOT TAKE A VACCINE no matter how convincing the doctor on Breakfast TV or GMTV appear!  The vaccine will help spread the weaponised disease to those who haven't taken the vaccine.  Anyone made ill by the Flu (Norovirus) vaccine in the UK?  Now you know why. (PS. Tamiflu pills are made by Gilead and have been promoted onto world markets very aggressively for many years by warmonger, Donald Rumsfeld - be very wary of this pill).

Above all don't panic.  This virus will soon die, just like the last Bird Flu incident.  Stay fit. Drink water, take MultiVitamin pills and get plenty of sleep.  You are extremely likely to have some immunity already.  Once again, this is a nonsense panic perpetrated by the media at the request of big Pharma.  They will keep trying.

Added 12.07.09:  I publicly declare as MY AFFIDAVIT to my government, health officials, people of the world, and to God or any other Conscious Power, that I am of sound mind and intellect and that I hereby state that I refuse any vaccination, in particular a flu vaccination of any sort, as is my fundamental human right, instituted by (among others) the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act.  I also refuse vaccination on religious, spiritual and moral grounds.  I also refuse on the suspicion that the science of vaccination is flawed.  I also refuse on the grounds of historical fact, some of which are outlined above, in that our world Governments have previously coerced, manipulated or mandatory administered vaccines to Real Lawful Persons in full knowledge of the vaccines ineffectiveness and toxicity that has led to suffering and death.  I also elect that any child of mine is also not violated by any vaccine.  I understand the implications of this and will take all care and due diligence to keep my child healthy in other effective and natural ways until such time the child can decide for itself whether to accept a vaccine.

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03:4 2009 -  A New World Odour - announced by yet another Puppet.

In 1841, the most famous freemason and Satanist, Albert Pike, wrote in his book " Morals and Dogma":

" THE GREAT FINANCIAL CRISIS WILL HAVE TO BE CREATED TO THEN PRESENT THEM A " NEW WORLD ORDER " AS A " SOLUTION" AND TAKE AWAY ALL THEIR RIGHTS FOR THE TOTAL DICTATORSHIP"

Countless researchers have been following this agenda, that started in 1776 as America gained it's independence from the Banksters of Britain and Europe.

Many times has it been announced as a way for a leader to somehow gain credit for what is far more powerful than any person or country.  Most famous of all is George Bush senior, on 9/11 (1990), exactly 11 years before the more infamous 9/11 (2001).  This announcement was almost surely at the request of the Council on Foreign Relations, an unelected elite think tank working on behalf of the supranational corporations and criminal banksters.  At the head of this organisation are Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brezinsky, both of whom are major advisors to another puppet called Barack Obama.

Here is the usual outline of what the New World Order stands for:

1.  A One World Dictatorial Government with a unified church and issuance of a single currency under their direction.

2. The utter destruction of national identity in the developed world.

3. Control and surveillance of each and every person through means of database technologies and mind control via the media and fear.

4. Depopulation of the world via birth control, deadly vaccination, eugenics, spread of disease, genetic manipulation and war.

5. To cause a total collapse of the world's economies and engender total political chaos.

6. To take control of all foreign and domestic policies of the United States and Europe.

7. To give the fullest support to supranational institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and the Bank of International Settlements.

8. Penetrate and subvert all governments, and work within them to destroy the foreign integrity of nations represented by them (ie Iraq).

9. Completely organize and control a world-wide terrorist apparatus.

10. Take control of education and food.

Added 6.6.09:  Canada hosts elite conference for major bankers and industrialists "Adapting to the New World Order" (link here - sorry link and pdf no longer available)

Now, just because you can't see just how so few can manipulate so much against so many without ever being found out, then think again.  This is actually a plan manipulated by many clever people against huge numbers of brainwashed people who don't understand much, and believe in what the media say.  Most people say they are worried about overpopulation, disease, food shortages, corruption, war, climate and so on, and willingly support policies such as Mr. Brown's, in the ignorant hope that he his working in their interest.  But no.  He is another puppet working in the interest of the New World Order.  They create the problem, or invent it in the media, and get you to decide the solution via the tabloids - the solution they wanted in the first place and why they created the fear.  Where do you get your information about overpopulation etc from?  You have no proof of the problem directly have you?  Same goes for climate change being your fault, and education needing targets, the hospitals needing more money, and so on.  You repeat the headlines down the pub, just like you're trained to do.  I read that..., I heard this....  It's all nonsense folks.  Think for yourself and question everything.

"They shove it in our face and laugh"

Gordon Brown is probably ignorant of all of this due to his own indoctrinations and fears brought upon him by the Corporatocracy.   Each one person or institute or media mogul gains great wealth for his advancement of the agenda against you. And if you dare to stand up and expose any of this, you or your character will be assassinated!  BUT, Mr brown, Obama, Kissinger and all the rest are fearful of YOU and the rest of Humanity.  We have deeply hidden but significant Godlike power to rule over them.  They are, after all, supposed to serve US, the Divine masters of this Earth.  Albert Pike knew this, and so do millions of Freemasons today, and are now a threat to the New World Order.  The New World Order are worried, but arrogant.  They shove it in our face and laugh.  They use attack via newspaper headlines, job losses, and promotion of yet more fear, as their form of defense.

So get rid of the fear, stand up for divine justice, and We will win over all of this.

ARE YOU SLEEPWALKING INTO A NEW WORLD FASCISM?

New Video: added 1:5 2009

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19:1 2009 -  Canon 5D mkII.

I recently traded in my old Canon 5D for the newer Mk2 version and the results from its first test in Andalucia are very impressive (see parrot, wagtail, cattle egret).  Not wanting to bore you, here's the basic first impressions.  The price gives good value, but still a lot of money at 2,100.  Park Cameras traded my old version, so I paid 1,600, not bad!  Image quality is fantastic, but with an over-hyped high ISO noise ability (I still wouldn't use it higher than 400ASA, but 800ASA results are reasonable) and the camera is very easy to use (no complicated custom setups).  Improvements are file size; that is, if you want to submit to agencies (8bit Tiffs are 60mb).  There is an option to take a reduced size of RAW file, but I don't see the point of using this as standard - you buy this camera for its huge files.  Focus tracking is much better than the older version, as I found it would lock onto quite small moving objects (rock martins) even with complicated backgrounds.  Lastly, the LCD is large and a delight to use.  The first drawback is storage.  I save my files as 16bit Tiffs, so that's 120mb per image.  Second, you cannot edit nor convert the RAW file into TIFF using Photoshop CS3 or even the ZoomBrowser software that comes with the camera!  You have to install the Digital Photo Professional software (that comes with the camera) to convert yet this doesn't allow editing of the RAW first.  The only way to edit the RAW is get yourself CS4, which is expensive, or download Adobe's DNG convertor software.  CS3 will then enable you to edit the newly converted DNG file (a sort of universal RAW).  Personally, I don't see ANY difference editing my RAW files versus editing the TIFFS, but there you go, many think otherwise!  Maybe it only makes a difference if you don't know how to take well exposed shots in the first place?   In conclusion, this is a camera only of real value to professionals and very keen amateurs who submit work to Alamy or other agents.  Otherwise, buy the original 5D secondhand for around 700.