I have always been interested in the visual arts: sketching, watercolour painting….and photography. My mother gave me a Kodak instamatic camera for my fifteenth or sixteenth birthday along with a reel of transparency film. Times were hard for us then and I would try to eke out one roll of film for as long as I could—often a whole Summer in those years when holidays were an unthinkable luxury and I took photographs sparingly on days out. The exposure of one reel was followed by an anxious wait for the transparencies to be developed and then, more often than not, disappointment with the results. I graduated from that to another simple analogue camera many years later and then upgraded to a more substantial—and expensive!—Canon after I had moved to Japan and had the wherewithal not only to purchase such a model but also to travel much more extensively.
The years went by. Digital cameras started to become popular in the first decade of this century. I resisted them for several years—a decision I now bitterly regret; invested in a simple point-and-shoot Canon digital camera in around 2010; and finally switched to a model in the Olympus EOS range four or five years later. I have been happy with and loyal to the brand ever since.
I am not and probably never will be a technical photographer. I look cursorily through the camera manual; get flustered by all its technical capabilities even though they would undeniably give me better results if I were to master them; and instead rely on what Nature has given me: stamina and strong legs to take me up into the mountains; an eye to see the potential in a particular scene and angle; and the 3 Ps—patience, perseverance and passion.. I do minimal editing, using ACDSee Pro to crop when necessary and just tweak a little in terms of exposure, colour adjustment, and so on.
It is my hope that these photographs will give you a pictorial insight into the countries and regions I have come to love so much; that they may bring back memories of your own travels there; or that they may even inspire you to visit for the first time. Do let me know! I am waiting for your feedback.
