Photography

Hi I’m Jerry. I picked up my first camera at 9yrs of age - an unexpected gift from my Father. An Agfa Billy-2.

This was a fold out camera with a black cardboard bellows which had the heavy glass lens at the front and the 120 size film you wound in to it at the back. It fitted in a slim brown leather case with a handle so you could carry it round or slip it into a briefcase or bag. Very portable. It had the f-number dial on the front of the lens and a shutter speed control cocking lever - all in one - which you had to carefully pull back and leave it there all cocked and ready to go. All silver metal dials with black etched numbers. Very beautiful.

The shutter button was on the lower right hand edge. The oblong stuck-out viewfinder was tiny and quite thick glass which gave you a remarkably good magnified look at whatever you were thinking of shooting but you had to hold it very still at the point of pressing that shutter button.

We had a steep grassed embankment either side of a train line at the back of our house and one day I found myself sliding halfway down and seeing a steam train just wheezing alive in the station about a mile and a half in a straight line to my right.

I remember looking at the track and seeing in my mind where this train would be passing once it got here and somehow I got the idea of focussing on that exact point, then pointing the camera back to my right a bit, so it was aiming about fifty yards or so to the right of where the train would pass when it got right in front of me.

When it came close I simply moved the lens from right to left, keeping the engine in sight and pressed the shutter button as the thing was right opposite me and kept the lens moving to the left as the shutter clicked and closed.

In those days you had to send film away to be processed at the local chemist and when I got it back about a week and a half later. I was never so excited about anything but when I held the black and white negative up to the light so as to be able to see what was on it I remember the breath just wooshing out of me at the beautifulness of what was there !

The train engine was in crisp focus, with the steam all blowing madly into the air above it and going back in a mass of grey/white blur above it but the green grass/shrub background was almost in motion, blurred and going from left to right, making the train look like it was speeding through the frame - which is what my moving the lens from the right to the left, and keeping it moving as I pressed that shutter, made happen.

I had managed to capture exactly the sense of the speed of the thing by making the background look blurred and keeping the train engine in crisp focus ! I was absolutely hooked from that moment on !

I could not get enough of looking out of my eyes, at everything around me, and “seeing” it the way I wanted to try and show it on film. I carried that little fold up camera around with me wherever I went and, along the way, began to learn how to use it - but that amazing first-shot had woken my creative seeing-ness up and it’s never slept since ! A Wonderful beginning. Thanks Dad !

Along the way I’ve been very blessed to have worked for a short time in an MGM sound studio learning light technician work - going up to the top of the wooden scaffolding in there and adjusting very hot lights so they pointed wherever the assistant director wanted them, varying in size from 5k to 120k.

You weren’t allowed to take anything that was loose on your person up there so as to not be a danger to folk the hundred feet or so below you ! You very quickly learned never to be careless about where you put your hands ! You only got a burn from the metal exteriors of one of those lights once ! Very hot up there and you learned to watch where your feet went because everything was cables on the wooden gantry beneath your feet and it was forbidden to put your weight on any cabling up there.

But I was in awe of the lighting engineers who could vary the intensity of those lights, putting in all sorts of plastic gels to attenuate the hues down there, and add or take away lights so the exact look of what they wanted down there was created. (increase or decrease the intensity of the focus of them). A truly wonderful early learning curve.

I thought I knew it all after that so dived into the world of going to music venues and asking to shoot performers live, unobtrusively from the side of the stage, in B&W with no flash,  then coming back the next night with the results and getting studio work with the artists off the back of those results.

I quickly found out you had to have a good photographic lab behind you who knew what you wanted and could deliver the push-processing so you not only had the negatives but some decent prints of some of them to show when you went back to get that vital and hopefully well paid studio shoot

That was a steep learning curve of a different kind and forced me to get any job that was going to simply have enough money to keep putting into that and getting to the place where it actually worked.

It took a while. And I met some wonderful folk along that particular journey. Bless them all. One lady singer was a single mother who sang her way round the world so she could pay for her daughter to go to school and have the chances she herself had never had - and she made that all happen for that young girl/lady.

I’ve seen courage-in-action in so many wonderful people along this particular photographic journey, and met some seriously lovely people - all chasing their dreams. Gradually, like in anything I guess, you find your way. I have supplied all sorts of people and organisations with images, from time to time, working in photojournalism, music, and some of the creative arts.

In one particular ten-year stint I had my own commercial photographic studios and we shot mostly small product work for companies who needed catalogues of their products and services - and that was a whole ‘nother learning curve right there !

Getting successfully paid at the end of a job is not always something some clients see as a necessity for them to follow through on ! I began to understand why Willie Nelson had a minder who used to go into the clubs after his performances and gently move back the edge of his coat to show off the large handgun there, so as to encourage clubowners to pay out the full total of all the monies they had agreed to pay !

For the rest of us, you learn real quick who to trust and who to walk away from.

I've always noticed that I've seen beauty in the Natural World around us all - how could anyone not ! - and I never tire of seeing yet some new version of all of that wherever I look.

I have, for a long while now, hoped to be able to bring some of that beautifulness to folk who will be glad they can access it, and this website is an attempt to deliver on that.

I hope you get blessed by what you find here, and enjoy coming back.

The images will get added to each month and in ten years’ time or so, (2032+), there will be many thousands of images here, both mine and those of other Creatives who wish to offer and sell their own work.

That kind of brings you up to date on the photographic side of things.

If you’re a Creative Artist, of any kind, and you have images of your work which you would wish to show and sell on this website please do get in touch via the email address and let’s see where we go with it. Look 4wrd2 hearing from you ! ---------------------------------------