….in the early 50’s.

My Dad worked at the S.H. Benson advertising agency in London. His job was to shoot photos for small newspaper ads, and process film and prints in their darkroom. Some 20 years later, when I was 16 Dad gave me his old Praktica 35mm camera and a Beseler enlarger. I started processing black and white film and prints in a home-made darkroom Dad helped me set up in the basement laundry.

I spent hours down in the basement darkroom and I’ll never forget the thrill of watching prints slowly come to life in the developer tray, under the eery red glow of the safelight.

I printed hundreds of photos, and this started my lifelong love affair with photography. Particularly Black and white.

In 1989 I started my first production company where we specialised in multi-image slide presentations for corporate clients. This involved shooting on Ektachrome film to create 35mm slides, which would then be programmed to a soundtrack and played using multiple slide projectors (usually between 3-16) on massive screens at product launches and conferences around the world. We switched to digital photography in early 2000, which saw the end of the multi-image projection format, but photography still played a major role in our productions, albeit it was now changing to video projection.