Welcome to my blog

Hello and welcome to my first blog entry.
My name, as you can tell from the header, is Nigel Monckton. I've been a keen amateur photographer for more than 20 years, and thought it might be worth sharing some of my experiences to help those of you just setting out on the journey. I'm also a user of other peoples photos in my day job, so hopefully I'll have a few useful insights to share about that as well.
This blog is linked to my website, so you can see a range of my photos and judge for yourself if I'm worth listening to. (Obviously I hope the answer to that one is yes).

For the equipment-minded I shoot with Olympus gear – currently an E-1 with a 7-14, a 14-54, 50-200 and a 50mm macro. I'll be blogging my experiences with these as things progress – particularly the 7-14, which I've just bought and poses some interesting challenges.
Why Olympus? Well I started in 1982 with an OM-10, and although I had to change all my lenses to go digital, I've always been impressed with the quality and sheer usability of Oly gear and I saw no reason to change. I'm not one to knock other brands though – I'm sure their kit is fine – it's just I've never been tempted.

What do I like shooting? In truth, almost everything, although I'm less keen on people. I quite like the degree of control you get in the studio, and obviously I enjoy the chance to shoot new things while travelling – you can see the results of these preferences on my website. Just follow the link on this page.