I
made my first artistic endeavour at the age of 18 –
I’m 44 now – by writing a book. It was never
published and having looked back on it recently, I can
see why! However, I’ll never forget the immense
feeling of pride and achievement when I finally wrote
‘The End’.
My family background is completely unartistic, I’m
afraid and thus a lot of the things I did were looked
on with complete bafflement by my parents. Over the years
I’ve dabbled in various things – a little
amateur dramatics, filmmaking, writing screenplays, directing
– but have always returned to photography and the
visual arts.
I am a passionate film fan, own an embarrassing number
of DVD’s and find that discussing movies with other
people gives you a ‘shorthand’ in discussing
visual styles and intentions. I have three children, aged
between eleven and sixteen, who look at me as if I’m
having a sly joke with them when I say I can remember
an age when video did not exist and the only way to see
films was at the cinema.
Computers are huge fun and offer immense potential to
artists from all media. Like anything else, though, they’re
just a tool, no more.
As a photographer, I shoot on 35mm film and use Photoshop
as my digital darkroom. I’m quite puritanical about
what should and shouldn’t be done with Photoshop.
I use it to crop and balance my slides, clean them up
and print them. I’m quite against the deletion and
addition of elements to photos that people seem to think
is what you must be doing when you use Photoshop.
