CliveOnBeara

I’ve owned a camera since I was 9. It was my birthday and I can remember my Dad taking me to a ‘grown-up’ camera shop in Bristol, England, and buying me one as my birthday present. It was a black and grey Kodak Brownie Autographic 44A (the one with the super smart plastic ‘pull over the top’ lens cover (not the little brown canvas bag that other cameras had at the time) and I had to learn about how to correctly load/rewind/lick the 127 roll film. I don’t think that my parents considered just how keen a photographer I’d become with the inevitable knock-on effect there would be when they were presented with films for ‘D&P’!
I recall going back to the camera shop some time later (when I’d saved up enough pocket money) to buy the special two-pronged flash attachment and my first batch of flashbulbs. I remember well the crackly sound and odd smell of burning hair/skin/plastic there was immediately after taking a flash picture, and the inevitable burns on the fingers as I tried to replace the bulb too quickly to get on with the next shot. I still have faded card wallets from a chemist in Bristol containing (now curly) black and white photos of my childhood. (Gladly, the burn blisters on my fingers have long since recovered.) I have also always enjoyed drawing and painting, and am sure that the early necessity to ‘compose in the viewfinder’ (so as not to use TOO much film) assisted me in looking for and at compositions for paintings and photography since.
Later, in my career, much of the work that I became involved in revolved around the presentation of photographic images for print, from initially being a darkroom assistant for a well-known natural history photographer, to art directing photographers at construction and engineering sites around the world generating images for corporate publicity material.
Now, living on the beautiful Beara Peninsula in West Cork, Ireland, I am surrounded by dramatic landscapes and big skies that change every day/hour with the variety of weathers provided for us by the Atlantic.
The images presented here on redbubble concentrate, for the most part, on my immediate surroundings, and how they vary according to the changing light, seasons, etc. but it is hard not to be drawn to record the evidence of those who lived in this area thousands of years ago, and more recently, and the marks they left on this landscape.