This is where I try to describe myself in a few words. Help! I am so complex (read: confused!) that a few pages wouldn’t even begin to tell you about me. I am in my 60s, was born in Norway, but married an Englishman and have settled in England for the last 40+ years.

I have always been interested in photography; from as far back as I can remember. I cut my teeth on an old Kodak 66, back in the days before TTL focussing or metering. This taught me a lot, and I love fiddling with the setting on my camera. I did a course on photography when I was 15, and later joined a camera club where I would enter competitions and join in with the projects for a number of years.

Back in the 1990s I had a neck injury which meant I was no longer able to carry my camera equipment around with me. It broke my heart the day I had to sell my Canon EOS 5 and EOS 100 bodies, 20-35mm, 28-70mm 90mm macro, 70-210mm and 500mm lenses, the 430EZ flashgun, set of Cokin filters and Billingham bag. In exchange I bought a semi-decent zoom compact, but photography lost its shine for me that day.

Once digital photography arrived, it really renewed my interest in photography. I bought a nice little bridge camera which I was able to carry without too much trouble, I was able to adjust all the settings in the same way I could with my SLR, and I get half-decent results. I then progressed to a four-thirds camera and finally ended up back in the world of full-frame SLRs with a Canon EOS 5D III, EOS 5D IV, EOS 1DXII, Canon R5 and an EOS 1100D converted to infrared. Having wanted to get back to SLRs for some time, I was delighted when I discovered a shoulder harness which meant I was able to carry the camera without being crippled by the end of the day. Having said that, my LSH (Long Suffering Husband) does most of the carrying.

One of the many benefits of digital photography - I can take as many photos as I like without it costing me a penny more. I have always been very trigger happy, and managed to use up 61 rolls of slide film on a three-week trip once, at the cost of another trip! These days – after the initial outlay – it costs me nothing!

I shoot in RAW and use mostly Adobe CC 2023 Photoshop) to edit my photos, Topaz Labs for Noise control and sharpening, Photoscape for framing my pictures (I know many people don’t like frames, but I occasionally quite like a simple black like around them for variety.), Photomatix to play about with some HDR and tone mapping plus the Nik Collection and Topaz Studio for creative stuff, Portrait Pro for portraits and Starstax for astro photography.

I am passionate – no, change that to obsessive – about travel. All my money and time goes on something travel related, be it research, booking, the actual travel itself, reading about it on the net or in books, taking photographs, editing my photos on my return or just talking about it. I live, eat and breathe travel. I don’t have any preferred travel method or destination, although I do like to follow the paths less trodden. I have been lucky to visit well in excess of 100 countries (142 at latest count), but as 80 of them were prior to the digital age, I am painstakingly trying to scan in thousands of slides and prints. And I mean thousands!

I have no real preference regarding my photographic subject, I am quite happy to snap away at landscapes, animals, plants and flowers, macro and architecture, but my favourite is probably animals, followed by people, especially children.

In 2018 I was very honoured to be awarded the distinction LRPS from the Royal Photographic Society, and ARPS in 2021.

Currently acting as their chairman, I am an active member of Backwell Camera Club near Bristol.

That’s Grete in a nutshell, if you want to know more, feel free to drop me a line.