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).
The morning after the neighbours’ noisy all-night party to celebrate the end of exams, the smokers had been drinking outside despite the freezing December air, inured by the lager, not noticing in the dark the dilapidated surroundings and wonky table. The music has been closed down but still neither the pigeons nor the mice have eaten the remnants of the students’ pizza. Stamped-out fag-ends on the floor. More cans and glasses than chairs: this is the reality of a “Patio garden in Fulham”.
Compare and contrast After the party
Really good show of Christmas illuminations in Keswick making it what we might like to think of as a "typical" Christmas shopping scene; not only are the shop windows featuring Christmas displays, some of them animated, many of the shops and inns are featiring illuminated Christmas trees as well as the lights strung across the street and the Merry Christmas feature across the entrace to Market Square. The decorations continue in streets well beyond the square. Seems popular: today, market day in Keswick, the town was thronged with visitors, many shopping.
Luminous light on the mist of Lake Windermere, the water still in the freezing November calm..Dawn is late on the water as the sun rises over the high horizon of the surrounding fells.
Earls Court exhibition centre is now gone, the concrete stadium which proudly hosted spectaculars ranging from The Royal Tournament and the London Boat Show to the original live shows of Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “The Wall”. Dust is to dust but as yet there is no monument. Meanwhile, the new blocks are beginning to tower over Brompton Cemetery, the exhibition centre’s peaceful neighbour.
Earls Court as it was...
Day trip to Penrith and Keswick, sunshine and heavy showers weather with the heavy showers merging towards the end of the day to give the “Cumbrian Monsoon” effect. Photographically, the light varies between moments of clear brilliant sunshine and almost monochrome, no colour in either the rain-drenched slate roofs or the rain-laden clouds.
My photo shows the often grim ruins of Penrith castle basking for just a moment in full colour.
