LPH News

Thank you for another great season with 99% occupancy. From our weekly online survey 100% of our guests would recommend LPH to a friend and 87% rate us as excellent with 13% as very good—not bad statistics—we just need to get that 13% up to excellent now! The new extension has been a great success - there have been a few minor snags but for most of the time the new facilities are excellent. It took quite a lot of getting used to the new quiet and warm lecture room, and the 52” LCD TV has been very popular.
We started our new workshops in Tuscany in April and this was followed by a second successful one in September. Again feedback has been excellent both with the splendid accommodation provided by Jimmy and Angela McCracken and their family and also the beautiful locations where we photograph. We continue to fine-tune the workshops, in an attempt to get the right balance – and are getting there. We can already boast regulars in Tuscany as we have repeat bookings for those trips too! Gail was able to join the September workshop and managed to spend a week dedicated to photography (without children) for the first time in 14 years!
In August we held our first Olympus workshop. The Olympus Users magazine ran a competition in the Spring edition and 9 successful winners had a weeks workshop provided for them courtesy of LPH and Olympus. It was a great week and enjoyed by everyone.
Due to guests changing requirements, LPH is now totally digital. For practical reasons we are not developing any more slide films nor using the darkroom for printing (this year it was used for half-a day—we are not excluding guests who are still using film BUT simply it is no longer economic to process them.
John has been very busy judging and BPE activity. He worked with ePhotozine, Permajet, Longridge and Bogen Imaging (including Gitzo, Manfrotto and Visible Dust) at Focus on Imaging In February then judged the Rushden Open Exhibition in April. In November he judged the Anglo Scottish 8-way Print Battle at Portinscale (not far to travel)and next year he is even busier. His new website johngravett.com is a great place to see his images and purchase them if you are interested.
The Camels have been reduced to two (2 humps!), we have sold the Freelander and replaced it with a 7-seater Discovery—still Landrover of course! The number plate is LP51 HOL (for LPS and LPH) — so wave if you see us around.

Lakeland Photo Supplies

Lakeland Photo Supplies is starting to grow in supplying photographic equipment to the photographers and tourists of Cumbria. We are advertising on the local map hoardings, Post Office and in Yellow Pages and Yell.com. We are also being invited to Camera Clubs to demonstrate our products.
Equipment being sold has all be used and recommended by John and includes Permajet, especially the Ink-flow systems, the new one for the Epson 2880 gives outstanding results; Lee Filters, Manfrotto tripods & heads, Gitzo tripods & heads, Kata bags, LowePro bags, Hama equipment including spirit levels and desktop studios—ideal for those Ebay sales! We also stock 4Gb and 8Gb Sandisk cards, and Visible Dust Sensor cleaning supplies.
Don’t forget to check us out, we are competitive with the big boys!

Christmas promotion: for every £100 spent with LPS, you get a £10 voucher off an LPH holiday—promotion valid on bookings made by 31st December 2008 (Excluding Tuscany).

Family News

We have had a very busy year as a family, especially with the active lives both Emma and Mikey are living. Photographically John’s year has had plenty of ups. Although the year started late with the building work (he hardly managed a single landscape picture throughout the building work) the exhibition circuit is going well, with a “best digital image” in the EAF exhibition, and a PAGB gold medal at Solihull. He has now achieved his BPE4*, for 200 acceptances on the BPE circuit. He just has another year to wait for his EFIAP.
In September, Gail joined John on the Tuscany workshop and Jenny looked after Emma and Michael. Gail spent a week photographing and had a great rest—the first full week without children for 14 years— a very strange experience. She also took over Chair of Governors at Braithwaite school in September and is working with the team to improve the facilities at the school.
Emma’s life has been very hectic this year. In dancing she has done a modern exam—in which she received distinction— a festival which she did on pointes and is currently working towards the Christmas show of ‘Sleeping Beauty’. She has taken part in the school production of Grease in which she played the roll of Cha-Cha and received a 132 marks out of 150 in a guitar exam. She has moved into year ten which means she is doing her GCSE’s and has chosen to do English, Maths, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, French, History, Drama, Textiles and RE. Her favourite subject is Drama and always comes back with lots of stories. Emma is also doing her Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award and is finding it very enjoyable. We also had a French exchange student , Alban, join us for a week in October. Emma is due to have the return visit to Morlaix, Brittany in March 2009.
Michael is doing really well at school and loving reading and sums. He is swimming once a week and will be restarting gymnastics in January after stopping for a couple of terms. His new love is Beavers, which is really active in Keswick and as you can see from the photo—the Go-Ape activity in France went down really well.

Gail and Emma went to Amsterdam for a weekend in April to celebrate Wendy’s 60th (Gails sister). They were joined by John who flew in from Tuscany and had a great time on the canals and having a fabulous meal with 50 friends and relatives. July saw us back at Billing in the dry this year and then in August we went camping in France. Isle de Oleran, near La Rochelle was excellent, and Brittany was wet—but it was still a good holiday.

We thank you all for your support during 2008 and wish you a Very Merry Christmas and look forward to welcoming you to LPH or Tuscany during 2009

Looking ahead to 2009

More building work! Since the darkroom has been used for only one day in 18 months and since the corridor and darkroom occupy the same floor area as the back room, we have decided to knock down the darkroom wall and convert the room into a photographic studio, which will enhance the facilities available for our guests on those occasional wet days!
We will continue all of our regular workshops in 2009, with a few changes. The black and white will now be totally digital. The successful Tuscany workshops will be available at the end of April and September. We are introducing two new Nature workshops. These will have the same format as the Landscape workshops, i.e. 7 nights and 3 excursions, but the whole focus of the week will be on nature. We are hoping to use more of our own woodland, Whinlatter and also the new Silver Meadows Nature Reserve at the end of Bassenthwaite lake.
Following Johns successful judging of the Rushden Open this year, he is doing more lecturing and judging. He has a lecture tour to Scotland in January, visiting Edinburgh Photographic Society on the 14th, Queens Park Camera Club, Glasgow on the 15th and Carluke on the 16th. He will be lecturing at Shillington CC on 26th Jan and also Jaguar Camera Club in Birmingham in Jan. We are still working on the Focus programme but expect to see him there on all three days and he is already booking up for dates in 2010.
The 2009 calendar has been online since the beginning of September and bookings are going smoothly. Prices are rising for 2009 due to the rate of inflation in food, heating and staff costs. 7 night workshops will now be £595 and the 5 night workshops will be £620—we are still offering our regular discounts if you pay your deposit before the 31st December 2008.
If you are suffering from the effects of the credit crunch or just don’t know what to ask for for Christmas—LPH vouchers make great Christmas presents and reduce the cost of your 2009 holiday! They also work well as retirement presents. Just get you family and friends to contact us directly and we can sort out your presents with them!

We thank you all for your support during 2008 and wish you a Very Merry
Christmas and look forward to welcoming you to a new LPH during 2009!