Thanks for your patience as we moved to a new hosting provider. The blog archive has been restored so all the articles are back. We’ve one or two more tweaks to make over the weekend as everything is not quite as we’d like it, but all the photos and the blog are restored, along with the store.

Cheers,

Mathew

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On the front page of Lodge Photo is a crop from a photo showing a man on a horse with a lance, tilting at a strange target. It’s one of a sequence of four:

This is the Giostra del Saracino - Joust of the Saracens - held twice a year in Arezzo, Tuscany.

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It has to be one of the most famous places on Earth, never mind the United Kingdom — the prehistoric stone circle that is Stonehenge. But if you have ever been there, you’ll have found yourself behind a low fence on a paved path, well away from the stones themselves and far enough away to make good photographs difficult.

It’s hard to blame English Heritage, who own the site and are responsible for maintaining Stonehenge. Over the years, visitors have chipped off pieces of stone and carved their initials. Today, you can still see graffiti carved in the 1800s, when the stones were simply sitting in a corner of a lumpy field on the edge of Salisbury plain rather than a protected monument.

So, how is it that I am so special that I got to go right into the centre of the circle to get the angles and photos you see on the site?

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Some have asked for recommendations of websites or agencies they should try for car rentals in Europe.

Not all rental car companies are equal — San Francisco CA

So here are the sites I use:

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Ever thought about renting a villa in Italy, France, Spain or some other European country? Figured that it was hard to do and just for millionaires or film stars? You may be surprised to learn that renting a villa can be more reasonable than staying in a hotel, especially if you are a family or in a larger group (though being a film star or millionaire does help if you want to rent an entire Tuscan village from the Ferragamo family — yes, the shoe people).

Renting a villa doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive; there are just five simple steps.

Step one is to decide if a villa vacation is for you. The pros are that you’ll have a base for a week or two that you can come back to each night. You can stay in all day, lounge by the pool or in the garden, go somewhere, eat in or out… all up to you. The cons are that there’s no daily maid service or other hotel amenities, you are in the same place (so visiting places far from base means a longer round trip), and you have to keep the place reasonably clean and tidy, and do the cooking yourself if you stay in (and clean up afterwards). Personally, I am happy to trade off hotel amenities for a more relaxed and flexible vacation.

Step two is to pick a country and general geography — South of France, Tuscany etc — based on the kind of things you want to do and see. Get a few guidebooks to places you think you might like to go. My personal favorites are the Dorling Kindersley “Eyewitness” travel guides (DK guides), and the Rough Guides. I like the DK guides because they’re chock full of photographs so you can get a much better idea of what a place is really like, and they’re also a good starting point for planning photo-taking days. The Rough Guides are impeccably researched with good writing on places, their history, art and place in contemporary life, with great vignettes on the famous locals. However, although brimming with great maps to get you around. they are sparsely illustrated when it comes to photos.

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