I’m a keen photographer living in Leicestershire, UK. You could say that photography is in my blood. Both my dad and my aunt (his sister) were active photographers from the 1950s onward, setting up their own darkroom, and my dad worked in the photography trade for most of his working life. I grew up with cameras surrounding me.
The first-ever camera I could call my own was a small, fully automatic, 110 film cartridge camera. It was so “cheap and cheerful” that it was very nearly disposable. It suffered from huge parallax issues, but I still derived immense pleasure from taking my photos and sending my films off to be processed.
Eventually, seeing my keen interest, my dad let me have his old Rolleiflex SL35 system – a huge upgrade. I used this for years, even though the shutter was very much on its way out.
When I was in a financial position to do so, I bought a Canon EOS 500N film SLR soon after it was released. I used this until I started toying with early digital cameras in the early 2000s. After trying a couple of compact cameras, I eventually took the plunge for a Canon EOS 20D in 2005.
I won’t go on about all the cameras I’ve owned and used since then. I’ll just say that I still have a Canon “kit” and I also have a Fujifilm “kit” – with various lenses and bodies. I also have a few vintage cameras, the pride of which is a 1945 Rolleiflex TLR. It’s battered and battle-scarred, but it works.
I can never bring myself to sell a camera; they all feel like friends, so I have way too many…
I particularly enjoy taking photographs of live music. Small local venues, dodgy lighting rigs – but lots of atmosphere. Those stages where they have just a few spotlights illuminating the band are my favourite; the spotlights create stark, high-contrast, dramatic lighting, which I lap up.
But I also enjoy shooting old, dilapidated buildings, landscapes, and nature in general. For many years, I ran a website dedicated to my interest in prehistoric sites, using my photography to illustrate each ancient site I visited and writing a brief guide to describe it, along with instructions on how to find it. I think it was around this time in my life (mid-1990s) that I began to see my photography not just as a way to record things, but also as a means to create an artistic statement. It is really my only artistic skill. All the rest of my family could draw, paint, create music – I was just awful at those things, so the outlet for my expression was my photography.
I’m under no illusion of ever making my living from my photography, but I have had a few published in the form of magazine covers, also to illustrate magazine articles, in books and a couple of album covers.