Born and raised in West Yorkshire, England, or the West Riding of Yorkshire as it was then I started a minor involvement with photography aged about 14, when after pestering my parents for a camera, I went along with my Uncle Edward to Brays of Holmfirth. There we bought an Agfa Isola, my first real camera - an inexpensive roll film type that made for hours of messing about using black and white film, and the local chemists shop for developing and printing.
Quite a few years later, the next significant run-in with photography came during a graphic design
course at Huddersfield Technical College. The art department had a much under-used, yet well equipped
black and white dark room, where I learned much about the work of other photographers, and the real
mechanics of picture taking and making, via abused Praktica cameras fed with Kodak Tri-X film developed
in D-76 - a standard sequence of events during the 1970's. It seemed to me then (as it does now) that
presented with a reasonably sophisticated camera, people seem to react in essentially 2 different ways - it's either a challenging, liberating experience or it's unproductive, confusing and tedious! I fortunately
found it, and the black and white dark room a liberating experience, and have done ever since, diving from
then on in to picture making with all sorts of cameras.
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Of course along the way I've had to be realistic, so I've photographed many weddings,
babies, and pieces of industrial machinery, but mainly found 'paying' work in the
photography
of architecture and art work for major property developers, museums,
galleries as well as
practising artists. Running parallel to the disciplined (yet enjoyable)
commercial photography
has been what I refer to as my 'own work', driven mainly by the
landscape, and more
especially the landscape of northern England .
From being quite young I have always felt a
strong sense of place stemming from the
unique landscape areas around the Pennines .
From learning to use the clunky old
Prakticas at Technical College I more or less decided
that photographically I would make
the subject my own. Naturally as a practising
photographer, I'm inclined to photograph
other subjects, but I always return to the landscape,
and am well aware that I am not
finished with it yet.
