About me (My photography)

I've been writing these posts and you have been interested and kind enough to read them, so it only seems right that I let you know a bit about me. I have been a photographer now for about 18 years, mainly taking photos for myself but in the last 10 years I have started to share them with the world and sell my work.

So where do i start? I studied at Stafford collage of Art and Design where I studied and achieved my Diploma in General Art and Design. After this I went onto Wolverhampton University and this is where I gained my Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine art. Although the Diploma and Degree were not photography based, photography did play a big part in every part of my studies, whether to record finished artworks or to capture ideas. During my time studying at collage I learnt the basics of photography and I learnt the skills needed in the darkroom. I really loved working in the darkroom, taking one image that I captured then playing around with various techniques to achieve a wide range of final images. Its amazing just how much you can achieve with one negative and a bit of patience and time. 

I have sold many prints of my photography and also went to the 20th October 2012 Public rally on behalf of UNISON to record the Midlands branch on their march. It was a great experience as it was my first time working as a documentary photographer and I came away with some good photos, but more importantly new skills and ideas for future photographic projects. 

This year I went to Trento, Italy, on behalf of a walking company. On this trip I discovered all manner of sights and sounds and so I gave myself a personal project and that was to try and capture the essence of the Trentino region. I would take out a different analogue camera each day (cameras that included the Fed4B, Minolta Hi-matic F and a Olympus OM4Ti) and explore every street, park and alleyway to search for opportunities to capture what I saw during my visit. Trento is a fantastic place full of old streets and buildings, some of which have original frescoes on them. So if you get chance I heartily suggest you go visit this wonderful and friendly destination surrounded by beautiful views. Oh and the food. Well that is to die for, but that is a whole different subject.

Whenever I go anywhere I will always take a camera of some sort, you just never know what you may see when out and about. Whether it is a small film camera such as the Chinon Bellami or an SLR such as the PentaxProgam A, some sort of photo capturing device will always be to hand.The mobile phone is just fantastic as a quick grab camera to catch that spontaneous shot or just to be discreet when shooting street photography. I usually take hundreds of photographs each month and so the use of a mobile phone’s camera is a really good way of keeping my costs down as I do tend to use analogue cameras more often than not. To help get a bit more out of an Iphone’s camera click here for some useful and fun camera apps.

Some of my other cameras include;

Minolta Hi-Matic F,
In 1972 Minolta released a new version of their Hi-Matic consumer rangefinder cameras, the HI-MATIC F, with the less sophisticated 38mm (f2.7) Rokkor lens. It has the same light and compact camera body as the Hi-Matic E, but it had been cheaper, built with less features.

Fed 5b ,

no meter . Industar 61 ld 2.8/53mm . Russian Leica copy

Seagull 4A "black face",
The Seagull 4A is a 6×6 TLR camera for 120 roll film made in Shanghai, China by the Shanghai Camera Factory. It was introduced in the late 1960s to complement the 1964 Seagull 4, and is reputedly still in production 40 years later.

Books featuring some of the photographers that influence me can be found here.

Posts featuring inspiring photographers can be found HERE and HERE. 

So to end this post I will leave you with a small selection of my photography. More of my work can be found on my Flickr, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram and my personal website.

All Photography by Paul Casey Hemming 

@ Big World Picture Dot Com