Portfolio

Sam Knox

I'm an Irishman in my 40's, living in Norfolk, having settled here after leaving the RAF in 2003. I have a passion for landscape, scenic, cityscape and architecture photography, and even some portraiture on a small scale. I enjoy the creative process behind themed model shoots, taking full control of everything from locations, costumes, props and permissions, right up to shooting, processing and publishing the resulting images. I do a fair bit of stock and microstock photography, and I also enjoy shooting my favourite sport, rugby and keep a photographic record of my local team, Swaffham.

So why do I take photographs?

Well, We live in an ever changing world where natural landscapes and scenes of outstanding beauty are constantly being replaced by cityscapes which bring their own unique aesthetic appeal. Where architectural styles evolve and change, striking stark contrasts between the old and the new, the natural and the artificial, the organic and the mechanical, and the beautiful and the grotesque.

Throughout history, these changes have been documented by artists and in recent years, by photographers and film makers. These snapshots capture a fleeting moment in time, never to be revisited, and create a valuable historical archive for generations to come. The closest thing we have to a time machine which can carry us back into our past.

As a photographer with a passion for landscape, scenic and architecture photography, I find this process very exciting, and have made it my mission to add to this archive by capturing a visual record of my short period of existence in the great river of history.

It's my hope that future generations will look back on my photographs of scenes and locations they know, and find the same fascination in the changes that I experience when I see 100 year old photos of my home town.

The kit I use isn't top of the range by any stretch of the imagination. I use entry level gear and explore it's limits and boundaries, partly because of budget restraints, and partly because I believe that art is made by humans, and not machines.
A £5000 camera in the hands of a person with no artistic vision will produce mundane and ordinary photos, while a true artist will take a £5 disposable camera and still find a way to produce stunning images.

I shoot mainly using a Sony Alpha A200, with a Fuji S5600 as an emergency backup.
My preferred lenses are Tamrons, using mainly a 70-200 f2.8, and 18-200 f3.5.
Processing is done in Photoshop CS3 for individual shots, Lightroom 2.5 for batch jobs, and I like Dynamic Photo and Photomatix for my HDR work.