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My Photography
The Virtually Grey Gallery displays and offers for sale my photographic work. I hope you enjoy your visit. I would be very pleased to hear from you if you have any comments or questions, or if you would like to make a purchase.
I’ve worked for more than 30 years producing pictures (almost) exclusively in Black & White. The landscape is where I look for my pictures, but to say I'm a landscape photographer is rather misleading. Whilst out walking I find many things to photograph. Most of my work is of components or elements of the landscape (micro-landscapes) rather the panoramas and vistas that landscape usually brings to mind. Trees, streams, fungi, clouds, rocks, reflections, patterns, water, grasses; in fact anything more or less "natural" that will stay still for long enough runs the risk of me pointing my camera at it. It's not uncommon for me to take an hour to make one exposure. If I make twenty exposures in a full day then that's a lot. Ultimately my criterion for taking a photograph is that the final image must at least have the prospect of being "striking" and "frame-able" in monochrome once the raw image has passed through my digital darkroom. You’ll find a few exceptions to my “natural” subjects with the occasional building or other evidence of human presence here and there! I am not a landscape purist.
Recently I’ve come to enjoy photographing inside cathedrals, abbeys and churches. The natural lighting inside is particularly challenging but exceptionally rewarding. And there is one subject area that keeps me returning time and again. I can’t resist the coast and sea shore as you will see when you browse through the gallery. This hasn’t been a conscious decision of mine, rather it has dawned on me over the last few years that the coast offers an infinite range of possibilities and seems to act on me like a powerful magnet.
For the last 10 years or so I’ve been using a mahogany and gold plated brass 5"x4" field camera. Kodak's 100TMax in Readyload single sheet film holders is my preferred film which I process conventionally, usually in XTOL. Until about five years ago I printed all of my work in my own wet darkroom. I’ve now converted completely to the digital production of my prints. I scan my 5"x4" negatives in 16-bit greyscale at 2400 d.p.i (almost 200MB files) or sometimes in 48-bit RGB at 2400 d.p.i. (giving almost 600MB files!). Photoshop is my new "darkroom". It has helped me to achieve that which I always found less than satisfactory in the wet darkroom, namely the carefully controlled enhancement of a print without obvious evidence of the darkroom processes. The large negative size and high scanning resolution (up to 4800 d.p.i.) means I can produce high quality images up to about 44" x 55” or more. Prints up to paper size 17”x any length” I produce myself. Whenever I want larger prints I turn to a professional photo laboratory where they are produced to my precise specifications using identical materials to those which I use. Inkjet printing technology has progressed at such an unprecedented rate over the last few years such that now a carefully produced inkjet print is at least indistinguishable in terms of sharpness and smoothness of tone to the naked eye from a conventional silver print, and many would say “better than”. I now use Epson’s K3 Ultrachrome pigment inks in an Epson 4800 printed with Epson’s own printer driver plus ICC profiles created with QTR software from Roy Harrington (see my “Links”). Printed onto carefully matched paper the results are stunning with the full deep rich black shadow areas through all shades of grey to clear paper-base white highlights; or toned to any hue required. The best ink and paper manufactures recognise the importance of longevity and it is now claimed that carefully selected paper and ink combinations now have a life of well in excess of 100 years. 
In 2001 I completed a book of my work entitled “There for All to See”. I'd love to be able to tell you where to buy it, but so far there is still only one copy! Some of the images in the Virtually Grey Gallery are contained in the book. To see one's own work in print, albeit as a single copy, is very inspiring. I’ve now completed work on my second book - the title is “Just Looking”. There’s also still only one copy of this too.
A portfolio of nine of my images was published in the October/November 2002 issue of Photo Art International. I’ve also had images published in Best of Friends 9 and Best of Friends 10, the 2002 and 2003 Yearbooks of Creative Monochrome. And in 2006 some of my images were used to illustrate an article about my photography in “Black & White Photography” magazine. Each published image is indicated here in the Virtually Grey Gallery.
I can be contacted at: steve@virtuallygrey.co.uk
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