Photography
My photography
I use photography to show something about where I’ve been or people whom I’ve met. As well as trying to see the beauty in a scene or situation, I’m also trying to convey ideas and feelings. My photography is about me and what I do, who I meet and where I go. All my photography tries to be contemporary and creative. I’m resistant to being fitted in to a taxonomy by categorisation such as “travel” or “conceptual” or “nature”. All image-making is political simply by the act of selection and hence exclusion but I am not campaigning for any particular point of view, except to try to see the positives and to live life to the full.
I use 645, 35mm and DX formats plus a handy little digital compact that shoots RAW files. I’ve experimented with non-lens photography - do ask!
I first worked in a monochrome/silver wet darkroom at age 7, helping my Father with scientific prints; I’ve used colour negative materials since age 21 and digital since 2005. I use Photoshop (Adobe) and Photopaint (Corel).
Rainwater flowing fast away from the fells in the River Greta at Keswick. The power of flowing water is impressive, just as much in smooth laminar flow as roaring rapids. The Greta has flooded many times causing much distress and damage. Many precautions and flood defences have been put in place, these were coping successfully at the time of my photos: the river was flowing freely at nearly two metres depth at Greta Bridge, pretty much as the river level forecast had indicated.
A double rainbow to the north of Keswick with Skiddaw (931 m.) and Little Man Skiddaw (865 m.) behind. It didn’t mean the rain was over though.
An English baker’s shop window stacked full with loaves, mixed from good flour, proved and baked on the spot in small batches by craft bakers.
Ravens is well-known in Brighton and attracts a dedicated clientele from the surrounding area, particularly as most of the supermarkets are closing their scratch bakeries and increasingly just warming up frozen product, which doesn’t have the same texture or taste as hot bread, fresh from the oven. Ravens’ hand-made Chelsea Buns are very popular, and elsewhere are now a rarity. the loaf we enjoyed is third from the left on the second shelf down on the left, a Malted Granary square loaf.
Sour dough bread is just that, ie sour; eaten fresh you can taste the vinegar, unlike English bread made with bakers’ yeast.
Still standing, doggedly resisting the waves but a ruin since the fire started by an arsonist in 2003. Brighton’s West Pier was opened in 1886, in its heyday there was a fine concert hall, the cast iron girders of its arched roof of which still give grace to the skeleton.
I walked its boards once in the late 1970s on a ride out from London with a mate, both on big bikes. We visited the Captain’s Cabin pub on the pier and the amusement arcades; us bikers didn’t do the stately helter-skelter nor the dodgems but I remember Spike had a go on the slot machines.
A bleak metaphor for these times.
Pairs of fruit. Does seeing them like this make you look at the differences?
Not a lockdown photoset: more a celebration of the fruit that is widely available in the supermarkets in Marseille.
