My lifelong fascination with the art of capturing compelling photographic images started one spooky day on an English moor in 1982 when I was accompanying a friend of mine, an accomplished photographer, as he was attempting to capture the menacing mood of a foggy Yorkshire cemetery with his Hasselblad camera. Later that day, I witnessed the art & magic which occurs in the dark room where the film is developed, and the prints are skillfully created. In what most photographers would have seen as very challenging lighting conditions on the moor that day, the resultant black & white prints were stunning and still crystal clear in my memory.
I then obtained my first camera, a German made Rollei 35 with its five element Zeiss lens and off I went photographing everything in sight. After a year or so of making every technical mistake possible (over exposures, under exposures etc) I re-connected again with my photographer friend in England who took me under his wing to show me how to really take a serious photograph. This amazing mentor really helped me to understand the principals of composition, reading light and shadows, apertures, depth of field, camera angles, film speeds, bracketing and most importantly, anticipating the shot.
So, armed with this new knowledge, I purchased my first SLR camera, a basic Olympus 1 and again, off I went in search of subjects to shoot. This time, the images were sharper and better exposed. For the next 20 years, before the introduction of digital photography, I became very loyal to Olympus due to their rugged construction, sharp optics (Zuiko lenses) and their advanced technical features for the time such as multi spot metering and very fast shutter speeds which allowed me to experiment with a wide range of film speeds. My last film camera was the Olympus 4 Titanium, a truly brilliant camera.
Then came digital photography which I admittedly was a little skeptical of in the early days when the lower resolution automatic cameras didn’t seem to allow for much creative input. However, as technology advanced, the new generations of SLR digital cameras have allowed the photographer much more latitude in both the creation of & the editing of an image.
And regardless of the behind the scenes technology, at the end of the day, the same 3 core principals behind a powerful photographic image remain, namely, light, subject and composition.
The images displayed on the website have been organized into 5 themed galleries to allow the viewer a faster route to view the types of images that may interest them. The images on display are quite recent and are just a representation of an extensive body of work over 40 years. These galleries will be refreshed on a regular basis.