The plan

I’m drawn to any landscape that man has put their mark on, whether it’s a coal mine in Wyoming, a grain silo in Montana or an old excavator in a chalk quarry in Sussex. As human beings we often mar our surroundings but occasionally we unwittingly create great beauty in the most mundane of objects and places.

I decided nearly forty years ago to only shoot colour.

I have devoted a huge amount of time to photographing coastal towns and especially the promenades and piers. I look for tat. I like tat. I like how many seaside resorts remain virtually unchanged. Many towns have revamped the seafront architecture and walkways but like a stage set the old traditional paraphernalia of rock shops and amusement arcades soon elbows itself back into place.

It’s still a formula that works and draws millions of visitors who need to get away and have a fix of this brightly lit, noisy artificial world. So I lie in wait and photograph the people who make a living there and the visitors. Plus the unique architecture and structures that adorn our promenades and piers.

I have adopted the rule (in the main) that any people are photographed candidly. In my view people should be part of the scene and the closer the  better. If I’m spotted and they react to the camera then it becomes a portrait in my book and the game is over.

The plan is do all the major coastal populated areas in the UK. This summer I went to Clacton, Southend and Jaywick, places I last photographed in the seventies. I also returned to favourite haunts like Brighton which I have been photographing for decades and have built up a substantial archive of images.

In the past my work in interactive media has taken me to cities around the world and I have amassed a huge volume of photographs of urban life.

This summer my son and I took a road trip after his wedding. Bizarre I know, but they had the honeymoon before the wedding which meant we could take off from Denver, Colorado where they live and explore other States. There is a selection of images from Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota that are the start of a project to photograph America in depth.

Print sales

I am setting up a site to offer print sales via Printspace’s CreativeHub in London. This will be available when my website is revised.

2019/20

In the past I have photographed in short bursts and stored the pictures away. Now is the time to pull this work together and start the work on two books. One on the coastal resorts of the UK and the other on London which is  still the best city in the world to photograph.