Simon Scott LRPS

• View all Portfolios
• Join The Society
• Search Portfolios
• Contact The Society

My name is Simon Scott LRPS, I was born in Belfast during the 'Swinging Sixties'  My first camera 'appeared' at the grand old age of eight, a Lovely old bakalite Box Brownie type 127.  I still have it together with my first photograph, a rather strange monochrome picture of a County Down goat!

 My next camera was an Olympus OM10 SLR, a very expensive camera compared to the lovely old Brownie but worth it.  I obtained good grades in both Ordinery and Advanced level Photography during the mid to late 1980s.  Soon after this initial success I joined the CPA Camera club in Belfast and became an advanced 'worker' within the Northern Ireland Photographic Association.

My next  and most pleasing success to date was to be awarded a Licentiate by the Royal Photographic Society.  I was then able to use the the letters after my name which looked excellent on my CV.  This was a really useful addition as my first 'photography' related job was as a printer in a professional D&P Laboratory.

Soon after this initial step in the world of professional photography I decided to go it alone and obtained a grant moving me into the world of self employment.  My initial 'contracts' during this period was documenting new architectural projects and renovations to historic buildings here in Ireland.  This was interesting and demanding work but my main interest lay in the fine art side of photographic expression which is basically what I am trying to achieve in my latest venture taking photographs  of the ever changing landscape, the changing light from  dawn to dusk, the changing of the seasons, the subtle colours of Irelands geological fault lines, and of course the ever beautiful rainbows and sunsets

I guess I am trying to make a statement about just where we fit in with the universe.  Rather an impossible task maybe but I can but try.  There are lots of books on the thery of dark and light matter, quarks and superstrings, the big bang etc etc, but how much do we reallly know?  Just look back a couple of millennnia to our Neolithic ancestors.  When they discovered copper they undoubtably thought of this technological development as a totally earth shattering discovery.  Equally we think of the World Wide Web, digital photography, or mega flat screen televisions as if sent by the Gods!

Basically though, what I am trying to say goes something like this :-

Everything we see and do is not a constant.  We live, we die, everything moves on with time and space, liquids evaporate, gases escape and catch fire.  The forces that govern the natural laws of the universe are at play everywhere we look.  Planets cool, volcanoes paralyze the natural environment, earthquakes destroy, change everything we hold dear, then we cash in with our weapons.  We use precious and often volatile mineral resourses to build the hydrogen bomb.  We live and die by the tens of thousand digging out diamonds for ourl loved ones, the list continues.

I photograph natural objects, such as rocks, water, bones, decaying material once so alive, and also relics of man's inhumnanity to man, such as rusted metal fragments and remains of buildings touched by the Gods of war.  I am also facinated by the fact that natural objects will often outlast us all by a considerable period of time, perhaps forever given the natural laws governing the finality of oour own solar system which is set to detonate in a mere few million years.  What will remain of it all then?  My little statement will mean even less perhaps.