Portfolio

Dr Graham McLaren ARPS

I have been a serious and serial photographer since I was lucky enough to be given a Canon AE1 for my eighteenth birthday. Now, more than thirty years on I am still taking photographs whenever I can find the time. Most of the images you will see here have been taken within the last five years or so. They represent some emerging interests alongside long-term themes such as my particular approach to landscape photography. My photographic work both informs and enhances my work life as I manage a busy university department that has amongst its courses degrees in Photography and in Graphics. Spin-offs from this career have included the opportunity to illustrate numerous books and magazine articles, curate photographic exhibitions and give talks on photography to national and international audiences.

In this portfolio you see my distinction panel entitled 'Sticks and Stones'. Here is my accompanying statement:

"Photography is used in this portfolio to draw attention to the aesthetic interest and significance that can be found in the marks we leave upon the landscape. I am fascinated by the small, seemingly banal elements of these interactions. Images are taken during long walks in the British countryside, the concern with detail meaning that they rarely contain sweeping vistas or large expanses of sky. The objects of my interest are removed from the realm of the ordinary and the everyday, and the viewer is asked to look at them anew, by the use of careful composition and soft-focus in black and white prints. The dreamlike, even eerie quality that results is intended to signal their importance to me, and to act as an invitation to others to share the beauty I’ve found within them."

Please take some time to visit my personal photography website, www.faitedetons.co.uk and also my commercial site www.focalpointdaily.com, the site 'bringing you the very best and the very latest on photography and digital imaging'.