dgcPhoto by David George Clarke

These days it’s hard to be a photographer without having a good working knowledge of computers. For me, however, the appeal of the photographic cyberworld is not just fabulous photo-editing software, but being able to communicate through the internet with like-minded people worldwide. And all the time it gets easier, thanks to the thousands of dedicated code-writers out there. This site is the result of my recent excursion into WordPress, the learning curve for which was remarkably painless, especially once I found the very well-written Atahualpa theme.

Pinhole
For many photographers, the passion with the subject starts early in life. For me, it was on my tenth birthday when I was given a Kodak Twin 20: a pale blue pinhole camera with a built-in flash gun that used flash bulbs! The Kodak had its moments but fairly soon gave way to a second-hand Zeiss Icon Nettar bought in Dixons for four pounds. Secreted away somewhere is a stash of 6×6cm B&W negatives from that fold-out bellows wonder, together with large numbers of prints produced in a blacked-out kitchen using a home-made enlarger. How things have changed.

SLRs
My first SLR was a totally manual Practica, a very popular budget brand in the late 60s. It didn’t even have a light meter so when I finally upgraded a few years later to the brilliant Olympus OM-2n, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. The Olympus served well until it was stolen in Rome in 1994, by which time it called itself a ‘lympu’: the case, if not the camera, had suffered the ravages of time.

Since then it’s been Canon all the way, firstly with a couple of film bodies and then the move to digital. A G1, to try out the new-fangled technology, was followed by a D60, and since then there’s been no looking back. Not only do I maintain that digital is now vastly superior to film, I also love the freedom and flexibility that computer processing gives, especially since I moved over to a Mac. Most of my processing is now carried out using Adobe Lightroom, with occasional further tweaking in Photoshop.

Equipment
These days I use Canon 1DMkII and 40D bodies;  EF 28-70 f2.8L, EF 70-200 f4L IS, EF 300L f2.8 IS and EF-S 10-22 f3.5-4.5 lenses; a pair of 550EX flashes with a speedlite transmitter and a set of tubes and extenders.

Photos
As you will see from my portfolio, I like to cover a number of subjects, but the emphasis is definitely on nature and wildlife. My wife Gail and I are fortunate to have children who are scattered with their families around the globe, giving us a great excuse to travel quite widely, especially since we retired. We now divide our time among Italy (Tuscany), Thailand (Phuket), Hong Kong, Kenya and Dubai, all of which, in their very different ways, provide endless photographic opportunities.

I very much enjoy surfing around other photographers’ sites and being able to enjoy their work wherever I happen to be. I hope this site will also bring a few people some pleasure. Thanks for visiting and please come back soon; there’ll be new photos added regularly.