I wrote a blog about this on 24 July so it is less than two months since I started with www.geogphotos.com on Picfair.

Every image that is uploaded seems to attract two ‘views’ automatically as part of the image ingestion system – some end up with three ‘system’ views it has been partially explained to me by a Picfair email response. Though I don’t know what the reasons are that some attract two and other three.

Regardless of these system created false views that stats are fairly amazing and hard to understand.

The most viewed images have a count over 100 ( 114 is the highest number of second hand cars on sale on a garage forecourt in Knodishall! Why??).

Now a few days later this is the state of play:

241,231 views and not one single sale. So, who is doing all this viewing and what are the reasons?

I’m puzzled.

Lound is a small village in the north of Suffolk. It is 4.5 miles north of Lowestoft. It is 2 miles from the North Sea coast at Hopton-on-Sea and is on the border with the county of Norfolk. The church is set on its own away from the village, by a roadside of a country lane, surrounded by fields. It is one of the small round tower churches that are largely confined to east Anglia and rare elsewhere. What makes Lound church stand out though is not its exterior even though that is pleasant enough.

D.P Mortlock in ‘The Popular Guide to Suffolk Churches’ ( I haven’t yet found his ‘Unpopular Guide’):

” The door opens to reveal a lovely surprise, a church that glows and glistens with gilt and colour beautifully maintained in the anglo-Catholic tradition’

The interior was transformed in the years immediately prior to the First World War through the work of Ninian Comper (1864-1960) one of the last of the great Gothic Revival architects whose artworks included church furnishings and stained glass. There is none of his stained glass here but much else.

My 24 photos of Lound are now on www.geogphotos.com

Also in a gallery at www.geographyphotos.com

Just happened to come across this when browsing the Guardian’s website.

I have to admit that I cheated and travelled to the summit by train!

Since June I have been out and about exploring areas of Suffolk that are largely new to me and visiting lots of ancient village churches. In total I have visited and photographed around 60 churches most of which I had not previously been to.

Now with some wet weather I have started processing those photos. First up is Brundish. The main reason it comes first is because I liked it a lot.

I visited twice, once on a cloudy day, and then went back as soon as I could when the sun was out. The first time I approached from the relatively high land to the west, the second up a narrow climbing lane from the Needham Market to Bildeston road.

The church is on a bend in the lane with only a few cottages nearby. It’s quite a secluded spot and deeply rural in nature. The building is small with a simple intimate interior. I particularly liked the ancient churchyard with its mature lime trees and inside the interesting patterned stained glass from 1902. My guide to Nineteenth Century Suffolk Stained Glass by Birkin Haward describes the glass as ‘mildly Art Nouveau’ and suggests that the unknown artist was possibly local.

My pictures of Battisford are available on www.geogphotos.com ( use the search function)

Also in a gallery within the Suffolk churches archive on www.geographyphotos.com I’m not linking to the actual gallery in the hope that you might look a round a little!

I’ve launched a new website using ‘geogphotos’ as a domain name. All images are priced at £30 for commercial editorial use, and all are available as prints. It’s using the Picfair.

If £30 seems too high for your intended use ( eg education) or if you want to make your own prints then get in touch. geogphotos@gmail.com

www.geogphotos.com

Many of the first pictures you’ll see are some of the copies that I have made of old slides. The ones right at the front were from the archive of racing driver Bill de Selincourt.

East Anglia has a staggering richness in the form of its medieval churches. Living in Suffolk I am naturally drawn to those of my adopted county. Though I am not sure exactly how many churches there are – I am talking historic village parish churches mainly but also some from the towns – I have just realised that I have now visited and photographed over 260 of them.

Some of these buildings are from the 1200s. Many of them are on sites that are much older, Saxon, often prehistoric. These buildings have been at the centre of their community for all that time. I find that fascinating even though the fine points of church architecture and religion are well beyond me.

