About

I am a North Shields-born, self-taught professional photographer living in the Morpeth area of Northumberland, and have a love of the ‘great outdoors’ coupled with an intimate knowledge of my home county. This has proved invaluable for seeking out the best locations, some well known and some not so well known, in addition to giving me a ‘feel’ for the best time of the day to photograph these places. My local knowledge also enables me, in the case of the better known locations, to find new and more unusual viewpoints from which to photograph such locations. I hope you’ll find my style is both individual, and indicative of my appreciation of Northumberland and its stunning landscape.

Since late 2009, I have been shooting digitally, using a Nikon D700 digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera, the results from which undoubtedly live up to its high specification. This camera has a 12.1 megapixel FX-format (full-frame) CMOS sensor, which means that the image sensor is the same size as a 35mm film frame. This gives excellent image quality with low noise levels, wide dynamic range, superb detail and smooth tonal graduation. I shoot NEF (Raw) file format images, in effect ‘digital negatives’, which I then process and convert into other image formats, such as Tiff or Jpeg, using Nikon’s Capture NX2 post-processing software, (not Photoshop!).

Before ‘going digital’, my images were created with a Nikon F100 35mm film single lens reflex camera, using Fujichrome Velvia professional transparency film; my transparencies being converted into digital images by using a dedicated film scanner – the ‘state of the art’ Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED.

In this age of digital editing/enhancement/manipulation, I still believe that what is most important, is to get things right ‘in-camera’. In other words, images are created in the camera, and ideally there should be minimal processing beyond the camera only to either enhance what is already there, or remove any eyesores or blemishes that detract from the image. Whilst to some this might seem to be too much a purist approach, I really want my work to be an honest representation of what I saw when taking the photograph. Whilst I use filtration on many of my photo shoots, their sole purpose is to enhance what is already there, rather than adding something that isn’t, (or taking away something that is). As I say, my overriding objective is always to capture a scene or subject as seen at the time I photographed it.

Memberships:-

Network Artists in Northumberland
Aurora Creative Arts
Bureau of Freelance Photographers