It was sixty years ago today…..

Exactly 60 years ago today, the Beatles played here, the Grosvenor Ballrooms in liscard, Wirral. Between June 1960 and September 1961 they played here 14 times and apparently hated the place. There were constant fights with hundreds of teddy boys from different ends of the town, squaring up. The Beatles often had to run from …

Pinhole photography, back to basics.

I've had a chance to get out with my pinhole camera lately, basically a wooden box with no lens. I loaded it up with a roll of Ferrania P30, a beautiful rich and very fine grained black and white film from Italy. A Christmas present. I love shooting with my pinhole camera, an Ondu 135 …

Pinhole photography

In early December i took my ONDU pinhole camera, loaded with Fomapan 100 , out for a few hours. Typically it has taken me a month to develop and scan the negatives. I do this not because i am lazy but because i like to forget what i've photographed and each batch of processed film …

A New Year…A New World

As we turn the page and look forward to memories yet to be made we enter that strange phase between festivities and normality. That transition back to reality and for most, work. In a few days we will be back to the daily 9 to 5. Christmas and the New Year will be memories. Some …

Recent pictures

For one reason or another the following pictures were never posted here so as the curtain falls on the most dramatic of years i thought i would share them with you. Llandudno, North Wales at the end of July 2020. I was amused by the fact that the next speedboat ride isn't for a year. …

Change happens fast

This time last year i wrote a piece on here questioning the purpose of Christmas. As an observation of its time it stands honest. However in the climate of 2020 it sounds very dated. You see, change happens so very fast that we often can't see it. One minute we live in a selfish world …

I simply remember my favourite things……

Or favourite pictures in this case. December is always a time of reflection. An opportunity to glance back at the recent past and remember both good and bad. Every year i produce, for myself, a 40 page hardback book of my pictures of the year. I am in the process of designing this years book …

The place where boats go to die

On the Wirral banks of the River Dee looking out to the coastline of North Wales sits a collection of boats. Some sea worthy, others less so. For there on sodden marshland reside the bones and remains of once glorious small boats. Unloved and alone they now lie in strong mud, embraced by nothing but …

Oh Winter solitude i Embrace You.

Will this rain ever relent ? Will the grey damp days ever change to a stronger pallette. Those summer greens, blues and yellows seem so far away as to fade to their own grey. At least they do here in the Northern Hempisphere. Its even been too damp to stoke my photographic fires of motivation. …

The Mail Box Challenge

When i taught photography i used to take my clients to a postbox. I then challenged them to take about 10 different pictures of the box. Using close ups, distance shots, different angles and other techniques that i had shown them, some could do it, many couldn't. When i went on my stroll the other …