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).
Birk Beck and Greenholme in Cumbria, seen from the Birkbeck viaduct on the West Coast Main Line. Shap Fell in the distance. Lying snow here at 200 m. altitude. Birk Beck is a tributary of the River Lune.
Christmas tree recycling point, Preston Park, Brighton.
O Christmas Tree, green friend from the forest;
Recycle now to come again another year.
Adored for Advent and the Dozen Days of Christmas.
By Twelfth Night you must go,
Else bad luck comes to hearth and home.
Embracing the chilling mist that softens shapes and makes distance mysterious; perspective changes and diffusion deletes detail, People and animals keep going, seemingly regardless of reduced visibility. Photographers often seek to minimise mist, in this set I’m seeking to feature the fog.
A set of photos from a walk in the mist around Hollingbury hill fort, Brighton.
More photos: Embrace the mist: Hollingbury - South Downs National Park
Honister Hause (332 m.), showing the road down Honister Pass from the slate mine. The figures on the “gates” are formed of layers of flat slate. A reminder of the Walking Song in The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkein)
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
Keswick’s resident monster, King Kong, lives outside one of the climbing shops. Nobody takes much notice of him these days now his fur has all fallen away. But you never know when he may stir. His friends in Muncaster Castle have been active this past week, scaring visitors in the maze and on Fright Nights. You have been warned.
