About the Photographer

I've been using cameras since I was very young, firstly with my father's slr which dated from around the 1940's and had a waste level viewfinder. It was a great training, using a manual light-meter and ground glass focussing screen. I sold that in my late teens and bought my first Minolta X700 which I then used for nearly 15 years until it leaked so much light that I didn't need to open the shutter to get an exposure. Following that, I started to invest heavily in gear, and bought my favourite ever camera, the Contax G2. This was a day to day workhorse for several years, alongside a Canon EOS3n. Finally, recognising the world may not be flat after all, I dived headlong into the digital revolution and the Canon EOS system, with the current workhorse being an EOS5D mark II.

Photography has never been a career, rather, it's something I've done professionally between assignments in my 'real job' (i.e., the one that pays for all the gear). At several points in my life, when the professional work was in short supply, I have variously found myself working professionally as a photographer for a national newspaper in London, working in a professional photo lab (not one of those mechanical labs!), and have had many assignments that have taken me around the world photographing remote places and the people that inhabit them. Pretty lucky when all's said and done..  hey ho..

My preference when using the Canon is primarily to work with fixed-focus lenses, and I carry both the f1.2 85L and the f1.4 35L lenses with me, along with the 70-200 which is pretty much the working lens when I'm traveling. I've just ordered a new Leica M9 from BHPhotovideo and as soon as it arrives and I've started shooting with it I'll be sure to post my thoughts in the blog - for now I'm pretty excited to be returning to rangefinder photography, and am looking forward to putting a bit more thought into the process. I have the rather worrying feeling that through the incredible abilities of the current crop of digital SLR's, I may to a large extent have been removed from the photographic process altogether.. Where it's all going is even more worrying - reading Erwin Puts blog certainly reaffirms my own thoughts that the focus of the 'big brands' seems to be on increasing complexity and ranges of features.

Perhaps there is some truth in the proposition that you could give a bunch of monkeys one of the latest fully automated SLR's and they may well yield the same hit rate as the average human user of the same gear.. I for one have almost never used the HD video feature on my 5DII, and aside from having a pretty complicated set of custom settings for the camera, I'm blissfully unaware of many of the features that according to the many web reviews, originally set it apart from the competition (I don't recall using an ISO of more than 800 more than a couple of times, and I'm still not sure why anyone would - is it really the case that suddenly people have the need to shoot in the dark?). In short, it's a full frame SLR with great lens availability and which produces smooth digital files - as far as I'm concerned that's all that matters. Had there been a full frame Leica available (or more ideally a full frame digital Contax G) when I bought it a few years ago, then I would likely have gone that way.. hey ho..

The film vs digital issue is an even bigger one - the images which I tend to be especially drawn to (whether my own, or by far more talented photographers) still tend to be analogue and as it happens, usually Tri-X or Provia which were my own chosen AgX media. In the former case, the grain was a huge part of the character of the shot as well as it's formidable latitude (it forgave my lack of technical skill many times. In the case of the latter, the extraordinary punchiness provided incredible travel portraits (albeit of course, with far from lifelike colours - but that's another issue again!).. Again, I'd reflect on Erwin's own thoughts regarding the general uniformity which digital has introduced and which the punters nowadays seem to want. Film choice used to be entirely personal, and was very much a part of the defining characteristics of each photographer's art. Nowadays, there is very little to tell between the colour and digital noise rendition of most of the big brand digital camera's. The obsessive pixel peeping, forums on noise, colour rendition, mtf charts and the like all only go to show that among many, the primary issue with a camera is the technology - how often I wonder do these people get out and actually take an image. In the old days we used to obsess over composition, contrast (using the available light) and subject matter - how times have changed. hey ho..

For the past couple of years, due to some pretty intense requirements on my latest work assignment, I've only managed to dedicate a few days a year to hard-core travel and documentary photography, the rest of the time I'm just shooting around the Emirates and occasionally down in Oman. I hope to remedy this in the next year or so when I plan a bit more flexibility around my current work schedule. Thus, right now, additions to the website are a bit few and far between. However, early in the new year I'll be planning a few trips further afield, including Syria and Jordan.

