As a ten year old boy on his summer holidays I reached up, put my sixpence into the fruit machine and pulled the handle. The first drum settled on 'Tic' - the second on 'Tac' - the third on 'Toe'. Jackpot! Just over £11 in sixpences tumbled into the tray - riches indeed!
The fortune was invested in a Kodak Instamatic 25 and the kit to do black and white processing. My passion for photography had started. It sat alongside another passion - railways and in particular steam engines. The little Kodak was replaced with a Minolta SLR which gave good service until I was seduced by autofocus and changed to a Canon EOS650.
I settled into taking slides of many subjects, never deserting my passion for steam railways, but equally never really achieving what I wanted. Good factual pictures - but something was passing me by. There was a gap between what I saw and felt and what film captured that I was never able to really close.
More recently a move to digital with a Nikon D100 was a revelation. Because I control every step of the process from idea to print or projected image I passionately believe digital is enabling me achieve far better results than I ever could with film.
My images of steam grow from knowledge of the subject. Success with photography in any field requires an understanding and a sympathy with the subject. I've been heavily influenced in developing my style by two landscape masters - Charlie Waite and Joe Cornish. Both of them are clearly at one with their subject and that emotion comes through in their pictures. Similarly Colin Gifford did much to establish a new style of railway photography as he recorded the decline of British steam in the mid 1960s. Two of his books 'Each a Glimpse' and 'Gone Forever' established a new way of capturing the emotion of the railway scene - clearly he too knew his subject intimately.
There are many who photograph steam and heritage railways. A quick flick through the many magazines and books on the subject shows two things. Most photographers take pictures that show the train in its setting - a front three quarter view in an attractive location in bright sunlight. They also try to recreate a scene that might have been - a form of recreation of the past. Whilst I take many pictures that fulfil both these drivers for the magazines - they're not the images I treasure.
More recently some of the magazines have embraced a more pictorial approach. I've worked with one of the major titles 'Steam Railway' to create images that break with tradition and go all out to capture the emotion of steam. Their support has driven me on to break away from the standard approach and create images that satisfy me as a photographer. Along the way I've come to realise that I'm a photographer first and a railway enthusiast second. That realisation enabled me to break the final bonds with tradition and work at creating truly pictorial images of my subject.
Now I go looking for light and then play the subject into it. Every photographer understands that light makes or breaks a picture. Landscape photographers know what they're talking about when they seek out the special light at the beginning and end of the day. Use that basic approach with steam - then throw in a cold day when steam hangs in the air - and suddenly there's a formula to create images that go well beyond the 'recreating the past' approach.
The second factor I work at is eliminating everything from the image except its basic and fundamental components. As I stop I ask myself what it was that stopped me. Was it a shape, a play of light on steam, a reflection? Then comes the work in isolating just that single element, showing it to its best effect and filling the frame with it. Being able to use Photoshop to augment this process is key to its success. I never build an image that wasn't there - but I do use the tools with a gentle touch to enhance what the camera captures.
The third element is luck. I depend absolutely on the weather; a dull day usually means no pictures. Capturing the combination of weather, light, a moving subject and all the subtle nuances that make a picture requires perseverance. Bear in mind that the best pictures inevitably come from cold days and there is a recipe for many hours of hanging around in the cold. I often find myself pondering the meaning of it all until the elements come together. When they do, they make all the hanging around worthwhile.
Being awarded the Fellowship has been a real boost to my work. Now I want to keep developing the approach further to encapsulate motion and people - both of which are a key parts of my subject.
