Rowans Gallery
Brackley NN13 7AB
Latest Gallery News
Press Release
5th July 2009
Call for entries - Emerging Artists Exhibition
Profile: My love for creating inspirational images started in my teens taking pictures of trains at Cardiff Railway Station, and at the Cardiff Canton Service Depot. Having graduated, married and settled down in Northamptonshire, Formula One motor sport was the next subject to dominate my lens. Over the next ten years I moved from an enthusiastic spectator, to a team photographer working alongside the marketing and press departments and providing image material to boost their efforts.
It was through motor sport that I learned to look. All too often, photographers in the motorsport industry use the same views, and the same angles, from the same corners. I was different; I became tired of taking the same pictures lap after lap, and started to look at new angles, new corners, and new views, and started creating images that weren't mainstream. I wanted to capture the sense of the speed of the car, or urgency in the garage, or the meticulous work that takes place to ensure that everything is squeaky clean, just right, and in its place. With my images I wanted the viewer to be able to smell the exhaust fumes, the oil, the polish, and hear the engines and the wheel guns. Ultimately I took the pictures that I wanted to take, and constantly explored and pushed the boundaries with this type of subject. It was this approach that eventually caught the eye of a Formula One team, resulting in a professional relationship which lasted two years.
Team owners, and team budgets, come and go, and with it came a change in direction for me. Through an event arranged by a local camera club, I put myself through a landscape photography workshop and found a completely new subject with which to explore new interpretations. Through the landscape I am able to encapsulate every human emotion, and I strive hard to create images that evoke and emotional response. One professional photographer once described this to me as "emotion, not location", where creating an image that captures what it felt to be there is more important than the scene itself.
Now, whenever I am out in the landscape I am absorbing the scene and my reaction to it and trying to compress those feelings into one 35mm frame. Often it is an abstract or creative image that serves best, and all these images are created using techniques in the field in front of the scene and not in an armchair in front of a computer!
Contact information:
01327 341806