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. This, coupled with living for six months a year in Italy with beautiful countryside and renaissance towns on our doorstep, provides 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.