mhh100

I have been a photographer for more than 50 years. A great aunt made the mistake one summer holiday of giving me an old broken camera made of bakerlite with a crack covered by masking tape. The viewfinder was a fold away wire frame and not very accurate, nevertheless the first roll of film was taken in a few minutes and pictures duly obtained of the beach at Bognor Regis, Rocks, groynes and the sea - an expensive hobby had started. Later my parent's friends and some family would come back with images from romantic sounding places with transparencies taken on Kodak Retinettes and Ilford Sportsman cameras, and then my uncle bought a Leica M3. Inspired by the work of Alfred Eisenstaedt I started more seriously with single lens reflex cameras. Instead of going to Vietnam to learn photography in the field I studied at photographic college and then I worked for a news agency. Then a safe government job where photographic work was occasional (and also done for friends and family). Later I completed a masters in Documentary Photography at Newport (University of Wales) and changed my style considerably from photojournalism to a more considered approach, sometimes nearer to fine art. I have been fortunate over the years to have been tutored and influenced by some great photographers, particularly Thurston Hopkins early on and Paul Seawright; attended university seminars by challenging practitioners such as Alfredo Jaar and Martin Parr, and read and absorbed many of the greats in photography from Europe and some form the US, AA, Coburn, Atget, Doiesneau, Ernst Hass, Walker Evans, Margret B-W, Henri C-B, Tom Stoddart and those who are comparatively unknown throughout the world who blog and share their images. In 2018 I retired and we moved to Scotland, initially just over the border whilst we finalised our Manchester house then to the Murray Coast in North East Aberdeenshire. The light here is amazing and I have almost completed obtaining a 9x12 / 5x4 camera large format camera kit again - just a few items left to get now.