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Ok enough with the joking which you may or may not get depending on whether you work in the printing industry or not. I’ll hazard a guess that you probably don’t work for Rupert (Murdoch not the bear).

Personal Profile

(Written circa 2000 - As with everything in life, as you get older your thoughts get more nuanced but you also get a bit more jaded and ambivalent about life. I’ve decided not to edit/update the following. Thus the sentiments expressed even though they’re mine are of course from a different, younger me)

I am a photographer who is interested in travel, landscape and portrait photography though not exclusively so. I trained to be a doctor and studied at Guy's and St. Thomas's hospitals but due to illness I have not yet completed the course as I write this. (I am at present in the final year with two exams left, having already done nineteen - I counted them!)

I have a number of passions and thought that photography would be a good way to combine them. I quite enjoy travelling, both within the British Isles and also abroad. Having moved from place to place as a child, anywhere new always holds a fascination for me (and with that a strong desire to photograph!). Historic buildings/towns (of which there are an abundance in Britain) are particularly appealing, even more so when you realise how well preserved they are, especially in comparison to most other countries.

I've been interested in photography since a child and I have finally started to take it seriously (to the extent of photographing anything and everything that attracts my attention). Photography is quite an expensive hobby and I would like to fund it by selling some of my work. I really don't like to restrict myself in terms of what subjects I photograph, this is most often determined by what opportunities present themselves to me.

I am also quite keen on what is termed 'digital manipulation' of photographs. I prefer to see the digital medium however as merely an extension of traditional photographic techniques. With the latest software, it is possible to produce artwork which look like traditional oil paintings or watercolours or pastels etc. What I find quite exciting is being able to create new art from existing photographs that you have in stock. I've found that still lifes tend to be particularly suitable for this process.

Technique

I have been taking photographs since about the age of seven. I used the family Pentax K1000 manual SLR with f1.4 50mm, 24mm and 28-80mm lenses. The camera which had been in the family for eighteen years, dropped in a pool once and been around the world about 3 times, was stolen in August '99 in Hampstead. I am quite optimistic however that I shall see my old friend again. I'll be able to recognise it in a camera shop instantaneously, it having had a bit of wear and tear as an old gentleman does.

The techniques I use are standard photographic techniques i.e. take photos in the morning or early evening. Use a polarising filter (to cut out glare and to saturate the colours) during the rest of the day when the sun is at it's harshest. Use a tripod when you can. One: it minimises camera shake. Two: you can use shutter speeds below 1/60sec. (1/60sec is the minimum shutter speed you can use handheld)

Do your location scouting before you shoot. If you're only going somewhere once, look in the travel guide books and work out where the pictures were taken from etc.

The only filters you need are a light and medium grey graduated (to balance the exposure between the sky and foreground), a polariser and skylights (one per lens) to protect the lens. Having said that you may want warm-up filters, which add an yellow/orange glow, for landscapes and portraits. Speaking of portraits, go down to M&S and pick up a pair of tights (or stockings - I don't know) and cover the lens with it. This acts as a diffuser. I think photographers of old used this trick.

I use both slide and print film. Slides I put onto Kodak Photo-CD and prints I scan into the computer using a flatbed scanner.

The application which I use extensively is Adobe Photoshop. Any technique that you can do traditionally in the darkroom you can recreate in Photoshop. Another application that I use is MetaCreation's Painter. This is a state-of-the-art program which simulates natural media tools eg. pens, pencils, chalks, oils etc. With Painter you can achieve results that look identical to watercolours, oils etc. The only difference is that the final print has a photo like finish. Even then you can print onto canvas if so desired.

I use Painter to mainly enhance the photos I take rather than produce any original artwork from scratch. One of the wonders of digital art, as I like to call it, is that you can endlessly rework art and add to it eg. montages, juxtapositions and take it in new directions.

Direction

I arrived in Blighty aged seven having flown out of Burma (as it was then known) on a Thai Airways 747. I revisited Burma aged twelve and then again in '97 when it was then called Myanmar (which is the Burmese language word for Burma - 'Burma' being the colonial name) I have fleeting memories of it being an idyllic tropical paradise, less from my first seven years of childhood then from the first return visit when I was twelve. I remember being smothered by relatives and mum's friends.

I think that my photos tend to reflect the way I feel about Burma and the warm people I know there. All we really tend to hear about Myanmar in the west is the political struggles that the country is undergoing.

The upside to being a country closed off to the outside world is that it has remained unchanged. The westernisation process that fellow neighbouring countries are undergoing produces it's own growing pains. Whereas I wouldn't wish Myanmar and it's people to remain socio-economically isolated from the rest of the world, I wouldn't wish it the problems that are apparent with rapid development and so called modernisation that many of it's neighbours are experiencing. Unfortunately, I think that growing pains are the inevitable price of growing up socio-economically.

I try to remain politically dispassionate, at least as far as my photography is concerned! (Honest)

Influences

My photography is influenced, strangely enough, least of all by other photographers. I must make the distinction here between understanding other photographer's work and being influenced by them. I think that I would give up immediately if I found out that someone else was doing exactly the same thing as me or had previously already done so. Having clarified that point, I am a great admirer of all photographers regardless of the field. I am interested in strong photography full stop.

Henri Cartier-Bresson talks about the decisive moment ie. the exact moment when the shutter release should be pressed. Women photographers like women clothes designers tend to understand the female form better and hence capture female elegance and sensuality more readily. The classic photographers I particularly admire are Marc Ribauld (whom I wish to follow in the footsteps of ie. in proceeding to China), Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Dorothea Langue and the American Photographers of the Depression and Don McCullin etc. Of the modern photographers, I enjoy the works of Ellen von Unwerth, John Swannell, Helmut Newton, Bob Carlos Clarke, Mike Owen (he presently does fashion for the Sunday Times) etc.