In the beginning

I was born one early summer morning in an old fashioned hospital in Crystal Palace, London from an Irish mother and a Dutch father. After briefly residing in the quiet London suburb of Beckenham, we moved to Holland. We took residence on the top floor of my grandparents house. As a young boy I loved to play with my granddad's old camera's. I can remember a large black Bakelite camera, which I recently identified as a 1950's Boyer Photax. My granddad was an avid amateur photographer. I still own a small collection of his slides and assorted pictures and a few of his old camera's. I guess watching him taking pictures is what started me off. 

Instamatic gratification

In 1972 my grandmother brought back a Kodak instamatic 100 camera from the US for my birthday. I can still remember how chuffed I was. It came in a plastic display case with a roll of 110 film and one of these square plug-in flashcubes and a black strap. I still have the negatives of that first roll of film. I bought my first SLR, a Nikon FE2, in 1983. My girlfriend and I set up a dark room in the bathroom of our apartment and we started doing our own developing and printing.  I dragged my camera everywhere I went, roaming around the streets, documenting the world around me.

CGI a new story

Nowadays I combine photography with my other love: 3D design. In a new series I present a portfolio of digitally composited images in which I call the shots.  My photographs serve as a stage for a story which I populate with 3 dimensional props and digital actors. I then relight the scene to match the original photograph and render the image or animation. No photoshop is used unless it is for color grading or cropping.

My work is currently on display in the 2023 summer long exhibition at the world famous Zonnestraal Sanatorium in Hilversum in the Netherlands.