About Me

I am a freelance photographer based in Kent. My aim is to produce unique arresting and captivating images and it is to this end that I still maintain a traditional darkroom and much of my work is still taken using film rather than digital cameras. I believe that while it is perfectly possible to produce high quality images using digital cameras and printers it is only with the hands-on interactivity between the photographer and the photographic materials that truly unique images are produced. Once an image has been captured with a digital camera and adjusted with software such as photoshop there is no human interaction, it is a machine driven process and every print will be exactly the same. Contrast that with analogue photography where the photographer can alter the image at every stage of the process. From the choice of film and developer to printing papers and toners all aspects of the process are able to be influenced by the photographer and as a result every image that is produced is very slightly different, a unique result of craft and process.

Much of my work is inspired by a love of nature whether it be obvious in my landscape and nature images or more subtly in my portraits and pictorial works, the cycles of death decay and rebirth are a recurring theme. It is also one of the reasons I still work in the analogue field where the photographer has a tangible connection with the elements that they work with. The need to get down and dirty with the chemicals, be it mixing a new developer formula or even creating the photographic emulsion itself(such as when creating salt prints, Vandyke prints or using other such alternative processes) is, I feel, a fundamental part of the interaction between the subject, the photographer and the final print that goes into creating the finished artwork as a whole.

I also have an interest in historical photographic processes, be they silver based or alternative processes. With the rise of digital photography most of the companies that provided silver based photographic film, papers and chemicals have ceased to exist, taking with them some of the most beautiful photographic products. However the chemical formula that many of these companies used to produce their developers, toners etc. still exist and it is to these formula that I often turn. Recreating some of the formula that were used by the great photographers of the twentieth century allows me greater freedom in creating a print than would be available by using only the concoctions that are available of the shelf and enables me to bring a further level of uniqueness and subtlety to the prints I create.