Richard's Bio
I've photographed geysers and volcanoes in Iceland, Mountain Gorillas and more volcanoes in Rwanda and Congo and the wonders of Egypt past and present. I've cycled or travelled by motorcycle in Central Africa, Europe, Iceland and the Rockies, always with a camera to hand. I've also spent much gentler times immersed in the heritage and landscapes of my native countries of Scotland and England and my adopted France, creating a photographic library of their heritage and scenery. My library now includes some 50,000 digital images and about twice that number of transparencies - the digitising of the latter being a major ongoing project. Another current project is a book – a photographic record of the changes Climate Change is wreaking to the world's coasts, their people, flora and fauna.
I've been using digital cameras alongside my film systems since 1996, and finally went fully digital in 2004. I mostly use Olympus equipment for its toughness, compactness and lens quality and Ive spent a decade transferring my darkroom skills to software, so at least I can now absent-mindedly switch on the light without losing a day's work.
For all of this, I blame my father: at the age of 10, my Christmas present was a second-hand East German Exa II SLR – entirely manual and sans light meter. My father probably and promptly regretted the latter as, within weeks of learning to tell my f-stops from my elbow, I'd hijacked his beloved Weston Master V light meter, never gave it back, and still use it. The camera I used for nigh-on a decade, only selling it to help fund a state-of-the-art Canon system to accompany my first African adventure – wombling around Northern Ghana whilst researching the wet-season ecology of the Red-Throated Bee-Eater. Heady stuff. In my latter days at University, I not only was photographer for the university newspaper and did my classmates graduation pictures but spent rather too much of my time in the departmental darkroom to stand much chance of a top degree. I must have been a great disappointment to the Bee-Eaters.
In late 2006, my beloved Gill and our feline horde moved to the Highlands of our native Scotland – we're now living in the midst of scenery that other photographers travel across the world to experience and record. That too is an opportunity and there will be much more about that here in time. In the meantime, although most of my time is spent working on my own projects, I am at times available for commissions and collaborative projects. If you'd like to know more, please .
Link to this gallery: http://www.two-worlds.com/imageination/2007/02/richards_bio.html