BIOGRAPHY

I have been a keen photographer for over 50 years. For the first 30 years, I used an SLR and shot on colour transparency film and occasionally black and white negative film (doing my own developing and printing). I was a member of two camera clubs and happily shot a wide range of subjects. When we moved to Cumbria in the late 80s, I began to concentrate on landscape photography, eventually gaining my ARPS with a panel of landscape images. At this time I began teaching photography and continued to do so when we moved to the Isle of Skye in 1996. We set up a darkroom in our house on Skye, allowing me to get back into black and white printing and I was pleased to see my work published by Creative Monochrome over a period of several years. I've been shooting with a digital SLR for the last 20 years.

 

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Although I continue to make conventional landscape photographs, my focus in recent years has been on details in the landscape (both rural and urban). The things I try to incorporate into my images are simplicity, structure, contrast and mood/mystery.

 

Simplicity can be achieved in many ways: by choice of focal length, by choice of viewpoint, by choice of medium (monochrome rather than colour), by underexposure, by processing the image in a certain way. Modern cameras can record an incredible amount of detail, but an image is often improved by removing much of that detail.

 

Structure relates to how the individual elements in an image are arranged - in other words, the composition. The photographer needs to create order out of chaos. If an image shows no obvious composition, it suggests that the photographer hasn't put in the required amount of effort.

 

Contrast can take many forms: tone, colour, texture and size are some of the more obvious ones.

 

Mood and Mystery are largely interchangeable - a moody, atmospheric image will almost always have an air of mystery.

 

Abstract images are mysterious by definition .

  

Photographers whose colour work I have found particularly inspiring are:

 

Ernst Haas

 

Shinzo Maeda

 

William Neill

 

Freeman Patterson

 

Andre Gallant

 

David Ward

 

Joe Cornish

 

Mark Littlejohn

 

Lizzie Shepherd

 

Simon Baxter

 

Maarten Rots

  

Photographers whose monochrome work I have found particularly inspiring are:

 

Ansel Adams

 

Minor White

 

Brett Weston

 

Wynn Bullock

 

Paul Caponigro

 

John Sexton

 

Michael Kenna

 

Huibo Hou

 

Fan Ho

 

Hengki Koentjoro

 

Alan Schaller

 

Carl Chiarenza

 

Tom Sandberg

 

Adrian Vila