Right: Whitby Gothic

We returned to Whitby for the Halloween celebrations and met up with two young goths who had modelled for us in the spring. Mike, my partner in SteelOrchid Photography, just about out-did everyone with his ghoulish convict outfit...reminds me of images of the escaped convict in dramatisations of Charles Dickens' book, "David Copperfield". The three of them threw themsleves into acting out a tableau.

The day was bright and colourful, so I have enhanced the sky by adding a few extra clouds and removed most of the colour from the image, though I felt that it was important to leave the reds intact and a little contrasting colour of the greens in Samantha's corset. The colour deviations were performed in Lightroom and the sky added in PhotoShop.

Welcome to my pages and thank you for visiting.

I have included a number of galleries of photographs, including landscape, architecture, flowers, Saddleworth and creative pictures. Additions for Christmas 2010 include a section called "pot pourri" and some new gothic images. There is, hopefully, something there for everyone.

You will also find information about gaining photographic distinctions. In changing over to a new format, I have dispensed with quite a lot of old pages, but I have included some tutorial videos.

Before you leave the site, please visit my BLOG pages where I continue to post my most recent images.

Site reviewed and updated June 2011

SADDLEWORTH BOOK

Why the book?

It is said that everyone has one book in them. I hope I have more than one! My first book began as a project to make Christmas presents for the family - a collection of my photos that were not intended to be competition shots but would show something of the area I have come to love since I moved here in the early 1970s.

Working on the project meant getting out when the sun was low and trying to capture as much of the natural beauty of the area as I could. I decided it would not be just a picture book and set out to write a few short pages about the history and character of the area.

I was very pleased that my landscape idol, Joe Cornish offered to write a Foreword for the book, then, once the book was published and became of interest to a wider audience, it seemed an obvious decision to give any proceeds to charity and I chose our local cancer hospital, the Christie.

Thank you to everyone who has supported this project. Your contributions are very important. "Saddleworth, through my lens" can be previewed here.