Holidays, Publications and World Cup Planning

I do like to take a "road less travelled" on my holidays so, unencumbered by noisy and demanding children (they are both at university now), Mrs T and I set off for the Outer Hebrides for a couple of weeks. This accounts for the drastic lack of blog posts recently for which I can only apologise.We did a tour of the islands, from the amazing little Barra in the south, through the Uists and Bernaray, and up to Harris and Lewis. I love this part of the world - with few people, clean air and scenery to die for, it keeps drawing me back. If you haven't been, then go - you won't regret it. If you were to go, the Blue Reef Cottages on Harris are definitely where you want to stay, especially if you fancy a bit of romance. That's one of them in the pic at the top of the post.We drove up via the Lake District, where for some reason we decided it would be a good idea to climb Scafell Pike. The day was heavily overcast and misty - not good conditions for going up a mountain, but armed with 2 GPS units, map, compass and proper outdoor gear, we headed up into the cloud. We did take a wrong turn in at one point as the track became very indistinct, and ended up in a boulder field called Hollow Stones which was quite amusing for a while before we back-tracked following the GPS and compass. Amazing how easy it is to become lost of you are not properly equipped! Anyway, web broke through the cloud to the most lovely view, and welcome, warm sunshine. OK it's not Everest, but it was a really special trip that will stay in my memory.Camera gear for this trip was a Sony RX1 and a Sony RX100 mark II. The RX100 stayed in a pocket all the time and covered moderately wide (approx 24mm) out to mid telephoto (approx 100mm), whilst the RX1 was used when I could take my time to work and compose for the fixed 35mm focal length. Image quality from the RX1 is stupendous, and the RX100 is no slouch either and is the perfect pocket camera for me. I also had the Sony electronic viewfinder with me which fits both cameras which is handy. I did manage to drop the viewfinder on the road and bent some of the connecting pins slightly causing it to malfunction, but a magnifying glass and pair of tweezers sorted that out.Annoyingly the RX100 collected a couple of big dust spots on its sensor at some time during the trip. I have dropped it back at London Camera Exchange to get it fixed by Sony (the benefits of supporting your local camera shop!) and hope to get it back soon.I can't say enough about how beautiful the Outer Hebrides are. It's always a bit tricky balancing the desire to be out photographing all the time with having to be a good husband and look after Mrs T, but happily I had two or three very amazing dawn outings which were well worthwhile. The one above is the beach at Barra which is also used as the runway for their airport. I could spend years up there just trying to capture the beauty of the place, which happens to be what Ian Lawson did to create the most stunning photo book I have seen for a very long time. This one is really worth a look. It shows that if you really want to capture the essence of a place you have to completely embed yourself in that place and its people.Enough holiday nonsense. Time for some sport. I've had a mix of rugby and football since getting back from holiday. with a particularly fruitful game at Reading who beat Doncaster 4-1. It's so nice there now they are back in the Championship - fewer photographers, more room and plenty of time to shoot the managers who were happy to hang around by the dugouts for 20 minutes or so before the game.Club photographer Jason Dawson still has work to do to get the Reading players to run in the correct direction when they celebrate. With 4 goals going in, they ran everwhere but towards him for three of them, with Pogrebnyak being the only one "on message", and even then he ran past Jason before executing what would have been a headline grabbing knee slide, rather than sliding straight towards him. Keep at them Jason! With 5 pics published across the Sunday Sun, Sunday Mirror and Monday's Daily Mirror I was quite happy with my end result. Not bad for a weekend warrior, albeit a professional one. And at full page rates per shot thank you - no free or cheap pictures or annual contracts in order to get published.I've got rugby for the next 4 weekends, with Quins on Saturday followed by the three Autumn Internationals at Twickenham where England line up against Australia, Argentina and New Zealand. It will be really interesting to see how the team perform - I thought it was touch & go whether Robshaw would captain them or if Lancaster would go for Tom Wood, but Robshaw is the man. Hopefully he'll be able to put Quins poor form behind him and lead the boys on a trio of crushing victories.Onto the World Cup. Somehow England qualified. I have to say I reckon Spain would have decemated Poland 15-0 and it did feel like we squeaked in. However, we've gone from 17th in the world up to 10th according to Fifa's latest ranking, so you'd hope we will get into the last 16 in Brazil.I'm trying to work out a way to get down to Brazil for the duration. It's a mighty undertaking, being a 4 week tournament far away, with stadiums huge distances apart, and prices rocketing faster than Branson's Spaceship One. Also, with no support or backup like the big boys have it will be very hard work. I reckon it is do-able though, if a number of planets line up. First being that England qualified - top marks there. I need to have a proper commission as well as there's no way I am going down there on spec, so that's being researched at the moment. I'm also building up a useful contact list of friends of friends who are in Brazil who are very generously offering to help with logistics and planning. Simultaneously I am feeling out a few opportunities to work for companies who are sponsoring the event to further help to make it a decently profitable exercise.I've been pondering buying a van and turning it into one massive road trip, sleeping in the van if needed, and selling it after the event. That is looking more like a stupid idea every day though, as I'd need to have a lot of guns and would smell really bad after 4 weeks. Plus with some stadiums being 3000 miles apart I'd still be struggling halfway through the Amazon rain forest by the time the game in Manaus kicks off.Anyway, planning has begun. I will keep you posted of progress. I think I've currently got a 5% chance of being there but will endeavour to turn the odds in my favour over the next few months. If there are any of you reading this who are in a similar situation and fancy teaming up, do let me know.