My name's Charlie (Charlotte for people who like the long winded version). I am a 24yo who lives in Lincolnshire, England. I can't remember not liking horses, and my earliest equine memory is my Dad getting bitten by Snoopy, a pony who used to reside near my Granny's house, while lifting me up to pet him. I started riding aged 7 with my friend Olivia, and was soon joined by my brother Oliver. Sadly, my early riding 'career' was blighted by confidence problems: first with cantering, and then with jumping. For two and a half years in my teens, I worked Sundays in a racing yard, mucking out in return for a ride or two. When the confidence problem increased, I quit. In May 2007, nearly 8 years I started back riding. Confidence problems are still there, but I've improved with respect to jumping - thinking of it no longer envokes the mad dash to the toilet!
I started racing as a bank holiday "family fun day" malarky, and I will admit now, I hated it. My earliest racing memory is sitting on top of the train engine in the kid's play area of Southwell, swiping at kids who wanted to dethrone my brother and I from our prime viewing location, watching a horse called Charlotte's Oliver. Just looked him up: August 12th 1991, and interestingly, he was ridden on that day by the Trainer my brother now works for! My favourite flat racer of all time was Giant's Causeway, such a battler, and Petrushka, who's speed in the Nell Gwyn was awesome. Of the jumpers, my all time hero was One Man. I follow Katchit after seeing his 9 length victory at Market Rasen. Alan King is my favourite Trainer, while Graham Lee and Ruby Walsh are my favourite NH jockeys. On the flat, I like Hayley Turner and Kirsty Milczarek.
I started photography when I worked in racing, just using a cheap non-digital to begin with as I was at college, and in the latter part, on the dole. Once I started working, I treated myself to my first digital camera, a Fuji (can't remember the model, will keep searching) and after a year upgraded to a Fuji S5000. At this point, I was photographing eventing and racing - the former being produced quite nicely, and the latter struggling somewhat. After a year, I moved onto the Nikon D50 I use now. I've not been completely happy with the D50 - blue skies rarely appear in my photos, although this could, of course, be user error! I use Paint Shop Pro 9 to edit and resize my images, which seems a big improvement to PSP7. I'm particularly fond of the scripts function, which I use heavily for gaming site personalized pictures. I've also noticed that stopping the scripts part way through produces some really cool effects. The down side to PSP9 - there is always a down side - is that the program plus software patches are big files for my dated computer to handle.
My other great passion in life is music. My people call my taste in music sad/crap/warped, but I think it's great. I feel very lucky that I can listen and enjoy such a wide variety of music. My main love is 60' and I have a fondness for 80's (cheesy) music. Favourite 60's bans and singers include Gene Pitney, Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Tich and Petula Clark. I love Lionel Richie and The Pretenders, both of whom I've seen in concert, and would happily recommend to people. Of the "modern" stuff, I like people like James Blunt, Katie Melua, Amy McDonald and Mark Ronson - people who seem to follow their own path musically and manage to pull it off so well.