Congratulations to all graduates from Friday’s ceremony at Pen Green in Corby. Image galleries of the event and graduate portraits are available at the online gallery.

Final draft of the prospectus, includes new photos from the recent session and revised logo.

Images from my recent shoot for the University of Northampton’s information services who all work jolly hard providing library, information and technology services to the students at the university. Everyone was very helpful and accommodating especially the models who gave their time to pose and put up with my sometimes odd requests to move this way, twist that, all whilst remaining totally natural looking.

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Double Portrait of my Father

A Double portrait of my father sporting a rather fine shock of snow white hair. This is an available light photo taken in 2009 at a Sunday lunch out in a rural pub.

You can’t really tell from the image but my father is struggling a little bit with the menu and the unfamiliar surrounding. I say struggling, because when this photo was taken he was suffering from a rare form of frontal lobe dementia called Pick’s Disease.

Born during an air-raid, in an isolation ward, to a mother suffering with scarlet fever, my dad was a remarkable man who had to overcome many hurdles just to have a relatively normal life. Nearly all these things happened to him before I was born so I’ll repeat here my uncle’s eulogy which describes my father’s life better than I ever could.

My Big Brother

Martin Heppell

I had a big brother until, when I was seven and he was ten, a car carrying the Heppell family back from Nottingham went straight on rather than turn a corner just before Kirkby-in-Ashfield. He and I were thrown through the sunroof of the car as it rolled down a bank into the field. I suffered shock and severe bruising and stayed in hospital three weeks. Martin came out worse suffering paralysing brain damage.

For the next three years I no longer had a big brother at home, only seeing him on sporadic visits to hospitals various; starting after about a year.

I lived with Father for some time as Mother needed a year in hospitals to recover from her own injuries. It was three years before I had a big brother at home again and by then a different big brother.

During those three years Martin had gone through months of coma, emerging with total paralysis of his left hand side and slurred speech to eventually being able to walk, talk and with effort open his hands all be it one at a time. It was slow progress but he showed he had tenacity.

It took another five years, but by his late teens he completed some tertiary education and after trying a couple of jobs settled into a bank job, in which he progressed, that was to last him for a career. He also learned to play sports like squash. He married and had two great kids and proved for the long term just how tenacious he could be.

By Martin’s late teens I had left home and lived the majority of my career “ south of Watford” but I have seen his life achievements since his late teens albeit at a distance: they are:

Stayed a full working life with the Bank

Became qualified to teach others and examined others in banking

Married an amazingly tenacious woman and raised two kids to be the first Heppells to complete University.

Coped admirably with years of mother’s nagging him for the two of us!

Sadly he developed his illness at the young age of 60 and we have seen my big brother progressively “lost” to us over the intervening nearly 7 years! But I would argue the world needed three goes before being able to take him away; that tenacity again!

In short he overcame the insurmountable to live a thoroughly good life.

John Heppell

I never thought of my dad as disabled, he never mentioned it, never complained, it only ever became apparent when people would occasionally ask me why my dad’s hand looked “funny” or why he walked with a limp. Similarly he never complained about the dementia which snuck up on him just as he was about to retire from working life, some might say robbing him of his retirement. Although he never complained both the accident and the dementia have had a great affect on family and friend especially the immediate carers.

My dad is survived by his mother, brother, wife, two children and three grandchildren and will be missed by all.

Links

• Pick’s Disease Support Group
• Nottingham Evening Post article on the inquest
• The Radford Care Group – where my dad enjoyed day care

A recent retouch and rescue for this photo from the 1980s. The power of PhotoShop and a lot of care and patience. “Nothing is real” sang John Lennon in 1967, always the visionary this was way before computer manipulation.

After

Featured below, the first draft of the photo album from May’s Birthday Party.

Click on cover to view full screen.

Paul and Laura are getting married next year and I look forward to capturing their wedding for them. This picture was taken at a recent birthday party on a very wet bonfire night in the midlands.

When you live and work in England you better be ready to make the most of the elements and the sparks flying here are from the rain as well as Paul and Laura, and not a stray firework.

Brooke Weston has recently published their prospectus for academic year 2010-2011. Photography, design and print was completed for their recent open week, where the Academy opens up for visitors to see the school as it works on a daily basis. Brooke Weston is regularly in the top 5 non-selective schools in the country and is often many times oversubscribed.