My first camera was a Coronet box camera which I bought with my first week's wages and I used it mainly for taking pictures of family and friends. It was when I joined the army and was posted to Singapore that I became interested in pictorial photography. Cameras there were cheap and I was therefore able to purchase a quality camera - a Ziess Icon with a Tessar lens. We had a dark room in the camp and so I was also able to do my own processing. Eventually I went through many makes of cameras until I found the brand I liked best, which was Nikon. My first success in photography was winning a holiday in Ibiza in 1965. My wife and I enjoyed caravanning, touring around the UK as well as in Europe, and as part of this interest we were members of the South Staffs section of the Caravan Club who, once a year, ran a photographic competition. It is in one of these in which I was successful then a friend at the time saw my work and suggested I joined WPS and in the in the early 1980's I joined, serving on the committee and for many years as a Programme Secretary. In 1991 I obtained an Associateship with the Royal Photographic Society (ARPS) with pictorial transparencies. One of my other enjoyments in life is mountain and hill walking which undoubtedly helped with my landscape photography, but I'm afraid time has caught up with me and it's mostly flat walking from now on. I enjoy creating audio visual (AV) presentations and I have been performing for the Midlands Counties Photographic Federation (MCPF) for twenty-six years. I'm interested in all aspects of photography but favour audio visual sequences, natural history and landscape photography.