"my doggy consciousness" Right now I have two photographers inside me - Scooter Shooter, my alter ego who rides a scooter photographing life on the streets, and a more considered photographer who attempts to create photos more mindfully. Sometimes Scooter Shooter also remembers to be mindful, but I have to admit he'll often shoot first and... Continue Reading →
During 2017 I had two successful exhibitions and gave a talk as part of "Rewired", an event at the Royal Geographical Society in London. I helped raise several thousand pounds for neurological charities and was featured in newspapers, a magazine and local radio. I also got divorced and lost a lot of money to solicitors.... Continue Reading →
Street photography and printing and framing photographs for more exhibitions have been filling my days recently. I'm happy to say that the Movement for Hope exhibition in London was a great success. By a strange twist of fate the comedian Russell Brand came to the private view and seemed genuinely interested in my work - see... Continue Reading →
Its been a hectic time recently. This week I was at the House of Lords for the launch of a book that I contributed to. I've also been selecting and printing photos for a London exhibition in September and there are a couple of other exhibitions in the pipeline too. The writing was a personal reflection... Continue Reading →
From years back, when I was still wearing the soles of my shoes out on street photo walks, I've found the idea of anonymising people and merging them into the urban landscape intriguing. I have some sympathy with people who question whether it's right to take photos of people without asking first. As much as I think candid... Continue Reading →
If you contemplate the miracle we call sight, what we actually see is light reflecting off "stuff" that is received by the sensory organs of the eyes and processed by the brain for the mind to make sense of. So, in a way, our mind is a house of mirrors from which we create meaning, our "lives" and... Continue Reading →
It's funny how you can take a photograph and something that you might think of as being detrimental ends up adding an unexpected new dimension to the image. I took this photograph of a lovely lady feeding pigeons a month or so ago. I was in my mobility scooter at the time and by the time I'd got... Continue Reading →
It's been wet. It's been really wet, mild, windy, occasionally cold, but mostly just wet. We are not supposed to have a monsoon season in the UK, but this January was very like one - albeit cooler. All that dampness condenses on glass and makes for interesting opportunities for image making. A new glass bus stop has... Continue Reading →
It's that time of year when we reflect on the past and turn to face the future with a sense of newness. Hopefully, if you have a mindfulness meditation practice, that sense of newness will creep into every moment - after all isn't each moment absolutely and totally brand spanking new? At the turn of... Continue Reading →
I've not posted on here for a while: Life has been hectic and in some ways my personal world has been turned onto its head recently. This has all conspired to keep blogging and other creative endeavors to a minimum for a while. Thankfully friendship, my mindfulness practice and photography itself are helping see me... Continue Reading →
"There is a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in" Leonard Cohen, ANTHEM In August 2013 darkness threatened to seep through the cracks in my life. . I'd spent 10 days in hospital to find the cause of what, for over a year, doctors had told me was a bad back (I was... Continue Reading →
I saw this street art and thought "how cute" but then wondered how on earth they made the babies feet so perfect without putting it to some discomfort! Hopefully stencils were involved. Sometimes I feel a slight a dilemma about whether to process images to black and white or colour. I know many photo blogs... Continue Reading →
I've been taking "street" photographs from a mobility scooter recently using my little Ricoh GR compact. It's a funny thing, but what they say about people not noticing you if you are disabled and in a scooter or a wheelchair is quite frequently true and it makes for great candids! The way I look at it, if I... Continue Reading →
Moving photos
We are moving to a new house in a few days and I may not have an internet connection at first. I'll be taking a break from blog posts for a short while as we make the new place shipshape. Until then, here are a few photos from my archives on the theme of "Moving" - These were taken with a Canon 6D and a Samsung EX1 compact,... Continue Reading →
Home alone – (& mindfully creative)
As a person disabled by MND, I freely admit there are days when I'm just too tired, ill, stiff, painful (or all of the above) to get out of the house. So in glass half empty terms, my photographic opportunities on those "home-alone" days are limited. When it's hell just trying to get up the stairs, officially... Continue Reading →
Walking the talk – “Venice calling”
I often find myself browsing through the photos that I took in Venice. We were only there for a week and I have to say it was the most prolific week, in photographic terms, that I've ever had. Some stand out to me as personal favourites and there are a few images that I didn't... Continue Reading →
Non-conservative, non-angry, mindful protest
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha Just in case you hadn't noticed(!)...... there's been an election here in the UK. The Conservatives have a majority for the first time in 20 years and it seems they will be... Continue Reading →
Circus brothers – Romania 1992, pt.2
This is the second of my posts about the time I was invited to photograph members of the Romanian National Circus in 1992, as they relaxed in-between performances. Part one can be found here. . One of the photos I took during the time I spent in the circus encampment still ranks, for me, amongst... Continue Reading →
The extraordinary ordinary
Mindful Photos mindfulness reminder - My most recent posts have involved photographs taken a long way from home in locations that are guaranteed to stimulate the senses. For balance, I thought I'd show some examples of how, with mindfulness and a camera, it's possible to see the most ordinary moments of life as though they are... Continue Reading →
The privileged view – Romania 1992, pt.1
As promised, here are some prints from my Romania Contact sheets - We had stopped in Brașov, Romania, during our trip by train through eastern Europe in 1992. Not far from the flat where we stayed with a local family who'd befriended us at the station, were what I took to be a group of traditional Romany gypsies. It was... Continue Reading →