I ❤️ COFFEE
All images are mine and are copyrighted
My photographic journey started in the early 80s when I was just 16 years old, I managed to save my birthday money and pocket money to purchase my first camera, a second hand 35mm Olympus OM2n SLR together with a Zuiko silver nose 50mm 1.2 prime lens, I loved that camera.
It was my love of motorsport that initiated my camera purchase, I eagerly travelled around the Midlands in my mates Ford Escort Mexico MK2 in pursuit of rally cars to shoot, after a quick but steep learning curve I eventually started to capture some reasonably good images.
I was enrolled at the local college, Training to get qualified in the building trade, and consequently my mum used to give me dinner money everyday to buy chips or a pie, however, I needed to buy rolls of black & white film frequently to support my new hobby, needless to say I was really skinny in my college years.
I was an avid reader of Amateur Photographer magazine in the 80s, and I was sick of paying Jessops to develop my rolls of film, and worse, the waiting time of around 7 days just to see if you had captured any good images. I saw an advert for a black and white developing tank together with chemicals to allow me to home develop my own rolls of film, the advert made it sound so easy so I thought I would give it try.
To load the roll of film inside the developing tank requires complete darkness, I initially tried this in my bedroom, but completely destroyed 2 rolls of 36 shot film, I eventually, started climbing into the loft to do this as the loft was completely black at night time with no light leakage and I soon started to get good results.
With the best rally car photographs I captured, I sent the negatives away that I had hand developed and had 10” x 8” Black and White prints made, I waited about a week, and went to collect my pictures from Jessops, I was blown away by how good the images looked and had actually turned out.
I started selling these prints to the drivers of the various rally cars during the Scrutineering before the actual races, I was getting £10 per print, which was a lot of money for me, especially as my apprentice YTS wage was only £25 for a 45 hour week. I was hooked and was getting requests for photos by most of the drivers.
The 80s was fun and I have many fond memories, but ultimately I stopped photography as a hobby when I started Bodybuilding. I started photography again once I was finished with Bodybuilding and purchased my first house, that was around 1990 and by 1995 I purchased my first digital 5 megapixel camera.
I have literally spent thousands of pounds on this hobby and have had many camera systems over the years, Olympus, Ricoh, Fuji, Nikon, Minolta, Sony and Canon.
I’m currently invested in the Canon camera system with a Canon R5 and various canon “L” lenses, this, together with the excellent Ricoh GR completes my hobby.
MG Metro 6R4, Lombard RAC Rally, Trentham Gardens, Staffordshire, England - Ilford HP5 Black & White film- 400 iso - 24 November 1985