Hello fellow steemians my name is Les and am delighted to introduce myself to this amazing community.This is my first post on Steemit and I am super excited at the opportunities of friendship, self expression and education that this unique platform offers. So here's a little bit of info about myself.
Myself and Flynn, my Spanish Water Dog
A former city boy from the UK, I made the move across the Irish Sea 5 years ago and now reside amongst the beautiful rolling hills of Donegal overlooking spectacular Lough Foyle.
I really enjoy the benefits that living in a rural environment offer you. The sense of peace and freedom is something that I had never experienced whilst living in the city.
Sunrise over Lough Foyle
Moving to Ireland from the UK has been quite a culture shock in many ways. From the anonymity of living in the city where one rarely encountered your neighbours, contrasting with a tight rural community where everybody is bound by family and religion. Many of my neighbours could tell you the names of the majority of families up to a 30 mile radius !
Living high up in the hills can present a challenge to mobility, especially when it snows in the winter months. As there is very little public transport, having your own vehicle is essential.
Snowed in
My main passions in life are photography, videography, music and dogs.
I was lucky enough to make a living combining my love of photography and dogs working as a freelance photographer for the canine newspapers Dog World and Our Dogs. I have also produced work for most of the main dog food manufacturers in the UK and my biggest achievement was being the official photographer for Pedigree Master Foods at Crufts.
Here is a small example of my work.
This is Marley.My first Spanish Water Dog
A group of Chihuahuas
Since my move to Ireland I have concentrated on my videography and am the co-producer of the Big Green Art Youtube channel, together with my friend Brendan Farren an Inishowen based weaving instructor and artist. The aim of the channel is to promote and teach the ancient craft of Irish Willow Weaving. Brendan is an amazing teacher and I support him by doing the filming , editing and SEO. One of our favourite tasks is producing the music for our videos as we are both keen musicians. Our intro sound tracks are reggae instrumental versions of old Irish folk songs. We have a comparatively modest following (1600 to date), I guess this is down to our specialised niche but the numbers are growing and we get really positive feedback from our viewers. Here is one of our latest videos explaining how to prepare willow for basket weaving.
Music has always had an influence on me and as a young punk rocker in the late seventies I became socially aware through listening to the lyrics of bands like The Clash and The Jam. Through the punk movement I discovered my favourite music Reggae. The spiritually conscious message of roots reggae music entered my soul and I have been a fan ever since. Over the years I have been privileged to see many of the greats including Burning Spear, Prince Fari, Tappa Zukie, Lee "Scratch" Perry but sadly never got to see Bob Marley live. I have played the guitar for many years and enjoy improvising with other musicians.
Lee Scratch Perry live in Derry 2017
I am looking forward to being an active part of the Steemit community and plan to contribute useful and hopefully entertaining content. The concept of the blockchain and crypto are a steep learning curve to a newbie like myself and any advice to guide me on my journey will be gratefully received. So I look forward to meeting my new friends. Thank you for taking the time to read my story.
All photos and videos are the original work of @rebelsoul
Welcome to Steemit! Great pics :)
Thanks for the nice comment.Appreciate it.
Welcome ;) Maybe you should get some of your willow weaving up on @dtube! Guess you would be the first to do so! Greets
Hi,yes we are planning to move to dtube.Google has not been kind to us,taking away our monetisation as has happened to a lot of channels.Thanks
Welcome to Steemit!
Welcome to Steemit! Great Intro post by the way. My Friend @steemitguide has some guides for you to get started with Post Editing which you might be interested in! Enjoy Steemit :)
Thank you , I will check the guides.I'm very grateful for your help.Cheers
Hi there @rebelsoul welcome to steemit nice to meet you. =)
It's nice to know that you are willing to learn and open about cryptocurrency and blockchain. =)
Best of luck and see you around.
Thank you and nice to meet you to. I believe you should always keep learning as much as you can and we are blessed to have so many generous teachers here.
Welcome to Steemit @rebelsoul!
I wish you much success and hope you find Steemit to be as rewarding and informative as I have.
Here are some links you might find useful.
Your stats on SteemNow
Your stats on SteemWorld
Your stats on SteemD
How to use Minnow Booster
How does Steemit actually work?
Let me know if I can help.
