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I started taking portraits on the picket lines of the Hollywood writers strike during its first week in May 2023. Since then I have continued periodically at a variety of the major studios and streaming companies around Los Angeles. Two things inspired the project: for one, this does not happen very often. The last writers strike in Hollywood was 15 years ago. Secondly, I figured, it's not too often you get so many screenwriters (who normally work behind the scenes) in one place. And so, a project was born. Since then, the strike has become even more unique. Actors were called to strike action...


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I'm not going to write too many words. Yosemite national park is the most spectacular place I've ever visited. People often say that, as a great photographic innovator, were Ansel Adams alive today he would be shooting the latest, greatest digital kit. I have no doubt that is true, but Yosemite, to my eye at least, loves black and white film (the Ansel Adams gallery in Yosemite park village still sells film, by the way...35mm and 120, but not large format). Anyway, enough words. Here are the pictures (all shot on Ilford Delta 100 120 in 6x6 format).


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I ran these tests some months back but have avoided sharing results because the photos are a bit rubbish. Finally, I've swallowed my pride and gone ahead and published. I've long wanted to test the famed Kodak Aero Ektar 7 inch against the far-lesser appreciated Dallmeyer Pentac 8 inch. Afterall, the Aero Ektar was based on the design of the Pentac which has been around since the early 1900s and was used in the first as well as the second world war. Both are very fast, aerial reconnaissance lenses with similar focal length and maximum aperture. I wanted to take pictures of the same subject...


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Work took me to Palma in Mallorca recently and I decided to tag on a few days holiday to the trip. It seems I will never learn with regard to travelling with film. With the hassel of taking film through airports these days and the risk of complete destruction before you even arrive at your destination thanks to the increasingly common CAT scanners at security, I take only a small amount with me....then never have enough! There is a plus. With only three rolls of Ilford Delta 100, I'd shot the lot within two days, so spent the rest of the time relaxing and not worrying about taking photos. Anyway,...


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I remember my grandmother's house well. I used to stay there when my mum was working late. I remeber how little 'stuff' it had in it. The sitting room had a small sofa, a side board with an old biscuit barrel on it, a TV, one of those 1930s mantle clocks on the fireplace and my grandmother's old reclining chair. That was it. Each bedroom had a bed and an empty wardrobe, nothing else. My grandmother's bedroom also had a dresser with triple mirror and a set of those brushes that were popular in the 1930s on top. The kitchen had just a cooker, a sideboard and a wall mounted radio that was a simple...


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I bought an Air Ministry Dallmeyer Pentac 8 inch aerial reconnaisance lens about ten years ago from a flea market stall in London's Spitalfields antique market. At the time I was doing a lot of people shoots and had fancied the look of a Kodak Aero Ektar...but was put off by the radioactive thorium in the glass and the price! Eight inch Air Ministry Pentacs are the British Wartime equivalent of the American Aero Ektar and used to hang out the bottom of Spitfire wings on reconnaisance missions. There's quite a lot of information out there about Aero Ektars, but less about these lenses which perform...


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I don't buy old photo paper. Like most of the old film cameras these days that are not already in the hands of collectors or users, most of it is trash--and increasingly expensive trash . We've all seen the e-bay posts where sellers open the paper pack and fan out the contents to take a photo for buyers. Understandably, for most, the basic knowledge of storing and handling light sensitive material has been lost to history. That didn't used to be the case. I used to buy every pack of old photo paper I saw. Sealed, open, part used, it didn't matter. Most of it worked fine, even for conventional...


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I've been using Ansco 130 print developer as my standard for a while now. It's famous because a variant of this developer was a favourite of Ansel Adams. It's not something you can buy off the shelf, but it's relatively easy to make....and well worth it. There's a lot of commentary out there about its magical properties in bringing out highlight detail and producing beautiful prints. But, for me, there is one unique characteristic of this developer that makes it well worth the effort of sourcing the ingredients and making it: it lasts for months at working dilution, even with repeated use....


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I've been wanting to visit Dungeness for years. It's not the easiest place to reach without a car, but I finally made the journey by train and taxi this year. It's every bit as desolote and odd as I had hoped. Home to an ancient nuclear power station well past its decommision date; a Victorian light house; a pebble beach classified as the UK's only desert; a passenger-carrying minature steam railway and a variety of crumbling fishing boats and other detritus of a working coastal area. There's also a couple of pretty decent pubs right on the beach...one at each end which is handy after a day's...


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Some years ago on a work trip to Poland I managed to fit in a visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau Nazi concentration camps. It was a chilly winter afternoon and there were only a handful of other visitors. I didn't have a great deal of film with me, but managed to get off two rolls of 35mm. When I got home and examined the contact sheets, I decided I wanted to print the images on a cold tone paper. Hardly anyone makes coldtone anymore. The only available cold tone paper I know of today is made by Ilford and comes in gloss only, which is not the look I wanted. So I decided to experiment with...


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