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Who am I?

I bought my first camera, an SLR, with my first grant cheque, I won’t say how long ago but the Olympus OM10 came out just afterwards. For the next few years my camera went everywhere with me and I collected loads and loads of photographs which were stored away. Early on I started developing my own Black and White photographs in the spare bedroom. By this time, I had stared work and had got married, my enlarger was a present from my wife. I enjoyed trying to play with the processing to improve the photographs quality and making sure I could include all detail. This just added to my collection of photographs. When I went on holiday I always used at least 10 rolls of film, both colour and reloaded Black and White.

As my work life as an electronics design engineer took over, my photography took a back seat only coming out for special events like family gatherings and holidays. Still I was only taking photographs just for me so my box of photographs in the loft just grew.

To reintroduce myself to being educated I took a night class in A level photography, this I really enjoyed as the focus was on the creative side rather than the technical side. I have always been stronger on the technical side; this is the engineer in me coming through. Unfortunately, at the end of the course work took me away on a regular basis so I never finished my final project. But it did whet my appetite for education, so I took and completed a 2 year Diploma in Management Studies at Staffordshire University then 2 years Visual Basic programming. At this time I also changed careers, re-training to become a secondary school teacher of technology.

This was the time of the computer my first computer was a Commodore 64 followed by a PC a few years later. As my study was small and the desk was now taken up with the computer I was doing less and less developing, and my dreams of my own dark room died. However I became interested in Computers and became the network manager at school and developed my skills with software as well as hardware, in fact I have become a bit of a stickler for doing things the “right way”. Part of my interest diversified into Web design, and I have produced a few websites mainly for work or friends. Throughout I have still got a passion for learning and advancing my skills.

But my interest in photography was just sitting there waiting for the digital era. By this time, I had changed careers and was now a teacher of Technology, ICT and Business. Through school I purchased a digital camera and started to use this (images stored on a floppy disk) and was introduced to Photoshop V5.5.
Through work and myself I have slowly progressed from a simple digital compact to my current Canon 5D MkII and Canon 5D MkIV and Adobe Creative Suite CC and my favourite Lightroom.

My first wedding was a present for a friend and it was one of the most nerve racking experiences I have had, on the morning of the wedding I suddenly realized that if I messed up not only would the couple not have any photographs but neither would my very close friends. However, it went well, and I learnt, a lot especially about planning. Since then I have provided wedding photographic services successfully to several clients. I have also found that I enjoy the relaxation you get from restoring and repairing old and/or damaged Photographs.

I am finally using my photography for myself, so this is my web site to show what I have taken and what I enjoy. I am still learning and enjoying adding to my knowledge and skills. As a consequence, I have also started adding video editing to this learning experience using Final Cut Pro and LumaFusion on my iPad, from this I have started formally adding to my YouTube channel as well as directly adding videos to this web site.

An extension from my photography interests is the creating and building of websites, Using raw HTML5 and CSS, Bootstrap and Wordpress.