Thanks for visiting, this is the usual ‘about me’ page, so who am I?
I’ve been taking photographs since pretending to be a photographer, around 1986, and sneaking into a stage production of Michael Jackson’s Thriller at St Mary’s Church in North Wales. I had an old Pentax camera and a faked “press pass” designed from my time doing work experience at the Rhyl Visitor.
I’ve been pretending to be a photographer ever since.
There’s photographers who have absolutely made their trade, Don McCullin, Tim Hetherington, Maria Larsson et. al., who arguably do not have to justify their trade, for the rest of us, it’s just taking nice pictures.
My time snapping pictures was fairly uninteresting, just photographing landscapes and streets, getting harassed in Bristol town centre doing long exposures on a Saturday night.
I don’t have a big break what I do have is opportunity, which you have to grasp as it comes or bluff your way into, such as pretending to be a press photographer at that stage play all those years ago.
The first opportunity was getting to photograph Paramore in concert. I’d never done concert photography before and I was merely filling in for a chap who usually took concert photos not being able to make that night. However, the bug soon got me and I returned to do Arcade Fire, Mark Ronson, Boyzone, Meat Loaf, My Chemical Romance, The Script, Jools Holland, Elbow etc.
The problem with this type of photography is that the pay is poor and the syndication of photographs is very limited.
I turned my attention to sports, an area of photography I’ve always been massively interested in. Unlike concerts, sports is very, very difficult to get into. Firstly, my love is rugby – apply for a photography pass to any of the national leagues 2-3 or above and people want to know who you’re photographing for and where you pictures are going to appear, the answer is generally no.
Luckily for me my local club Lichfield has a really cracking women’s team, with a significant number of the ladies being selected for the national team, this allowed me to get some cracking shots of the ladies defeating nearly all visitors to Cooke Fields and take photographs of the men’s team as well and go to the international competitions for the women’s 6 Nations, due to the local interest of Lichfield having so many players selected for the national team.
I did give a sports agency a go for a small time, but it’s so time consuming working full time and giving up your weekends to drive 70 miles each way for £150.
Sadly, this was all due to end under Nigel Melville’s changes to the women’s game.
To supplement my love of sports I got into photographing local cricket games, but with two small children at home it’s hard to dedicate 5+ hours to a game on a weekend.
And Ironman 70.5s!
Enough whinging, as you know this blog is about the things I’m into, photography, cycling and hiking and the small chance of passing on a decent bit of info to someone looking for a bit of kit information or photography stuff.
I really appreciate your visiting and, if I can, I’ll answer any questions you have about this site, me or the things I’m into.
Vision of a Life 