Talks & lectures

I’ve been interested in photography since my dad gave me a box Brownie when I was a kid. For a long time I had a Pentax ME Super. I bought a Nikon D50 about five years ago, and got seriously into digital photography (I never got into film, sorry…). I joined Chesterfield Photographic Society in 2006 and am now President. I joined Clay Cross Photographic Society in 2007, and am currently webmaster. I’ve had a website and Flickr site since 2007. I gained an AS level in photography at Derby University in 2007-8. I joined the Royal Photographic Society in 2008 and gained my Licentiateship in February 2009.

If I have a style, it would be street/ documentary/ realist, I suppose. I don’t do natural history, and I don’t photoshop my images to death – what you see is more or less what you get. My influences include Eugene Atget, William Eggleston and Stephen Shore. When I’m out with the camera I respond to the world around me. I call it “another way of looking”.

I believe that an image is only complete if it has an audience. I love showing my images to people and talking about them. I quite like surprising people and making them think, so you won’t see any images of Dunstanburgh Castle, more likely old tyres floating in a pond. Neither do I care much for entering competitions, although it’s nice when I do well in them.

I have a library of around 200 A3 prints as well as over 2000 prepared digital images and several Pro Show Gold presentations. I’m prepared to travel within 50 miles or so of Chesterfield.


I have three talks.

What is contemporary photography? Well, according to the RPS contempoary group:

"If you think that photography is a medium for communication and self-expression; is more expressive when images are grouped so that they interact with one another; and should be free from constraints or rules; you will find the Contemporary Group stimulating and exciting"

Now you know as much as I do. Contemporary photography is as much about what it isn't as what it is: it's about the story behind the image; how images together mean more than images on their own; It isn't about making images that will win competitions, or that look pretty, or "pleasing", or that people want to hang on their walls.

No, I'm none the wiser either.

... but this talk will, through audio visual presentations, digital images, print sets and one or two other rather unusual presentations, help you to see what I mean. Or not, probably.

I live near Clay Cross, a mining town in North East Derbyshire. During 2010 I became involved with a regeneration scheme for a former pit site near the town centre: removing the spoil heap (which had been there for over a hundred years) and redeveloping the site for retail and housing. Over 15 months I visited the site every couple of weeks or so. My aim was to see how the development changed the town; both its landscape and its people.

This talk gives a little of the town's history, and then traces the story of the development in pictures, from the run-down back streets to the brash modern supermarket and shops that are there now. I use audio visual presentations, together with mounted prints and digital images.


This image, blown up to about 2m high, was used on two of the decorative hoardings round the development site.

I first picked up a camera at around the age of nine. I achieved my LRPS in February 2008. It was a long journey, and it's continuing. I'm now working on a panel for my RPS Associateship, which is, believe me, hard.

This talk is, I suppose, biographical, from the earliest images I have, through the Pentax ME Super years, to the very first 1 megapixel camera I bought ten years ago. It relates my first excursion into the world of DSLRs. I talk about joining Chesterfield Photographic Society; how I came to do an AS level in photography at Derby University; and I how I prepared for, and succeeded at, my "L" assessment.

Finally, I talk about the work I am continuing in preparation for my "A".


This image was part of my successful "L" panel.