August 2025
Can’t believe I haven’t been to Teignmouth in nearly a year – doesn’t seem possible! Went for a trip out for the day and couldn’t believe my luck – I bumped into 3 out of the 4 “models” from previous encounters…and had a catch up chat with one of them. I also met Eddie, a local photographer and “persuaded” (read bullied!) him into modelling [see final image], which for any photographer is fairly traumatic – far easier to take pictures than have them taken of you! Always good to make contact with fellow local enthusiasts…and he was a natural!!

January 2025
Teignmouth is only about 40 minutes away from Sidmouth and couldn’t have a more different feel. It’s great for street photography as it has Back Beach – with colourful, peeling boats and beach huts, where the locals hang out; the main Prom – which runs for miles; a Pier; skate park and a train line next to the sea. Rosemary and I often go there for a few hours of photography and invariably come back with something (after sampling the local cake offerings of course!).

In fact the first image below, “I still miss her”, was taken in 2023 when we were having a wander round Back Beach. The guy started to talk to us about camera gear (as older blokes often do!) and I was desperate to take his photo, as his face seemed so expressive and interesting. I think because he’d been into photography in the past he agreed, but probably couldn’t understand why I wanted to! Sadly he then started telling me about how he had recently lost his long term partner and you can really see this rawness in his photo. Was a very poignant moment…

In 2024, Rosemary and I offered to run a Sidmouth Photographic Club summer trip to Teignmouth, which meant that we had to make several recces to choose/sample cafes. In the end we made 3 trips and on each of those I managed to take one or two images that I liked. As always, success is weather dependant…and with street, the luck of the draw who happens to be around at the right time. Had one slightly dodgy experience (entirely my own fault of course)…was eying up a couple of characterful blokes in one of the shelters and from across the road I held my camera at waist height using the back screen to take the shot. But one of the guys clocked me and called me over, asking me rather gruffly if I was taking their photo. I looked surprised and said that no, I’d just got a new camera and had been looking at the screen to see how to change my settings (this was actually true…except that I had pressed the shutter button as well). Thankfully one of the guys used to have a camera back in the day, so we chatted a bit about photography. Then Rosemary wandered up and not knowing what had happened, asked me in front of them if I’d got the shot….arghhh!!! Recommence digging out of hole. I said no, I hadn’t managed to ask them yet if I could take a photo. The older guy was happy for me to take his picture, which is the black and white image further down in the gallery. Blimey, you really do have to be able to talk your way out of trouble when you’re dealing with people!!

The trip itself went really well – we had about 18 people in the end, which was one of the largest club trips and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves…and I even got a few more images to add to my collection….oh, and the cake was great!!

(Click on an image to see a larger version)