Dana & Linda...

Dana and Linda wish everyone A Merry Christmas!

Dana, the founder and all-round lovely lady and leader and everything else of the TEDS toy charity - and whom, frankly, I've always had a bit of a 'thing' for, for all the three + years I've known her, poses impromptu with volunteer, Linda, at the very end of a quite pleasurable assignment this morning.

Their Toy Emporium, where, instead of people simply donating toys their children have grown out of, and getting absolutely nothing back, they exchange them for something in stock, donated by others, who have also...and so on etc. Makes a lot of sense and there's also a play room for young children and another area where small kids decorated cup-cakes today and could then take them home, to eat. They also aim to provide a drop-in facility for mothers to befriend and get advice during trying times.

Settled back in an old auctioneer's building that's due for demolition, TEDS have had legal and red-tape wranglings after the new industrial estate unit they were due to move into back in August fell through. They moved all their stock - several tens of thousands of items into any garage and shed they could find and now they have six months respite, back here.

I was taking publicity shots for their (hopefully) to be new or at least improved website (it's a bit rubbish at the mo) and so as well as row upon row and stacks of toys, teddies, dolls, clothes, buggies - you name it, close-ups as well. It's an old building with strip-lights but diffused flash using 'rear-curtain fill-in' plus manual override sorted out the lighting very well. I used the venerable Nikkor D 17-35mm f2.8 on the DX D7000 throughout.

This one was in the reception area and is the fruit of being around for a couple of hours and generally being a bit blokey and jokey and Linda absolutely refused to pose. I can't remember the joke but I had taken one of Dana alone and so had set-up the shot, so when Linda rushed in, the shot was taken in a nano-second - and utterly painless for all!