First off, welcome to my new site. Thank you for looking into my little corner of the internet. It's all still a bit new, and there are many more products and ideas to come, so keep coming back, or keep an eye on the social media channels to see what’s new.
Part of the plan for the site, is to release the odd blog every now and then. Covering events I’ve been to, some experiences, the stories behind the photos and maybe even some technique ones if there’s interest.
But I thought I’d start off with a little blog to introduce me and how i ended up here.
Well I’m Paul Cook, I’m a 40 year old bloke from a quiet little village in Lincolnshire. Ever since a young age I have been obsessed with anything on wheels! Traction engines, old cars and vintage motorbikes are my main interests, but if it has an engine I’ll stand and stare at it for hours and if it can be raced, even better.
Who’s to blame for this, well it’s safe to say it’s my late father John Cook. If you're a road steam person, you may have known him and if you saw him at rallies, I was the annoying little kid that went everywhere with him by his side. My earliest memories are at Cadwell Park with dad watching vintage bike racing, Rallycross and travelling all over in the search for new steam engines so dad could cross them off in the register. Dad never had an engine, so he got into the hobby as a number collector, then he got involved in the National Traction Engine Trust, where he was membership Secretary for years, and eventually Vice Chairman. All of that meant most weekends we travelled to rallies up and down the country, and it wasn’t unbeknown to do 2 or 3 rallies in a day!
As a kid/teenager, I was just happy to travel around with him, take it all in and get excited when he let me finish off his roll of film by taking the last 2 or 3 pictures. When digital cameras came about, I started to take photos, and a whole new interest for me was born. I would takes 100’s of photos everywhere i went, starting off with a “potato” of a camera - which sits on a shelf above my desk! Progressing to a bridge camera, I then started to get bit more into it and started to get photos published in the NTET’s Steaming magazine and then joined social media where more and more people saw them.
When Dad passed away in 2010, I joined the General Council of the NTET and ended up on the Executive Committee as Head of Sales, and i started to help friends out with their engines more and I too started travelling all over to see as much as I could, but the photography was always there and I started to take it more and more seriously.
In July 2015 I started my Facebook page, Eyes of a Penguin as a place to share my photos and its kind of gone from there. In December that year I printed and sold my first calendar and have done one every year. The page now has over 14,000 followers from all over the world and I have made many friends and had many interesting experiences because of it.
This last year I took the cameras to 27 events and did over 5500 miles all in the search for that perfect photo - I wonder if I will ever take it?!
Ever since this all started, people have asked if I sell prints of my photos, and it’s been my plan to set up something like this for a while, but I have only just found the time to do it!
So please have a look around, purchase a calendar if you haven’t already got one, or have a look at the prints that are available and see if you would like any of them on your wall - both make great presents and remember Christmas is just around the corner. If you’ve got a favourite photo of mine that you’ve seen on the Facebook page and you would like a print, get in touch and I can arrange for a print to be done of it. other sizes and framed pictures are available, again just get in touch.
Going forward, where does this end up? I don’t know, but I’m sure there will be lots of laughs along the way.
And just to finish, the question that is always asked - “where did the name Eyes of a Penguin come from?”
Well, that would be telling, but who knows, one day I may write a blog on it.
Paul