Photographer & Technologist: Shropshire and Andalucia

I’m a photographer and technologist based in Shropshire & Andalucia. 6 am is the best time of the day. It’s too early for Shrewsbury to swing into action, although in Spain everyone is getting ready for work while the temperatures are cool. The house is quiet and the traffic outside is muted. It’s a time when I can think.

I’m a photographer and technologist based in Shropshire & Andalucia. 6 am is the best time of the day. It’s too early for Shrewsbury to swing into action, although in Spain everyone is getting ready for work while the temperatures are cool. The house is quiet and the traffic outside is muted. It’s a time when I can think.

What brought you here?

I’m guessing you’re interested in photography. In which case you’ve surely come to the right place if you can put up with a little music and introspection along the way.

By profession, I’m a full-time commercial photographer and technologist. I have a degree in Photography from the London College of Printing and I misspent my youth in the music industry, as people do. Always loved music, early memories of playing my uncle’s Charlie Kunz records on a wind-up gramophone preceding my discovery of the Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, the Small Faces and the Who. After a stint as a DJ and promoter at Dingwalls in Camden Town I branched out on my own, playing at the Electric Ballroom on Saturday nights, Bongo Fury in Leicester Square and Fire at the Rock Garden.

It took 25 years for the music bug to lose its grip. I decided to learn computing. As people do. To my surprise, I turned out to be quite good at it and spent a year or so in the new media sector before joining IBM as a consultant. IBM gave me a chance to travel widely and I adapted to the relentless corporate drudge by taking photographs. After a decade of this well paid but utterly dysfunctional life, my marriage was in ruins and I decided to leave London and go back to photography full time. 

Five years later I started Helter Skelter Media with my partner, documentary maker Vivianne Howard, the company trades as Helter Skelter Studios and Helter Skelter Design. Commercial Photography and Video on the one side, Web sites and digital marketing on the other.

Ten years further down the line, I decided to take my own projects more seriously.

On to the photography then. 

I’ll be writing about the photography I do that is not commissioned by clients. The stuff I do for myself. There will be a lot of black and white photography, some 360° photography, infrared, and abstract colour photography. I’ll be writing about cameras, lenses, equipment of all stripes. I’ll also be writing about photographers, some that you’ll have heard of and others that I discover along the way. I’ll be writing for me,  but if you like it, you’re very welcome.

I’ll be writing about the photography workshops that I plan to deliver and my other life in Spain, a place in Granada where I feel a sense of home quite unlike anywhere else I’ve travelled. I’ll be writing about all sorts of stuff, kit reviews, opinion pieces, but it all comes back to photography.