As you'll see from some of my images, I am a photographer currently living in the rural heart of Middle-England. I've always had cameras and an interest in making images, and grew up surrounded by pictures, with several members of my family being semi-pro photographers over the years. My main aim in taking photos of the things around me is to make people go 'wow', laugh or feel something...though I guess many photographers would say the same! I enjoy getting involved with candid and posed street portraiture, landscape work and shooting live bands.
I'm quite interested in the technical aspects of photography too - I had a few years of scientific training and think that a good technical knowledge helps you become more creative, I have been known to spend many happy hours experimenting in an effort to come up with something unusual and fun. I'm much more interested in the act of taking photographs than I am in spending my time with my head in a photo-editing program. Such programs are great, but I want to capture what I see (ok maybe with a little bit of tweaking!) rather than create composites, get heavy with special effects or endlessly mess about with layer masks (yawn, just from thinking about it) because a great image should speak for itself, without relying on clever tricks. It's not that I don't admire the work of the masters of digital manipulation, I just don't want to be one.
I'm happy to talk about photography with anyone and have a widening number of contacts within the photography world. I'm a keen blogger and Flickrphile, but am always struggling to fit my photography around the rest of my life, particularly the type of photography I do for fun.
I love being outdoors, whether it's running, cycle riding or taking long walks in the countryside, and am often to be seen toting around my camera whilst I'm out and about. I'm drawn to the sea and if I could live anywhere it would be near the beach, where I could take endless images whilst listening to the waves break on the shore. I've been a salesman, a primatologist , a labourer and many other crazy things in my life before finding myself on the current path. I'm a big fan of printing images rather than just being the curator of a bunch of electrons and am slowly filling my family's home with what I consider to be interesting work. They tolerate me admirably!
