I began my photographic journey at the age of eleven, when my father, a keen amateur photographer, introduced me to the art of processing contact prints in a makeshift darkroom set up in the under-stair broom cupboard. I was utterly fascinated by the magical moment when an image slowly emerged in borrowed dessert bowls, printed from old 2¼-inch negatives taken with a Brownie Box Camera.

I later graduated to a Boots Instamatic camera using 35mm film. I vividly recall taking it on a two-week school cruise around the Mediterranean, armed with a single roll of 36-exposure slide film. This experience taught me an invaluable early lesson in patience and careful shot selection.

I was among the first students at my school to take both ‘O’ and ‘A’ level examinations in Photography. As an incentive to secure respectable results, my parents promised me my first SLR: a second-hand Pentax Spotmatic. This marked the point at which my photographic journey truly began in earnest. I was fortunate to be given a small room in the house, shared with our dog, to set up as a darkroom, and it was beneath the enlarger that my love of black-and-white photography was born. In particular, I became captivated by the creative, hands-on process of dodging and burning, an often unpredictable art compared with today’s precise digital tools.

My enduring photographic hero has always been Ansel Adams, whose work epitomised the power of black-and-white landscape photography combined with masterful darkroom technique. While I long aspired to become a wildlife photographer, practicality prevailed, and I chose the more secure path of a career in finance in the City of London, a place I came to love and where I ultimately became a Freeman and a member of one of the City Livery Companies.

Pursuing wildlife photography in earnest was challenging in earlier years, requiring costly long lenses and for larger species, even more expensive international travel, well beyond my reach at the time. Work, family commitments, and health also played their part in diverting my focus. Now, in retirement, I am enjoying the freedom to roam more widely and to fully immerse myself in this intoxicating creative art that first captured my imagination all those years ago.