Happy Christmas Everyone!

The title says it all really. I wish you all a very merry Christmas, and of course a happy new year. I have not been as active on this blog as I would have liked to have been this year, but as I hope you know, I have changed that. I am back to blogging 3 days a week, and the numbers are in, and they say that my page views are higher than ever! Not quite sure how that happened, but it is indeed a happy thought that so many people seem to visit this blog. I have absolutely no doubts that 2014 will be a bigger year for me in the realm of photography, and as stated many times recently, my love for photography continues to grow and grow. Thank you to all people who regularly visit this blog, and indeed have continued to visit this blog, after a relatively quiet year. I hope to catch up with plenty more of you in the new year. To all other fellow photographers, keep up the great work and never stop learning. Let's keep this ball rolling.

There is perhaps no better setting for a Christmas picture, than back to where it all began (let's not argue about this), in the humble town of Bethlehem. These candles are within the very building that Jesus is believed to have been born (yes ok I'm sure it's changed a bit in a couple of thousand years). It's amazing to look back at 2013 and remember that I visited the holy city of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, in the same day. These are indeed special places to visit, and I encourage you all (especially the believers) to visit these places. They will stick with you.

So light the candles, put on the Slade, and have a great Christmas with your families. All the best, Pete

Palestine

The Middle East, one of the most tense places you could possibly be on Earth. I have said on a previous blog post that Palestine is perhaps not a place I would visit again. In fact, I was mocked at work the other day because I said it is not a country I would voluntarily go to, which was met with unsuppressed laughter of "but you did!". As dumb as it may sound, I really didn't! I had no idea that the tour we took from Sharm El-Sheikh to Jerusalem (The Holy Land tour) meant going to Palestine as well. I knew we were visiting Israel, and mainly Jerusalem, but I honestly did not know that Palestine was that close to it. I must state though, that it was perfectly safe to visit Palestine, and indeed if you want to visit the birth place of Christ (Bethlehem, for all you who have forgotten your Christmas nativity stories), then you have no choice but to visit Palestine, because that's where it is (likewise Nazareth, which is also associated with Jesus, is also in Palestinian territory, though we were told that it isn't safe to visit there at the moment).

I have also mentioned on a previous blog post that the tour we took was far from ideal for taking photographs, simply because we had so little spare time. So today's picture is rather like like a tourist picture I suppose (albeit one that took me ages to process), but is still a record of my travels there. This is looking away from the Church of Nativity and into the local town area of Bethlehem. It is a 3 shot HDR picture taken with a Nikon D90, processed in Lightroom, Photomatix, Photoshop and Topaz Adjust.

New blog name.....Again??!

Yes, you may have noticed that I have yet again changed the name of this blog. Having only just changed it to Home and Away (not influenced by the Aussie TV show), I have now changed it to the non-cryptic UK HDR Photography. Why? Well, because I have decided that the travel photography blog idea has been done to death, and I don't want to appear in the same vein anymore. Therefore, I want this blog mainly to be about what it mainly contains, which is HDR photography, whether from Britain or abroad. Of course, not every photograph will be an HDR, but this would be stated, and otherwise the blog name would just be Photography, which is unlikely to get me up in the Google rankings.