Portrait

I don't do Portrait photography as a rule, I'm just no good at it. However, yesterday I did, and made a positive choice to give it a go.

As I ran down by the reservoirs and on to Overtown Lane there is a ramshackle small farmhouse that someone lives in. Survives in more like. This is him.

In all the time we have lived round here, and I've been walking or running past, I have never met him before. There has been signs of life, smoke from a chimney, but never the man himself.

Yesterday, I ran past and shouted morning, then after 10 more yards, stopped, headed back, said hello, and asked him if I could take his picture. I showed him blip and what I usually took, and he was happy, if maybe surprised, to stand and pose.

To be honest, I was sold with the googles, it's a strong look, and as I have just typed string and changed that to strong, string also plays a significant part in his attire. There I was in lycra, my running kit, and toasty, I was probably warmer than he was, but he won't been feeling it.

We'll probably never meet again, as it's clearly a once in 20 years event, I wished him well, and we went our separate ways.

Life comes at your fast, and the irony that the very next farm is in tip top condition, largely by being rented out as location for a well known BBC TV Drama shows how we all live cheek by jowl. Some just have other paths, other approaches, and end up in different places.