About

While completing my GCSE Art, I studied Black & White photography. It gave me the photography bug, and I worked hard to buy my first SLR camera. I used to sneak into the school darkroom to process my film and make some prints.

I moved to the south east of England for university and have been living here ever since. My life changed in 2008 when I lost my first wife to cancer and then sold my first business in the space of a few months (the latter was planned!).

Photography became an outlet for the pain and emptiness I felt. But I came to realise that getting out into the landscape helped me to put things into perspective; being able to bring the memories back was just a bonus.

My Equipment

I have chosen to work predominantly with large format film because of its inherent limitations. It’s a format that requires discipline and strong intention when I am making images. The format’s limitations also help to guide me in shaping the final image – there are choices I make in the field which cannot be ‘fixed’ in post-production.

My camera is a Chamonix 045N-2 field camera. It is a modern interpretation of an age-old design, manufactured in Teak and stainless steel. It has no electronics, and the knobs on the back and side are for focusing. At 1.5kg, it is extremely lightweight and compact for a 4x5-inch camera.

I use a range of film stocks, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to get hold of film. Most of my images are on one of three film types; Fujifilm Velvia 100, Kodak Portra 160 and Kodak Ektar 100. There’s something magical about viewing film on the light table right after it’s come back from the lab.

I do still shoot digitally too, but in the interests of saving my back I rarely carry both camera systems. I do, however, use an Olympus E-PL2 as a viewfinder to aid me in my search for compositions. It’s handy in that the 14-42mm kit lens’s focal length guides map pretty closely to the five large format lenses I use: 90mm, 135mm, 180mm, 240mm and 300mm.