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).
Ghostly shapes of cranes constructing Rampion Wind Farm as viewed from Brighton. The pale silhouettes on the horizon of the Channel seem to represent visually the future, ie renewable energy production, compared to the stark shapes of the familiar, traditional, coal and gas burning power stations.
Rampion’s 116 turbines are located between 13 and 25 kilometres offshore. Total peak capacity is expected to be about 400 MW. As comparison, a coal fired power station with eight cooling towers produces more than five times this amount, 2116 MW, such as Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station in Nottinghamshire, which we visited as part of my degree course.
A group of photos exploring contrasting shapes, patterns and textures. The low angle sunlight highlights grain and textures in these objects that have subtle natural colour as part of the character of their surfaces. From today’s walk through Brighton Marina.
Underskiddaw’s annual bonfire and firework display is one of the largest of many erupting just after sunset in the Vale of Keswick. It draws an appreciative crowd of a couple of hundred people; the impressive bonfire and fireworks can be seen for miles around as well as by the locals, protected by a hawthorne hedge which has been trimmed recently. Tonight’s clear skies and full moon lighting the background skyline of the western fells, still peppered with flickering head-torch lights as the last hikers come down home from Grisedale Pike (791 m.)
Autumn in Annecy-le-Vieux. Leaves in the lake. And the ole time festival “Ancilevienne” celebrating the return of the animals from the alpages, the high pastures. Displays of old time farming, old tractors for the kids to play on and farriers showing skills with fire and iron. A quartet of Alphorns playing a lumbering tune in harmony, a rare musical treat amongst the accordions and singers of traditional Savoyard folk songs.
I love and hate Marseille in almost equal measure. I love the camaraderie, the architecture, the relatively open society but I hate the squalor and the mindless hooliganism.... and the high taxes. I feel no less safe than in Shepherds Bush, West London. There’s been a strike for more than a week by the rubbish collectors, the tourist places are still clean enough but the residential neighbourhoods are covered in rubbish and at night you can see rats. So in this one picture you have creative Marseille with imaginative street art and its music, also the shiny motorcycles and the hundred year-old plane trees under the famous blue sky. But also the bins overflowing and the old paint on the dirty buildings.
Note the shop behind the bin, it’s selling “Home Hygiene”. Poubelles la Vie is a pun on Plus Belle la Vie, the primetime soap on French TV3 about life in Marseille; poubelles = rubbish.
Faces blurred - this is France
See also « Plus Belle la Vie »
