Fine Art Photography Prints

I inherited my passion for photography from my father who also had a great interest in taking photos to capture the moments as we grew up as children. My father loved taking photos although he had no concern with regard to the technical side of capturing photos and subsequently the essence of how to take photos correctly, ultimately became that passion for me.


I learnt very early of the literal meaning of the word photography. The term comes from The Greek word phos, photos - light and graphos - writing. The word photography means writing with light or painting with light. Painting and drawing came naturally to me in art classes at school and I saw photography as a natural extension of expressing my artistic talents. Whilst my father was happy investing in one of the first Polaroid cameras I was saving for my first decent 35mm film camera.


The first serious 35mm camera I owned was a classic Leica 35mm rangefinder, which I bought second hand in 1974. I could only afford it because the rangefinder part of the camera, which is used to set the focus on subjects at various distances was faulty and one had to calculate manually the distance from the camera to the subject and set the focus point on the lens accordingly, I learned how to calculate these distances by eye very quickly as film was very expensive and I couldn’t accept the frustration of out of focus shots. This was also a totally manual camera with no built in light meter, so again I learnt how to mentally calculate the shutter speed to be correct for the lens aperture setting that I might have picked for a given subject, taking into account the ambient light as well as the reflected light of the subject.


I also used a flashgun with this camera that again had to be manually input with the correct light output settings for distance, aperture, shutter speed and ambient light. I enjoyed a love affair with this camera over many years as the camera taught me more about photography and how to correctly capture light. I was living in Africa at this time and learned how to take photos in the harshest of sunlight as well as how to photograph people with very dark skin in deeply shaded areas.


I have continued my studying and enjoyment of photography from those early times then to the present day. We should never believe that we are unable to learn more.