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).
People I saw in one hour’s wander around Preston Park, Brighton on Sunday afternoon. Individuals, pairs and couples, groups and teams.
Magnificent flowers and foliage in the garden of Muncaster Castle at the foot of Eskdale; the castle is still owned by the Pennington family, who have lived here since the early 1200’s. Henry IV (of England) was sheltered here by Sir John Pennington after the Battle of Towton (1461). Muncaster Castle gardens feature a fine collection of rhododendrons and other plants collected from the Sino-Himalayan region, including primulas, irises, cotoneasters, camelias, anemones and acers.
The climate at Muncaster is said to be similar to that at 3350 m. in the Sino-Himalayan region, ie temperate cloud forest.
Muncaster Castle also features a collection of Birds of Prey: eagles, owls etc; in normal times there are displays for the public. There’s also a delightful woodland walk with the forest floor strewn with native bluebells, not the invasive Spanish variety.
Muncaster’s collection seems at least to have inspired whoever laid out the garden I have inherited here at Keswick; my rhododendrons are also in fine flower.
More photos: Muncaster Castle Gardens, Eskdale - Lake District National Park
Skiddaw Man (931 m.) and Little Man, Skiddaw (865 m.)
Helvellyn (949 m.) and Lower Man Helvellyn (925 m.)
It’s rare but not unprecedented to see fresh snow in the Lake District in May - local memories recall snow falling in early June 1975.
How different the world now looks since that icy day in February that I ventured out to St. Thomas’ hospital opposite Westminster and the Houses of Parliament. Those first doses of the Covid-19 vaccination lightened our fear and started the release from lockdown.
Haematite extraction - Florence Mine, Egremont, Cumbria
The chilling sight of a decaying pit head. Haematite was mined here, not coal. It’s one thing to visit a mining museum, quite another to walk around an abandoned working with the machinery still in place and rusting around you in the spring sunshine. You think of and can almost hear the men who worked here from 1914 over several generations, building and operating this untidy structure that now whistles in the wind.
