You don’t have to go to the Mediterranean or the Caribbean to see beautiful sea colours. Parts of Britain can have drama as well as subtlety of colour in the sea reflecting the sky and the sand, rock, or algae on the shore.
It’s easy to create miracles with digital photography these days, making even the Thames estuary look like the Caribbean – I won’t do that. The colours in these photos are as close as I can get to what I saw.
My photographs reflect the variety of moods and colours of the sea from the Isles of Scilly, through West Cornwall, Pembrokeshire and to Scotland, Tiree and the Outer Hebrides.
They are all places jutting out into the Atlantic and generally have nearly white shell beaches. These are conditions where the light brings out the best of colours. They all have a special quality of light, such as that which St Ives is known for, or a 'silvery' Scottish light. The images concentrate on the tranquil, calming and colourful.
I started printing photographs aged 13, and have used monochrome, colour print and slide film, now using digital photography. I have exhibited widely including the Hexagon in Reading, West Ox Arts in Bampton, and more locally at the Warneford, Churchill and John Radcliffe Hospitals. I regularly join in the Edith Road Open Studios in South Oxford. For the last 30 years I have lived and worked in the Oxford area, but feel most at home on the quiet coasts and beaches of the far west.
My work is influenced much less by other photography than by impressionist and more recent abstracted painting, especially landscape painters of Cornwall. I am a geographer by training and a Visiting Research Associate in the University of Oxford.