 

About the Images
The Bullring shots: taken in Oman between 2006 and 2007, at various locations between Barka and Sohar. Locally known as Bull Butting, the sport takes place every Friday in Oman, Ras Al Khaimah and in Fujairah. It does not harm the animals, and largely serves to enhance the bull's value. The competitions between each bull take place over a period of some 30 seconds to 2 minutes, and a judge determines whether one of the animals has managed to push the other a designated distance. A few years ago there were rarely foreigners in the audience, and while today you are more likely to come across tourists at the events, I'm still generally quite surprised at how few people (even those who've been out in the Middle East longer than my decade or so) are actually aware that this sort of thing takes place. If you do manage to get to a Bull Butting event, be sure to keep your' wits about you. There are no safety barriers, and as you may have noticed in the images, the bulls are apt to take the occasional pot shot at the audience, or the idiot photographer behind the 200mm lens - blissfully unaware that the beast is pretty much upon him. Thanks to my rescuers who preserved both my equipment and ensured I retain most of my limbs at the many events I attended. With regard to the technicalities, the black and white images were typically taken with the Contax, using Tri-X 400. The colour images were either Provia E6 or digital capture using he EOS 20d or more recently the 5DII.

The Oman Market shots: taken at a number of locations, between 2005 and 2008, including the famous Nizwah Markets, Barka, Muttrah Fish Market and Seeb. These shots aim to characterise the daily life of people, who still depend on the traditional markets. The existence is both harsh, and yet so very full of vitality and colour.

The Oman portraits: taken between 2004 and 2009, throughout Oman including Salalah to the south to Sohar in the North. The portraits aim to show the diversity of this beautiful country, and the incredible hospitality and generosity of the Omani people, always having the patience to pose for yet another photograph and always offering a cup of tea into the bargain.

Cambodia: remains to this day one of the most emotionally charged and yet rewarding trips I have ever undertaken. People are often obsessed with recent war zones, having worked in a couple I don't share this obsession, but do recognise it in many tourists I see around Vietnam, Cambodia, and similar war-torn locations. What I always find incredible is the capacity for people to put such an appalling moment in history behind them, and to move on. Further to the north, in Ratanakiri, the Jarai people were incredibly welcoming, and despite an initial suspicion of the camera (being animist) I soon had them taking shots of each other with the digital camera. Tonle Sap lake is an unmissable experience, and taking the local fast ferry from Siem Riep to Pnom Penh has the nerves on edge as the captain negotiates the continually changing sand banks along the Mekong, while the lake and villages along the way provide a visual feast.

Street Shooting: is perhaps where I feel most comfortable with a camera in my hand. These images cover a period from around 1995 to 2010, with the common thread being that these are all grab images, usually taken with a rangefinder or on occasion with the SLR. I'm looking forward to getting back to a more traditional approach to grab shots using the Leica, perhaps rediscovering some technique along the way.

Portraits: are a diverse collection of images, all being environmental portraits of people and their work. The images of the pebble collectors in Bali were taken on a recent trip back in 2009, where the families of the fishermen supplement the village income through collecting carefully selected pebbles which may be sold to be used decoratively. The boy and horse shot taken in Bahrain is part of a series of shots taken of horse trainers in Bahrain 'swimming' their horses in the Tubli Bay area. The dhow fisherman shot is part of a series of shots taken around the Seef area of Bahrain. The young boy in the trees was taken while travelling through the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

The Landscapes: are a small selection of images taken over the past 20 years or so. Living in the Middle East for the past decade has meant that deserts have provided much of the natural canvas for my image making. However, when I'm travelling, I do like to take some time out to simply enjoy a bit of nature and an occasion am lucky enough to be there when the light and natural forms coincide to provide a backdrop for some camera work.