My interest in photography started back in my childhood, when I would venture into my father’s dark room and investigate what it was all about. Occasionally I was allowed to take a photo on his treasured Pentax camera. 

 

The first camera I bought was a second-hand Vivitar, when I was about 18, I had caught the bug. The next step was in 1993, when I got the Canon EOS 1000f, a ‘modern’ 35mm SLR along with an EF 35-70mm & 70-200mm, happy days. My wife and I, with a 2-year-old and 6 month baby, headed off to Cyprus to work for a charity. The EOS 1000f became a valuable tool for documenting what was happening around us. Before leaving Cyprus, two years later, I sold my camera to a friend with my heart set on the Canon EOS 5 (a semi-pro camera) when I returned to the UK.

 

June 1995, we arrived in Greece, just a week after a major earthquake in the central region of Greek Macedonia. With camera in hand, a team of us went to the devastated area bringing much needed relief. Capturing the distraught faces on film was a challenge as many of the people thought that by taking their photo, we were capturing their soul. Over the next 12 years I had the privilege of helping with relief work in Greece, Albania & the Republic of Macedonia, my camera never far from my side.

 

As the new millennium began, I started digitising all my films, just as well as in our move back to the UK in 2007 the films were lost. I went fully digital in 2004 when I broke the bank and got an EOS 10D with a massive 6.3 megapixels. I also gradually started to get a couple of quality lenses, the EF 24-70 F/2.8 L and the EF 70-200 F/4 L. As our family grew up, life got more and more hectic, and the camera went into hibernation in its comfortable bag, the iPhone became the quick and easy tool for snapping whatever tickled my fancy.

 

With the arrival of Covid in 2020 and lock-down, the thrill of taking photographs was re-born. Being blessed with a big garden with lots of birds visiting, I invested in a second-hand Sigma 150-600 lens. A new passion was born, capturing beautiful images of nature and wildlife, with the desire that each photo I took would be better than what I had taken before.