Nick Prior
Over the years I have discovered that taking photographs makes me look at things properly. I am one of life’s systemisers: I like making sense of the complexities that surround us. I am particularly interested in line, shapes, relationships and patterns and, on occasions, even colours. As a result much of my work (but not all) is in black and white.
On good days taking photographs is, for me, a bit like meditation. I can get completely absorbed by a landscape, or the lines of a tree, or even just how the light is reflected through an underpass. Photography enables me to show other people how I see things. That’s not to say you should see things like I do! But if there’s something in my pictures that speaks to you, that’s great.
In recent years, I have taken to making books of my photographs. When I say “make”, I mean designing, printing and fabricating hard and soft cover volumes myself. I consider myself neither simply a photographer who writes, nor a writer who illustrates ideas with photographs, nor a bookmaker who happens to use photographs. Each discipline informs the others. A project now for me is finished only when it has found its appropriate physical form.
So, how can you buy my work? Currently, only by personal contact. But maybe this is the next step for my practice. I would need to resolve the conflict between making hand made photographs and books in ones and twos, and the need to create a sensible stock of my work to make selling a viable activity.
What, no cameras?
How can you have a photography website without camera reviews?
If you’ve come to this website looking for reviews of cameras, lenses and photo software, I’m afraid you’re going to be well disappointed. There’s plenty of sites around that will identify the silver bullet* that’s going to transform your photography. This isn’t one of them.
*Spoiler alert – there IS no silver bullet …..
What you will find in this website are articles more concerned with reflecting upon how you go about your photography. Thinking about looking and seeing rather than an analysis of the sharpness in the corners of your lenses.
In the end of course, the equipment isn’t so important. For me, what matters is seeing something interesting then taking a picture that demonstrates just why I found it interesting.
Influences
Ian Roper and North Crag Eliminate
Denis Thorpe and Hebden Bridge
This website and opinions
I’ve put this website together as a place to develop, record and share some of my thoughts about photography. I’m not entirely sure it needs saying but the opinions expressed in these articles are mine (who else?); any errors or egregious content are mine alone.
You’ll find very little technical content on these pages – others do that sort of thing much better. You’ll also not find too much about the camera hardware I use. It just really doesn’t matter! The images on the site were created by a variety of cameras including Canon DSLRs, Canon and Fuji compacts, and an inexpensive secondhand Samsung mobile phone, and even that’s probably more than you need to know.