I’m a freelance web developer and photographer based in Essex. I’m
also a serial BarCamper, and regularly travel to attend varous geek events. You’ll find me haunting other bits of the web too:
Randomness
Ten random things you probably don’t know about me (and probably don’t want to!):
- I LOVE purple. Can you tell?
- I started learning to play Bass Guitar in 2002. I’d wanted to play bass since I was a teenager. Then one day I woke up and thought, “why don’t I just go and buy one, rather than dithering all this time?” Not sure the neighbours were pleased. But my amp doesn’t go up to 11! I started out with a cheap 4-string model, but now have a custom 5-string Iceni Funkmeister, with a purple paint job. I guess I’m a late starter when it comes to rebellion and rock-goddess pretentions, ha ha.
- I love rugby. I love photography. So putting the two together was inevitable. I’ve been taking my camera to games since February 2004, and have now photographed over 100 matches, and attended various rugby-related events.
- I’m an PAGB-accredited judge, and regularly visit photographic clubs in East Anglia and North London, to judge their competitions. For some reason, they like my opinions and keep inviting me back.
- I speak three languages (four, if you count cobblers). I’m happy to blether along in French, and have passable German (I was mistaken for a Dutch tourist when chatting to some German ladies in Barcelona one summer). The oddest nationality I’ve been mistaken for was when I was offered a menu in Swedish in a pizza restaurant.
- Danny Grewcock (England and Bath Lock) once signed my rugby shirt. I was still wearing it at the time.
- I won a Gold Medal in the 2004 Kranj Miniature Print Competition (an international salon held bi-annually in Slovenia). It was with my image from the British Museum, entitled And Let Thy Feet.
- I went on a canal boat holiday in 2005, along the Canal du Midi, in the south of France. I hired a boat with six friends, and we cruised about in the sunshine for a week. On the way back to Carcassonne, we accidentally kidnapped a dog. If you buy me a drink, I might tell you why!
- I became an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society in 1999, having previously gained a Licentiateship in 1995. My portfolio for a Fellowship is currently on a back-burner, but I will go back to it in due course.
- I had my first photograph published when I was 8 years old. It was taken when I was seven, at Darnholm, on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. I used my father’s manual camera (he had set the exposure for me) and managed to pan the shot when the steam train came round a curve under the bridge. Dad regularly submits pictures for publication in preserved railway magazines, and so he sent it along with some of his, and it was published in Modern Railways. So I’m a bit of a closet steam-head as well as nethead.
