About me or about this Blog? Not quite sure so here we go with a brief summary of both

ME:

Goes by the name of David Page and makes a living taking photographs. I first started taking photographs many many years ago with an old Ricoh SLR. 35mm black and white film was lovingly unrolled in a dark bag and then taken into my makeshift darkroom in the toilet where I developed the films and prints. Oh yes those heady days of spending hours in a confined space breathing in noxious chemicals whilst the family queued up waiting to use the loo Eventually I started producing prints that weren’t too bad and a few made there way onto the walls of our home. Friends and family commented how nice they looked, though I did detect a slight patronising tone in their voices. Over time I was producing quality large black and white prints. I would then lovingly cut matts for them, titled them, frame them and again hang them on the walls of our house. The same friends and family, now with a sincere tone in their voices, suggested that they were so nice that I could sell them.  So that’s what I started to do, sell black and white fine art images. I sold them at markets, craft fairs and held my own exhibitions. Local galleries then became interested and they held my work. I created my first web site and starting selling prints on-line.

Next major change in the “about me” was the onset of digital photography. I bought my first Nikon D100, computer software, top of the range Epson printer and jumped into a learning curve of digital photography. After some initial setbacks on how to get a true black and white prints from an inkjet printer without it looking slightly green or magenta in some lights I decided to expand my areas of expertise and enter the world of portraiture.  The portraiture took off and I soon made a name for producing fun images of children and families. I am not one for the “sit and smile” portraits so my style developed into some rather manic photo sessions trying to get people to be at ease and looking/acting natural. It seemed to work, business came in.

Wedding photography soon followed into the armoury. Following the informal style of photography I seemed to fall naturally into it was well received and again the word of mout advertising machine kicked in bringing in the clients.

Commercial photography with the aid of  some rather nice Nikon lenses also come into the repertoire. I was now also taking product photos for businesses in my own small studio.

So here I am now in 2009 slightly older and hopefully wiser than when I first started out. We moved over to France in 2007 where we established our very own smallhold in an attempt to jump out of the rat run that life in the UK had become for us. Our aim was to feed ourselves from our land, well at least 80% of all our food. I mean we’re not that crazy to try and grow our own HP sauce trees! Two years on and we have succeded, all our vegetables and meat are provided for from our smallholding. Our supermarket bills are negligible although the wine bills do seem to be going up I started this journey in my home country of England and now I find myself several years later sitting in my studio in France typing away at my computer and creating my first internet BLOG. My bag of photography skills includes weddings, portraits, fine art, stock and commercial photography. If I think of anything else that I could use my camera for then I would more than likely give that a go as well.

This BLOG:

Well everyones doing it aren’t they? I thought I would give it a blast and see what happens. A BLOG about what I am doing in the world of photography, the ups and downs….. A BLOG about life around me and my family as we continue in our self sufficient-grow your own-organic is good-rural lifestyle-learning French-happy little world……………………….