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).
Why not be a tourist in my own town instead of travelling for hours to somewhere that anyhow is lower on the tourist must-see lists? A bit of searching online produced a variety of lists of top ten sights of London. Here are mine as I visited my own capital city this fine first Monday in September.
This day out was a reminder that London has so many fantastic views. It does need a bit of planning plus knowledge of the tube and bus map to optimise the route and take best advantage of the direction of the sunlight. You still have to walk the miles though.
Red soil, green fields with rolling hills: it has to be Devon, glorious Devon.
“Red and green should never be seen” doesn’t apply in Devon, thinking of the design rule.
Views of the Blackdown Hills, Brendon Hills, Quantock Hills and the Vale of Taunton on a family walk out from Hockworthy on the Devon/Somerset border. Also the green roads, woodland, farms and quarries.
Big cat in the trees in Preston Park, Brighton exercising its tiger fantasies by trying to stalk the birds.
Never a credible threat to the birdlife but gets the sparrow gangs cheeping from other trees, safely out of range. The fat cat gave up and landed (heavily) on the ground, primal instincts satisfied and returning to being a consumer of organic salmon as a treasured household pet.
Not quite walking on a grave, but I was amazed to see on a pavement the once-famous name of the television company that gave us Ready Steady Go and many other pioneering ITV shows. Rediffusion also made their name as providers of television set rental and the first generation of cable television connections, which was the reason for this manhole cover in Brighton.
Sunset at high tide on Hammersmith Reach on the River Thames in West London. Two photos of the same sunset to compare and contrast the trees on the Surrey side with the steel and glass architecture on the Middlesex side, to use the Boat Race terminology.
