Hi,
I’m Andrew Leonard and I live in Northern Ireland and run a surveying and photography business as well as a mixture of websites.
Here you will find a mixture of company news, product updates, ideas, personal reflection.
For those of you who want to know a bit more about me , here’s my story!
How Did It All Begin!
I was born many years ago in the rather flat landscape of East Anglia. Where I lived and grew up for all my childhood.
At the age of 18 I decided I wanted to become a Building Surveyor so off I went to University of Reading (I only had a choice of two, the other was in Salford, a bit too far way from home). After 3 years of studying away in the Faculty of Urban and Regional Studies (or FURS as it was known) I graduated.
I eventually found a graduate position at Stevens Scanlan & Partners and under the superb guidance of the Building Surveying partner Roger Buckley, I became a Chartered Building Surveyor. During my six years in London I met a very attractive woman (Samantha) from Northern Ireland who worked at News International and who eventually became my wife.
In 1996 the Manchester office of Stevens Scanlan needed a Building Surveyor, so off I set and spent a few months in Manchester before returning back to London. I found Manchester to be quite good city and Samantha and I decided we wanted to move there. So we both applied for jobs and both received job offers on the same day.
In Manchester I worked for a firm of commercial surveyors called Richard Ellis, and worked on many projects including reinstatement works of the Royal Exchange Shopping Centre following the Manchester Bomb.
We eventually found a house that need renovating so we moved in and spent many a weekend and evening restoring it.
TIME FOR A CHANGE
This is the point in my life when things took a turn.
First a bit more info about my background.
From an early age I have always been interested in computers (at primary school we were lucky, because the father of a girl in my class donated a computer to the school - believe me computers were a very novel thing back in the 70’s - it was such a big thing, I remember we had our photograph taken with it for publishing in all of the local newspapers).
The other thing I had an interest in was taking photographs, from about 8 I had a camera and took loads og photographs and just loved collecting old cameras at jumble sales.
Whilst at University, I worked on a farm in the summer holidays and this allowed me to buy a 35mm SLR camera, which I used to take many a photograph.
My choice of dissertation back in 1989 for my degree was perfect for me, it combined my two interests computers and photography - it was all about computer interactive learning for Building Surveyors using a language called “hyper text mark up” - remember this was in the early days of the internet being released in the public domain. At the time I didn’t realise how cutting edge this was (my tutor at the time went on and produced a whole paper on the subject Computer Assisted Learning In Building Surveying Education), I often wonder?).
A couple of years after University I bought a darkroom kit and developed my own black and white photos and then had a vision - to have a website that sells property, so in about 1992 I registered the domain name The Property Store and due to various things happening in my life (like enjoying life in London) I didn’t really pursue it (Oh! hindsight is a wonderful thing).
Then I settled down (got married etc.) and my career took over, but as a hobby I started designing websites and bought a digital camera and in 1997 I I took a leap of faith and started a Company called Net Art Ltd with the idea of designing websites. I designed a few, but I noticed that there was a lot of software being produced that allowed people to design their own websites, so in 1999 I realised the way forward was to sell things over the internet. I came up with the idea of selling balloons over the internet, not uninflated ones, but a balloon in a box, one that is fully inflated. So in 1999 I registered www.ballooninabox.co.uk and became one of first to sell balloon in a box gifts online and eventually became one of the leading balloon delivery websites in the UK - selling 1000’s of balloons each year.
As the years went by, we had children and Samantha always said she wanted to return home to Northern Ireland. In 2006 we took the decision to move, but this meant giving up selling balloons. In late 2006 we moved to Northern Ireland and found a company in England who would deal with our orders, as we couldn’t ship the balloons from Northern Ireland because they were likely to burst when being flown over to the mainland.
I decided that I needed to do something else and looked at what I enjoy doing and my skills, after lots of thinking I decided that an Elevated Photography business would be ideal. It allows me to use all of the skills I have (surveying, photography and computer), so in 2007 a new business venture was started, a unique combination of surveying and photography.
Well that is near enough everything about me.