photographs and words

A brief history in time …

I first picked up my fathers Zenith camera in 1980 and promptly borrowed it for the next few yers, I loved trains and travelled all over the country taking pictures with this camera. Back in those days with manual focus and film, you had the agonising wait until the prints were ready to be picked up to look at what you had captured.

In 1984 I was lucky to have saved up enough to purchase a Minolta X300 SLR with a couple of lenses. With better equipment it allowed me to process and print black and white photos at school and managed to install my own darkroom at 15 years old.

I was fortunate being asked to photograph a few professional sporting events as a freelance and I was hooked. My images were included in the local newspaper, fame at last!

By 1985 I had enrolled at Huntingdonshire Regional College to study photography, a wonderful two year period in my life where history met technical ability, I wanted more.

In 1987 I joined a cruise liner as a ships photographer and part of a team of five Togs, I learned to process and print colour films along with taking over 1 million images of passengers eating and generally having a nice time.

In 1991 I started my own photographic business mainly processing and printing specialised colour and exhibition work. I also took a period when I worked for local newspapers as a freelance, covering news stories including Prime Ministers and Royalty.

With the advent of disposable cameras, many Togs were no longer required, so I took a break to try something different.

I rejoined photography in 2000 when a friend bought me a digital camera. Since then I have grown to learn and love photography again, mostly taking landscape images.