February 2020: I am a retired landscape ecologist who worked for a local planning authority for 25 years. Between 2004 and 2014 I would spend my holidays either in Crete (Sfakia) or quieter parts of Spain (Cordillera Cantabrica/Almeria) photographing plants and trying to capture images of the landscape in a simple moment of time (I am not a fan of HDR imagery, but am a follower of Ansel Adams Zone System). As I am totally inept at languages, my limited travelling was interesting at times! Caring for a friend from 2104 to 2017 restricted my travels to within the UK, but since then I have been travelling a little more, especially Ireland.

As far as botany goes - I am self-taught, but sharpened my skills undertaking survey work in Kent, particularly in teasing apart the mosaic of brackish marshland communities on the Isle of Sheppey and Chetney. I am still prone to making the most amateur errors and enjoy botany all the more for that.

My flickr photos fall into several groups: I invested much time in plant photography in the early 1980's (particularly from a time I lived in Germany) and with deterioration of the emulsions, I digitised as much as I could before my Nikon scanner failed. Some of my early flickr photos show a lack of expertise at use of the scanner and I am revisiting that early work. Then there are the photos of veteran trees: even putting aside their ecological relevance, their role in human history is not insignificant, but widely overlooked. There are the photos of Crete and Spain and elsewhere. In recent years I have become increasing increased in landscapes relating to prehistory, such as megalithic sites.

For editing I use Canon Photo Professional 4 and GIMP. Most of my pre-digital colour photos were taken on K25 or, latterly, K64. Emulsion film scanning is now carried out using Plustek OptikFilm hardware with Lasersoft Silverfast se software.

2023 Update: With mild arthiritis I have found changing lenses on my faithful Canons to be difficult so I have indulged in a Sony RX10 IV for travel work. My partner and I finally got hitched earlier this year and together we made the trip of a lifetime to Albania seeking out the resting place of my uncle who died 82 years earlier in a remote valley.