ABOUT ME
I am based in Oxfordshire and specialise in fine art, commissioned and event photography with a particular focus on nature and live music. I have been a Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society since 2004 and have been featured several times in Amateur Photographer. In 2017, having spent many years as a semi-professional photographer, I took the decision to move away from my previous career in engineering and computing to concentrate on my photography full time.
When I was ten, I was given a Kodak Instamatic and my chosen subjects were aircraft, particularly the larger ones, which I think is the origin of my fondness for wide angles. It wasn’t until ten years later when, equipped with a better camera, I began to photograph nature and the natural environment, primarily in black and white. I really enjoyed the whole process: from choice of film; noticing subjects (especially dead trees and debris according to my friends); having an image in mind; then exposing and developing the negative through to the lengthy process of making a fine print in the darkroom. This became the basis for my creative approach, which follows that of Ansel Adams in terms of observation, visualisation and realisation. Yet, as Ansel observed, first you need to have the desire to photograph.
Although my origins are in film photography, in 1998 I began digital giclée printing with processing in Photoshop in order to obtain as much creative control in colour as I had previously enjoyed in black and white in the darkroom. For me, the realisation of a fine art print is an essential conclusion of the photographic process that I enjoy and would not pass on to others. Consequently, I print with a large format photo printer with twelve pigment-based inks and use archival materials such as acid-free cellulose and cotton rag papers to produce prints that faithfully reproduce detail, tone and colour and that I am confident will last a lifetime.