About Myself and My Hobby,
Let’s start at the beginning, the late 1950s, I had my first camera, bought for 7/6 in pre-decimalization 1957, which is 37.5p in decimal pence from Woolworths, with a roll of 127 film a fortune for me at the time, and this is it,
a Bakelite VP Twin (16 on 127 roll film), made in the Midlands by E Elliott Ltd, (Edwin Elliott) a well-established Bakelite molder in Birmingham, but Mum & Dad I guess helped a lot in the purchase of it and my first roll of film, in any event the first 16 photographs I took at the Natural History Museum with it had me hooked on photography, over the years I bought, as finances would allow, better cameras and lenses, I even had my own darkroom, (family bathroom), where I developed black & white images, and in later life Cibachromes from transparencies, but one thing was constant, the cost of film and developing it, especially in my schoolboy years, where pocket money was earned in a local shop as a Saturday boy.
I learnt very early on, not to point and shoot a roll of film in the hope that something would be worth keeping, it took too many hours of Saturday working to sustain that type of photography, compose, imagine the result, recompose and only then press that oh so expensive shutter button, a habit that has stayed with me for a lifetime, even in today’s digital age I very seldom take more than two or three photograph of a subject, of course that occasionally leads to a failure to have the image I wanted, but there it is, old habit die hard.
On to my offerings in the galleries here, I admit I have no training in photography what so ever, I am totally self-taught, in fact I only joined a photography club in May 2025, you are never to old to learn! I hope you will visit the galleries and enjoy looking at the photographs as much as I did taking them, and if you really like one or two perhaps a place on your wall or a gift for a freind.
