Biography

My passion for photography started in Hong Kong where I lived on and off for 15 years. Educated in England, I took a degree in film, television and photography. After several years travelling in Asia and Australasia I worked for a travel company in London, which financed trips to Africa and the Americas.

In 1992 my wife and I moved to the Dordogne area of South west France. Once our property was established we started “Fleuret Photographic Holidays”, running week long courses (in English and in French). This led to me taking small groups to Provence, Tuscany and Morocco. If you would like to know of any forthcoming trips please email me. We do not advertize but work by recommendation from existing clients. Why not visit www.fleuretholidays.com.

During our first few years here, much of my time was spent renovating old properties and building up a house rental business, with my photography work running in parallel. I have recently been commiting a lot more time to photography and as such have the opportunity to work on other books which I hope will be published in the near future. Many of my images, particularly of France, have featured in magazines, newspapers and on television.

Technical details

Cameras: Canon Eos 3; Canon 20 d; Hasselblad 500CM

Film: Kodachrome 64 and Fuji Velvia 50.

Filters: Lee filters - polarizer, warm-up, and grey grads.

Film scanner: Nikon coolscan 8000

When shooting landscape and buildings I tend to use the Hasselblad. I love to compose an image in the square and the large, bright viewfinder allows me to see exactly what is going on. The restriction of the weight is a double-edged sword. Whilst lugging 15 kilos of gear around is not always a pleasurable experience,it is this weight that forces me to stay with an image and really look at it.

By contrast the convenience of 35mm or digital lends itself to people and wildlife photography. The encombrance of medium format is just not practical. I have found digital to be particularly liberating for many reasons. The joy of taking a photograph can be continued as soon as I am reunited with my computer. Through post-production in photoshop I can relive the experience sometimes only moments after taking the picture.