I am primarily landscape, still life and commercial photographer, although I also undertake lifestyle and portrait photography in addition to this. Combined with this I also provide photo restoration and retouching services as well as printing services from my office in East Sussex.
Never one to stay with just a single format, I work with everything from 35mm, full frame digital, wide format pinhole to 5×4 large format cameras.
My approach to taking photographs is straightforward. Firstly does the subject excite me and secondly what can I do to make the final image even better?
Sometimes taking and processing an image require precision, other times I apply my well known ‘Rule of Ish’. This is defined as variables calculated from several random points none of which are fixed.
Mark often jokes that I am an image maker. A former employer once said he would give me the corner of a photograph to see what I would make from it.
I still maintain an active photographic darkroom in addition to digital printing.
My interest in photography grew whilst I was at secondary school, where we had access to a black and white darkroom.
As I became more enthusiastic I persuaded my father to build me a darkroom in the loft at home.
When I left school I went to work for a photographic studio in Sevenoaks; it was here that I received my background training in commercial photography and also running the black and white darkrooms, handling both film processing and printing.
From here I moved on to work for a major professional photographic processing and printing laboratory. It was here that I learnt the art of colour printing and was printing from 35mm up to and including 10×8 negatives and transparencies. Within two years I transferred to the large exhibition and display printing department, here we would regularly produce prints 30ft long by 6ft high. After this I became the lead technician working on a Cymbolic Sciences Lightjet printer.
In my spare time I joined a local camera club since I was keen to spend time behind the camera as well as working in the darkroom. As a result of this I spent a fair amount of my time there sharing what I had learnt about processing and printing with others.
Whilst I was employed at the laboratory I became the first colour printer to gain an Associateship to the Royal Photographic Society in colour printing.
In the middle of all of this I also found myself teaching photography and printing on a part time basis.
Some 17 years after starting work at the laboratory I found myself looking for another job. Soon after this, I started work in the retail side of photography, spending 7 years working for a very well known and highly respected used camera and photographic retailer, from this time on I started increasing my digital retouching work.
Mark and I worked together on several occasions whilst at the camera store.
As a result of this Mark and I formed GCM Photographic.
How did Mark and I meet?
After a life changing event, a mutual friend suggested we might be interested in making contact with each other since we both had an interest in photography.
I spent many hours in the darkroom teaching Mark the finer points of processing and printing. We worked together on many assignments and often visited photographic trade shows.
Through time spent together and sharing our mutual interest in photography, our friendship grew.
We decided to create our blog site to enable us to posts a variety of items including reviews of photographic equipment and share our enthusiasm for everything photographic. Sometime later we set up a Facebook page to help direct people to our blog and it is here we also share some of the photographs we have taken along the way.
Mark
I am a landscape photographer based in Kent with a particular interest in capturing the small and intimate moments of nature. Although I have covered all the genres in my professional life, I have a passion for images of creation. This is a two-way process – I like the subject to ‘pull me in’ and then, in turn, I try to take a picture which expresses what I am seeing and feeling to others.
How did my interest in photography begin? Firstly, through my family. My grandfather used his artistry as a B+W photographer, plus my mum inherited his photographic interests, but in colour photography. I used to “borrow” my mum’s Praktica film camera. Don’t tell her that I still have it!
School was hard for me as a non-academic. I have dyslexia and Aspergers, both of which were poorly understood at that time. While this made an academic career very difficult, it pointed me in the direction of more creative pursuits. Another catalyst was a BBC TV series of programmes called ‘The Story of Painting’ by Sister Wendy Beckett, a nun and art historian. She made art and the history of art come alive for me, for which I am very grateful.
My first break came when I met Colin and he offered to teach me B+W 35mm film photography and darkroom skills. A while later a professional photographer also noticed me and my work. He asked me to join him in his photographic practice, giving me a wide range of experience which honed my technical expertise and knowledge. I have also worked in photographic retail sales, where I gained knowledge of photographic equipment. At one point I was even working alongside Colin.
As a result of my experiences I now, in addition to my ongoing photographic projects, collaborate with Colin, my colleague and friend, to create this website to share blogs which we hope you find interesting.