I have been a keen amateur photographer for half a century, and though my subject matter is largely centred around my other interests of natural history, astronomy, landscape, music, town twinning, family, now grandchildren - and I have to add flummoxing judges too, I have a very definite interest in photography as a hobby per se.

But I'm also an opportunist photographer (though there are some popular subjects that bore me stiff). My photostream is fairly representative, though I'm catching up on a long backlog, and recent submissions include several distinctive batches. I do largely what I call "pictorial record" - I rarely do "creative" unless specifically inspired (e.g. "Gemma" "Parallel Universes", and "Eye-Pod").

There are two attitudes to Photoshop: those that revel in it and occasionally over-use its facilities, and those who take the view that if you can tell that picture has been photoshopped it's been done badly. I tend to the latter, though I exempt thoughtful good creative work, which I do admire and respect, from this mild censure!

I started with Olympus OM series film SLRs in the mid 1960s but also used the half-frame Pen series, e.g. the Pen F SLR. I moved to Konica-Minolta when I went digital, as (1) Olympus were tardy at entering the digital area, and (2) KM had image stabilisation in their camera bodies, so I had a wider choice of cheaper lenses. I moved to Sony when they took over KM, with the A200 and A580 DSLRs, acquired a Canon 60Da for astronomy, and then a Panasonic FZ1000 point and shoot camera.

The Panasonic didn't quite filled the bill adequately for me to ditch the Sony DSLRs, but eventually in 2018 replaced all my Sony equipment with the the Sony RX10 MK 4, keeping my Panasonic as a reserve camera and for use in dangerous environments (like beaches) where I won't risk my RX10. I'm retaining the Canon astro-camera, along with a Chinese ZWO 185MC specialist astronomy camera. I'm sorting, refurbishing, and rationalising my astronomy kit and hope that in the near future I'll be again submitting some astrophotography to Flickr.

After countless decades in East Kent (Canterbury then Whitstable) Catherine and I moved to Sheffield in July 2023, mainly to be near our younger daughter Rachel.

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