My first experience of photography was watching my dad using our bathroom as a temporary darkroom while he developed and printed some black-and-white films he had shot. Watching those pictures just “appear” on the paper in the white tray was magical to a 7-year-old. I was hooked and have had a love of photography ever since.
I got my first camera at 13, a Zenit E, fully manual with a built-in light meter. The following year I got a 2nd hand enlarger. With the money I earned from my Saturday job at the local market, I gradually acquired all the darkroom accessories I needed to develop and print my own films which were all Ilford FP 4 in those days.
So, it was obvious that when I left school a career in photography would follow. Or Not!
For various reasons, I couldn’t go to college and at 16 had to get a job – any job. So a career as a Chef started. Two years later I got a job for 3 times the salary as a computerised microfilm operator which was not the type of photography I had previously hoped for but at least I got to smell the Fixer every day (if you’re old enough you will know!).
That change started my career in managing documents and after a short-term move into Computer Programming, I ended up in a sales role before starting my own microfilm service company at the age of 28. That evolved into a scanning service before eventually providing online hosting and records management services.
As a youngster, I played Rugby and Football but at age 24 discovered Golf and all other sporting involvement ceased. I played regularly until 2015 when a knee injury resulted in a long lay-off and after a few months of utter boredom and too much work, I decided to get back into photography.
I bought a Nikon D810 and a couple of lenses, a series of books by Scott Kelby called The Digital Photography Book, read them and I was on my way. I did a lot of Bird photography plus sports, street and landscapes. After 18 months I realised that landscape was what I wanted to do. I enjoyed the travel and planning aspects as well as the technical challenge.
In 2018 I decided that my images weren’t that special and I needed to understand more about post-processing. I had tried Photoshop and found it so complicated, but un-deterred I signed up for a course with Blake Rudis and learned colour theory along with Photoshop.
In 2019 I started shooting architecture in London and developed a liking for the dark fine art style processing of Julia-Anna Gospodarou. I signed up for a workshop with her and she mentored me for a while.
I have done quite a lot of colour work but my true love is Black and White Photography. I am just drawn to Tones, Shapes and Textures and use colour only when it is integral to the image.
I get asked what I shoot with so I have created a gear page which you can find here if you’re interested.
Thank you very much for reading, it means the world to me.