Born in Ilford, England, but I have grown up and worked in Essex for most of my life, with the exception of a stint at University in Chester where I discovered what hills and mountains looked like, as well as Welsh rain. I love photography, history, sport and travelling, which as hobbies, all fit together really well.
As long as I can remember I have always had a camera in my hand, normally my dads until he got fed up with me using up his film, he bought me a Pentax 110 Automatic with changeable lenses. Unfortunately the quality and telephoto distance was not great. As soon as I started work I got a proper SLR, an Olympus OM30 with two zooms giving me a range of 28-300mm. Wow, now I could start taking real sports pictures. Auto focus lenses soon took off with the new Canon EOS 650 and from then on, I was truly hooked and have since always used EOS's, with the exception of a Fuji bridge camera when digital SLR's cost silly money!
To me the camera has become a portal, which has enabled me to explore all the different aspects of photography such as nature, landscape, architecture, night-time, etc, as well as giving me the confidence to travel far and wide in search of the next image. My Image Chasers Blog at www.imagechasers.co.uk,reflects my photographic journey and is intended to show how, through my experiences, I have explored different images to develop my own photographic style. Often I visit photographic sites and am blown away by the images to the point where I wonder if I could produce anything as good? Hence the images on my blogs are not just my best work, but represent stages in my learning, which will hopefully encourage people to start their own photographic journey.
Belonging to Camera clubs helped foster my interest to expand my knowledge and not be afraid to experiment with my photography. It also taught me how to process and print my own images as well as appreciate the qualities of black & white compared to colour. Instead of processing I now use Photoshop CS6 to tweak my pictures. Join a club, it's great fun!
Now cameras are with us everywhere and with the invention of the memory card, taking pictures is cheap and fun. I have met so many people who are interested in photography and want to learn the basics to improve their pictures, but courses that are available are extremely expensive and only often for a few hours duration. My aim is to promote photography through Image Chasers and start...
