I’ve had cameras of one sort or the other for as long as I can remember, and was constantly taking snapshots. I first realized that I should probably take it a little more seriously when I went professionally to Antarctica, but really I never took advantage of that opportunity. I couldn’t really tell an aperture from an orange at that time. It wasn’t until considerably later, when I started to need raw material for illustration and multimedia work that I began to take things a little more seriously, and I was a very early adopter of digital photography with an Apple Quicktake 200. I mainly used this to create stitched panoramas for VR work, but eventually I started unwrapping these and creating still images. And this got me interested in the brand new Hasselblad XPan panoramic camera, which I bought as soon as I could afford it. From then onwards, it’s been photography all the way. Originally, and for quite a while, I wanted to be a “landscape photographer”, out in all weather capturing Ye Wilde Beautie of the Rugged Landscape with amazing colours and not a person or sign of human activity in sight. Eventually I realized that that is really a little bit boring. Or possibly beyond my capabilities. Either way, these days I’ve gravitated more or less to photographing everything except people. And cats.
In terms of actual output there’s not a huge amount to show for all this. Over the years I’ve produced a number of self-published, professionally printed calendars, which lost me money but were sometimes well received, and I’ve had a number of photographs printed in magazines, online and print. I’ve also licensed some photos to corporate customers, but always on request – I’ve never sought this out as it seems far too much like hard work and I’ve already got a day job, thanks. Finally, this year I produced my first self-designed book on Blurb. Nobody has bought it, which really doesn’t surprise me.