Alan Stopher CPAGB

It's 48 years since I bought the first camera which helped me open my eyes to the possibilities of photography - an Olympus OM-1. My photographic interests broadened after joining Huddersfield Camera Circle in 1996 and I still find being part of a photo society an enjoyable way of keeping in touch with constantly changing techniques and meeting people with whom to share my interests.

In 2006 after three decades of taking slides and two of using a traditional black and white darkroom, I bit the bullet and bought a digital camera. This too was an Olympus - an E-500. It had its limitations and I have since then used an E-620 before moving to Micro Four-Thirds currently with Olympus EM5 mark II and Mark III bodies. I’ve also got a compact XZ-1 which is handy to carry around at all times. I feel that life too short to get to understand the intricacies of Photoshop but instead find Adobe Lightroom a good tool for storing and sorting image files and making adjustments to images before presenting them. More recently the ON1RAW plug-in has got me dabbling in filters to bring out aspects that I feel complement the original capture. In so doing I try and style the finished image or print to bring out what was in my mind’s eye when I took the picture.

You can see from my gallery that I enjoy photographing people in their environment, capturing lowlight subjects, landscapes, architecture, canals and railways. Travel photography is also an area which I enjoy. I have a love-hate relationship with my printer, mine is an Epson R3000, and find it particularly pleasing when the finished article looks and feel how I want it to show the image I captured.

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Alan Stopher