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).
Crowds and solitude: the calm at the end of the day in Menton on the French Riviera.
Place Notre-Dame du Mont, Marseille
Cours Julien, Marseille
Six views of Marseille sixth arrondissement today.
Photo of Eastbourne Pier as an exercise in style. I’m seeking to emulate the postcards of the French company Yvon, I received many of these sent by my Father while he was working at marine biology research stations in the 1960s. Yvon postcards then were dramatic colour or high gloss black and white, the image quality was far above that which could be achieved by holiday snapping. Yvon’s postcard France featured landscapes and architecture which fuelled my enthusiasm as a junior traveller as well as a schoolboy photographer shooting, developing and printing my own photographs well before I was a teenager.
Difficult to pin down what is créole architecture taste in La Réunion but it’s easy to recognise: there’s the preference for a three-window pattern and a building design based on square, the choice of colours is distinctive. Residences of the petits-blancs (white settlers) have more restrained colours and more architectural detail.
The gardens of Hell-Bourg are similarly diverse. Almost all flowering plants are imports; the tree ferns are imports that have become indigenous. There’s a striking absence of garden versions of plants used for agriculture, so I didn’t notice any flowering ginger, coffee or sugar cane.
More photos: Architecture & gardens of Hell-Bourg, Cirque de Salazie, Île de la Réunion
First sun on Skiddaw
Candy floss pink dawn over Skiddaw (931 m.) was the start of a photographically rewarding day hiking the snow on Latrigg (368 m.). Encountering a family of Roe Deer was special, I’ve not seen them this far down before. I walked home to shelter from a chill wind and sleet shower, I resumed my day out, but on my mountain bike.
More photos: Hiking Latrigg in the snow - Lake District National Park
