Biography

I started photography in the mid 1960s with an interest in trains, having limited success borrowing my father’s Kodak 620 folding camera, using Army Surplus film and scrounging developing and printing where possible from friends who did their own.  I’ve done my best to do it ‘on the cheap’ ever since!

The ‘then’ girlfriend bought me a Kodak Instamatic 100 in the late 60s, which I used for mainly slides, then progressed to my first SLR, a Kowa SET with fixed lens in the early 70s.  With this, and the subsequent Olympus OM20, I moved more on to Black and White and by the mid 70s was processing my own in a makeshift darkroom.

In the late 70s I joined Pontefract Camera Club!

The OM20, and the B and W  darkroom work kept me happy for twenty plus years, never moving on to colour in the darkroom.  Then came the computer and a pirate copy of Photoshop 5, and suddenly colour was available, initially by scanning slides. B and W could also be done, and gone was the darkroom.

Then the OM20 failed, and a decision had to be made.  And so entered the Nikon D70 (I didn’t somehow like the Olympus digitals of the time).

Equipment

Current equipment is a Nikon D200, with either the Nikon 18-70 lens which came with the D70 (superb quality), or a Sigma 18-200  OS (more versatile). I have a tripod and hardly ever use it,  and I’m now onto Photoshop CS3 on the computer.

Inspirations

I’ve never really studied many of the ‘well known’ photographers, past or present, so can’t claim much influence there. I do get inspiration sometimes from seeing the work of other club members, and other clubs, in YPU, PAGB etc..
I still have ‘trains’ as a favourite subject, but basically will shoot anything and everything if I think I can ‘make a picture’ out of it.

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