About Me

I’ve always had an interest in photography. It started with 35mm film SLR cameras. My first camera was a 1970’s Russian built Zenith-E SLR. As well as taking pictures I enjoyed developing and printing my own B&W film in a makeshift darkroom in the bathroom and learning processing techniques such as ‘dodging & burning’. My other passion alongside photography is cycling.

As my interest with film photography faded, I rekindled an old interest I’d had in Astronomy and astrophotography was a natural follow on. My background in electronics helped & I was soon modifying video webcams for long exposure photography trying to capture images of the planets & feint galaxies and nebula’s. I remember the excitement the first time I imaged Jupiter & Saturn (circa. 2003) and processed them on my laptop. The equipment I used got upgraded to where I was imaging using a dedicated cooled CCD astro camera with computerized tracking mount, auto-guider and a selection of different narrow band filters. A typical single exposure was 10 mins long & you’d have to take multiple exposures in order to get a ‘decent’ final image. The moon, weather & light pollution all played their part and it could sometimes take weeks to get an image. I still have all the astro-kit & will get back into imaging with it one day. A selection of the images I have taken are in the ‘Astro’ section of my Gallery page.