Introduction

The arrival of the pandemic caused me to take up photography after a gap of some 40 years

Early in lockdown it became obvious to me that, to retain some vestige of sanity, I needed a hobby. So, at the age of 69 I bought myself a Sony A6000 camera and two kit lenses.

My previous photographic exploits had required a Zenith analogue 35mm film camera and a darkroom with equipment and chemicals.

Now, it was all digital and involved Adobe Photoshop. The camera itself had numerous menus with features I didn’t understand and, after months of practice shots, I realised I needed help.

Luckily, the Open University, in conjunction with the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) offered an inexpensive digital photography course for beginners.

Students were invited to join the RPS for a reduced fee, giving access to many online workshops and lectures. It was through participation in these that I finally found my genre: Black & White images. I spent the next year honing my skills and getting to grips with Photoshop.

Many of the lecturers were experts in this software and happy to explain anything I didn’t understand or didn’t know how to do.

By this time, I had traded in my original equipment for a Sony A7M3, and various lenses purchased, some second hand, from specialist dealers MPB and the London Camera Exchange.

Finally, I upgraded my old Windows 10 laptop to a reconditioned Dell Inspiron (Windows 11) with a built in nVidia graphics card, able to cope with the introduction of AI into Photoshop.

Now I had all the equipment and software I needed and sought projects to focus on. The first of these was a photographic study of the memorials at the National Memorial Arboretum. Others have/will be added as time progresses.

I hope that you enjoy the images as much as I enjoyed taking and processing them.