Many blessings! @bycoleman
Thank you so much, this is a great help.
Wow that are really great shot u surely gonna popular ibet and Flynn he is super cute plz add some more pics lastly from now on I will upvote and follow ur post I hope you will do the same... let's grow together after all we are family 😄
Thanks for your lovely welcome.I will be adding lots more pics and i'm glad you like Flynn.Following you and looking out for your posts.
Welcome to steemit @rebelsoul. Join @minnowsupport project for more help. Checkout @helpie and @qurator projects.
Send SBD/STEEM to @treeplanter to plant trees and get an get an upvote in exchange of your donation (Min 0.01 SDB)
Upvote this comment to keep helping more new steemians
Send SBD/STEEM to @tuanis in exchange of an upvote and support this project, follow for random votes.
Hi,thanks for your welcome.Can you explain how I join these groups,is it by following them?Had a look at their blogs but couldn't see how to join.Sorry if my question seems stupid.
Welcome to Steem @rebelsoul.
Do read A thumb rule for steemit minnows - 50:100:200:25 for starter tips.
Spend time reading Steem Blue Paper to know how Steem blockchian works and if you still have any queries ask them on our Ask me anything about Steemit post and we will try to answer that.
All the Best!!!
Thank you for the great advice,really appreciate it.
Welcome to Steemit Les. Great Introduction. First and foremost is to have fun here. The rest will follow. I'm looking forward to see your future posts.
Love the dog pictures though a Spanish Water Dog is not a breed I was aware of.
Thank you for your warm welcome. I am planning my future posts already and one of them will be about Spanish Water Dogs. Looking forward to lots of fun.
Hello on steemit :)
Your first post is really great, have a good time here ! :)
Thanks , took me a while to get the post together. Great to meet you !
A fellow dog lover! Welcome.
I enjoyed reading your story. I've also moved from cities to small country villages and the contrast is amazing. Wonderful and also challenging.
I hope you get off to a great start on here. If you're interested in articles on learning the ropes then please check out some of my recent ones. I mostly blog on nature, spirit-in-nature and the conscious aspects of crypto. I look forward to seeing more of your posts and images.
Thank you for your kind words.I'm looking forward to reading your posts.Their certainly are challenges to living in the country,but the rewards definetly out weigh the negatives.Lovely to meet you.
Welcome! Really enjoyed your intro post, lovely photos, and i love your dog, so adorable... Being a dog owner myself i will be following you for sure, and you've even given me a bit of motivation to share a few photos of my dog. Thanks :)
Hi, i'm delighted that my photos inspired you.I intend to post some tutorials on getting the best from your dog photgraphy.I will follow you,so I can see the pics of your dog.Thank you
Wonderful, i will be sure to check it out. And if you've followed me, i better get those pictures sorted and the post put together!!! Binky is my dogs name, she sort of looks a bit like a fox, well, that's what people keep telling me... You will have to judge for yourself :)
I'M looking forward to seeing Blinky,I bet she's gorgeous.I think she has got a great name.
welcome! Looking forward to read more from you :)
Thank you, I appreciate your warm welcome.
Welcome to Steemit. Everybody else has given you suggestions and you have been here longer than I so just welcome, and I love your photography. You get to Jamaica much?
Thank you so much.My dream is to get to Jamaica,that could be my goal to do well on steemit :)
There's a lot of similarities in our posts. I didn't mention I also have 2 whippets. We used to take them racing & lure coursing when they were younger but they're 12 & 13 years old now, so it's just a walk or little play time these days.
I love the sunset photo, it is spectacular.
I'll give you a follow as well! See you around steemit :-)
Thanks @positiveninja , I really like Whippets, great temperaments and so greaceful. I'm looking out for an activity for my dog Flynn.We took our last Spanish water dog to gundog training but Flynn hasn't got the work drive of our previous dog. The sunset picture was a sunrise.I used to live on thy banks of Lough Foyle and during October time the sun rises around 9 oclock.So it was easy to get some spectacular pictures.Get out of bed open the front door and snap.
Thanks for the follow :)
delighted to connect! I am also new on steemit. Love finding new soul tribe members like You. Have a beautiful journey here.
Hi, thank you.I hope you have great success.
Really good introduction!! And really good pictures