I was born in the 1940s, and photography found me early. In those days there was no pressing a button and seeing the result on a little screen: you mixed your own chemicals, you worked in the dark, and you waited. I remember the smell of the darkroom more than almost anything else from those years: sharp, chemical, and somehow completely absorbing. You learned patience because the process demanded it, and you learned to really look at a photograph because you’d spent an hour coaxing it out of nothing.
For a long time, that was simply how photography worked, for me and for everyone. Then, gradually, the world changed around it. Cameras went digital, darkrooms became unnecessary, and eventually a computer could do in seconds what used to take an evening of careful work. I won’t pretend the change didn’t unsettle me a little at first. But once I’d retired and had the time to properly explore it, I found a version of the old darkroom magic waiting for me in Photoshop: the same instinct for balance and light and mood, just with different tools.
More recently still, as my health has made the old ways harder, I’ve leaned into AI to keep creating. It still surprises me, some mornings, that I can be making art at all after seventy-odd years of it changing shape around me. But the thread running through all of it (film, Photoshop, AI) has never really changed. It’s still about looking closely at the world and trying to make something honest out of what I see.
I don’t know how many more chapters there’ll be in this particular story, but I’m glad you’re here for this one. If you’d like to see where it’s led, have a browse of the shop: there’s a bit of all of it in there.