I enjoy getting out and finding the churches never knowing exactly what to expect. What better way can there be of exploring the geography of Suffolk settlement? Before the pandemic and away from the towns most of the churches were open. You have the building to yourself to explore, there is always something of interest.

We are incredibly fortunate in Suffolk to have the wonderful website of Simon Knott who combines knowledge with a warm personal touch. I strongly recommend his site. He has gone on to cover Norfolk, Essex, and other places but this all started off in Suffolk. Simon Knott’s Suffolk Churches.

My galleries of Suffolk churches are easily found from my homepage at Geography Photos.

Here are a few of my favourites.

First, Aldham Church which you may recognise from then BBC ‘Detectorists’ series.

Medieval paintings of saints on rood screen inside church of Saint Andrew, Bramfield, Suffolk, England, UK – Saint Mary of Magdala

This is Little Wenham church – found at the end of a long unmade road.

Finally, another remote church at Badley a mile or so from the main road between Needham Market and Stowmarket with its unchanged largely 18th century interior.

This small gallery of exclusive images is from 29 May 2021. No surprise to see the continuing rapid rate of coastal erosion along this coastline, but something of a shock to see a large outdoor film set under construction for an Amazon Prime movie series. There is also a new (to me) development in terms of a project called Bawdsey PhotoPosts to encourage passerbys to record the changing coastline landscapes.

Gallery

The film set is to the left of this shot – you can pick out a pale stripe which is their temporary access road shown in the next picture.

Sister Pictures Limited production company will be filming a series called The Power based on a novel by Naomi Alderman. Information here

The Bawdsey PhotoPosts project is a collaborative project involving AONB Suffolk Coasts & Heaths, Deben Estuary Partnership, Bawdsey Parish Council, and coastal scientist Helene Burningham of University College London (UCL)

This reminds me of an art project in 2005 when a video camera was placed in a window of the marvellous tower and took time lapse images of the coast every 15 minutes. A set of flags was set up on the clifftop spelling out the message:

SUBMISSION IS ADVANCING AT A FRIGHTFUL SPEED

The final flag fell on 16th September 2005, by 6th January 2006 the coast had been eroded by 17 metres in one year and to mark this point one white flag was put in place on the cliff top.

The completed 30 minutes time-lapse film by Bettina Furnée & Tim Sidell, 2008 is on this site along with more details about the ‘Lines of Defence’ project.

There are also a couple of photos from Geography Photos on that website.

I came across this archive of motor racing and personal photos at an auction in Suffolk. Bill de Selincourt (1921-1994) was an active sports car racing driver in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He also returned for some more racing in the 1970s. The pictures that I have are from his earlier period. They show Bill racing and also relaxing.

Many of them must have been taken by Bill himself, others of Bill racing by his wife Mary. There are pictures of Grand Prix of the early 1960s in Belgium, Monaco, and Monza. Also pictures of Bill in action at Goodwood, Aintree, Brands Hatch and Oulton Park.

I must own up to an almost complete lack of knowledge of motors sports so it has taken me quite a time to do the research necessary to complete all captions. I am extremely grateful to those on the Alamy forum and Autosports forum who have helped fill in the gaps and spot errors. There may still be some mistakes so please do let me know.

I am delighted to be able to publish these historic pictures on my website and to make them available to publishers, archivists and enthusiasts.

The gallery of around 90 images is on my homepage at Geography Photos

Images for personal use ( and for publication) are available inexpensively at Alamy:

PA Media bought Alamy in Spring 2020. It was a fairly quiet affair and has stayed that way since. There have been no dramatic changes in the business as far as contributing photographers have been aware.

I came across this image use of mine in the Guardian a few days ago but only today did I have a second glance and then noticed something interesting. It’s the byline identifying that the article has come from PA Media – in other words it seems to be a package written and produced for the newspaper by PA using an Alamy image and presumably words from a staff member. The fee for this use has not as yet been displayed to me but a package like this is a good way to add value to images and make Alamy photographs far more appealing to publishers. So a positive sign of things to come I hope.