I'm an old and arthritic retired gas fitter living in Essex, a coumty in the UK. I bought my first primitive camera in the middle 1950s at age 15 to photograph places visited when out cycling . . A year later I was encouraged to buy my first proper camera by a workmate. It was a 35mm Zeiss Contina with a 50mm f3.5 fixed lens, and witj his help started to do my own developing and printing..

.About 1960 this camera got ruined when a row boat that some friends and me were messing about in, partially sank. .It was replaced under insurance, but I later bought my first SLR, a second hand Minolta SR-1-, then later an SRT 100,, then an SRT 101, and finally an X700 gradually acquiring a selection of lenses that fitted all of them before going digital in 2007

I don't like photographs that are "photoshopped" to the Nth degree. I like to make my pictures a replica of what I see . No exagerated colours or distorted perspectives.

I've found photography to be a hobby that encourages you get out and see things whenever possible, and subsequently a means of keeping those memories fresh in my rapidly failing brain...

I've loved every bit of it.