I'm Ed, i currently live in north cornelly and have lived in the area for the last 31 years. This year as my new years resolution i decided to get off my arse and develop at least a couple of the hobbies that i enjoy and have put off, one of these is very amateur photography.

Up until this week i have used my trusty old sony dsc200 cybershot point and shoot camera, which has served me well but has become increasingly annoying with the lag between seeing a shot and capturing it, and to top it all off my new mobile phone appears quite often to take superior shots, especially in poor light or in motion shots.

So i took the plunge and picked up last years model of the canon eos 450d with a 15mm to 85mm image stabilization lens, and have ordered a tamron AF 70-300mm F4-5.6 Di LD Macro 1:2 as they were less than half price!

I really enjoy spending time with my son (Aron 10) and with my motorbike both of which give me ample opportunity to go to interesting places and indulge in a bit of shutter-bug-ery.....
I hope to mainly take 3 types of shots; friends and family, landscapes and hopefully some motor sport/motion and would love any advice or just to share in general chat with others who share my interests.

In the long term i'd love to be able to develop my skills so that my hobby gets to the point that it pays for itself but realise that with current technology advancing so quickly it's not likely to become a career, currently i'm a robot engineer in Tata (portalbot steelworks) which takes up alot of my time and i have shared custody of my son on tues, and thurs evenings also on some weekends, so the normal thursday meets may prove a little difficult but hopefully there will be plenty of other opportunities to catch up.

and apologies for the spelling and grammar, there's only so much a spellchecker can weed out lol