How it all Started.
I started Local Life in 2006 as a place to put some photographs and some basic audio recorded while out and about in my home town.
Since then the idea has grown and Local Life and Little Histories has become the home to photographs of wildlife and places around the United Kingdom as well as home to on location 30 to 40 minute audio programmes recorded on location in towns and places around the country as well as nature audios recorded at nature reserves and the like including wildlife walks and specialist areas such as bat detecting.
About the Author.-
I am not a specialist in the fields of nature or history but have a love of both and the recordings and photography are my own journey into these worlds and are presented more from the approach of the ordinary man discovering than the specialist imparting knowledge.
I trained as a musician, fine artist and studio photographer and went on to work for many years as a Graphic Designer and Artist for Advertising agencies and in the world of publishing and today still work in publishing but in the technology side of the business for a national magazine and newspaper publisher.
From my earliest days I have had a love of audio starting with listening to plays, dramatisations, location recordings and comedy on BBC Radio 4 in my youth when I was not allowed a Television in my bedroom. This love has continued and I still prefer to listen to radio and especially BBC Radio 4 to listening constantly to audio books while driving in my car which as a consequence of my job I have a lot of time to do, finding far more enjoyment in imagining the scenes presented by audio than having them presented on a plate so to speak on TV and Film.
Local Life & Little Histories - The History
2006
2006 saw the launch of Local Life & Little Histories as a place to put some basic audio recorded while out and about in my home time along with photographs of anything that took my interest.
2007
2007 saw the advent of the Little Histories series of audios which looks at towns and places that I visit as part of my work. In these 30 to 40 minute audios recorded on location some of the history of the location is researched and recorded while in situ along with my personal perceptions of the places.
2007 also saw the advent of more voices on the audio as the I try to bring interviews with people at the locations I visit to afford some more colour and informational value to the programmes and on occasion by even dragging the other half in on the recordings.
2007 has also seen a number of recordings dealing specifically with the subject of bats including a 2 part recording made at a bat presentation / workshop and a number of recordings made while out and about bat detecting at various locations from the Midlands to the Lake District.
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July 2007 saw a major redesign of the Local Life & Little Histories website in order to hopefully make it more user friendly and to make identifying the latest audios and entries easier and also to make specific areas of interest in the archives easier to access.
July 2007 saw the introduction of the 'Audio Diary'. These are informal audios up to 30 minutes in length that are recorded 'off the cuff' with no editing looking at what is happening behind Local Life & Little Histories.
August 2007 saw the introduction of a new series of 15 to 20 minute audios called 'In Search of Wildlife'. In these audios one specific species of bird or mammal is explored on location in the British countryside or at reserves. It is hoped that over time this will build into a comprehensive archive of recordings, descriptions and photographs of British wildlife.
August 2007 also saw the introduction of the 'Shiretalk' name in conjunction with Local Life & Little Histories with 'Shiretalk' becoming the branding for the audios and with 'Local Life & Little Histories' being the overall branding for hosting the 'full package' of audio, text and images. Along with this change to the naming, intro and outro idents were added to the audios to brand the audios and to direct anyone listening back to the Local Life & Little Histories website for further information.
Intro and Outro ident voiceovers courtesy of Clever Little Pod
2008
2008 has seen a move of county for myself and the adoption of a local reserve as a regular patch to visit. Following on from this there is now a Sightings Diary page for birds, mamals and insect life and a new series of audios exporing the reserve at different times of the year.
Newly added is a Species Photography page which over time will be added to to create a photograpic entry for all the species the seen at the local patch with informative information on those species.
Press & Promotion.
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May 2007 saw Local Life & Little Histories recommended by Dean Whitbread in a roundup of British podcasts in the Pods & Blogs segment of BBC Radio 5 Live's Late night programming. You can find the BBC Radio 5 Live website entry here: Virtual Cash, Congo and Podcasts. You can listen to the British Podcast Roundup segment from BBC Radio 5 featuring Little Histories here: British Podcast Roundup.mp3
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September 2007 saw Local Life & Little Histories being featured on Podfinder UK on the BTPodShow network with the Local Life & Little Histories audio's being described as 'an audio show offering a fascinating insite into rural UK today'. You can find the episode at PodFinderUK Show27 and the full list of PodFinderUK shows at PodFinderUK.
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The Future.
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As time progresses hopefully more interviews will be made and the standard of the audio content raised to afford a better and better listening experience.
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Contact Information.
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If you have any comments or suggestions then please feel free to contact me at: feedback@littlehistories.co.uk. Your suggestions and comments are always appreciated.
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If you have any feedback or comments with specific reference to the audio output of Shiretalk and Local Life & Little Histories please contact us at feedback@shiretalk.co.uk
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Local Life / Little Histories also has a sister site A Doodle A Day which is the authors site dedicated to sketching for fun.
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You can see the listings for just the Local Life & Little Histories audio output with brief descriptions at Shiretalk
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The Technical Stuff
For those interested the photographs on Local life & Little Histories are taken with the following equipment:
- Nikon D80 with either a Tamron 70-300mm Zoom or Sigma 50-500mm Zoom lense.
- Fuji Finepix S7000 (mainly for macro and panoramic photographs).
The Audio is captured with the following
:
- Edirol R-09HR using the built in microphones.
- Olympus LS-10 using the built in microphones
- Fostex FR-2LE Field Recorder with a Rode NT4 stereo condenser microphone or Beyerdynamic Shotgun microphone.
- Any studio and not location based recordings are made with a Rode NT1a large diaphragm condenser microphone, Audio Technica 2020 microphones with a PreSonus tube preamp and PreSonus Comp16 compressor, Tascam DP-02CF recorder and Alesis Multimix 12FXD mixer.
What People are saying about Local Life & Little Histories.
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'Most podcasts I listen to once and delete them. Yours get saved. They're like a verbal massage. Listening to them actually feels to me as though I am taking a walk through the park, like a park that I have frequently visited and yet there are still pockets of it new to me and unexplored. It is so completely unscripted and improvisational that I always feel I am walking alongside you'.
Steven L
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'As an expatriate the opportunity to reminisce about the country I left behind 8 years ago is a most wonderful experience. Please keep up this excellent initiative'.
Matthew T
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'I spend some time looking for sites like yours.
I'd just like to say what a wonderful site it is. The best I've seen for an awful long time'.
D.
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'Great podcast, keep em coming.
i'm a fan'.
Dean W
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'what a wonderful site- I found the link from the wild about Britain website forum discussing online vs independent photo kit shops.
I have just moved to the midlands and I am trilled by the number of local places i can visit- your site is sooooo useful.'
Shelagh
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'I spotted the plug for your site on the BBC Countryfile Forum. I love the approach you've taken with the podcasts (and plan to working my way through some of them over the coming weeks)...All the best with the site -nicely done Sir '
