I was born in 1957 in Gillingham, Kent, and took no interest in photography until my late teens when I went on a trip to Monaco to watch the 1976 Grand Prix. I was so envious of my mates who had Olympus and Pentax cameras. That was it after seeing their results, I needed to get an SLR camera. My first SLR was a Zenit, with a Helios 44 lens - it was all I could afford at the time - but I got great satisfaction from my first shots and subsequent darkroom efforts.

Since then I have had a range of cameras all Nikon from the EM, FM2 - Oh I wish I still had that camera! - FE2, F501, F801 generally keeping to Nikon lenses from 50 to 28-85 and 70-210mm zoom lenses, the only exception being a 300mm Sigma APO lens. My main stock of film was Kodak. I loved using Kodachrome 64 and printed Cibachromes. Then the digital age hit us! For a while all I used was a Nikon Coolpix 885 and switched back to film for a short time using a Voigtlander and a Fed 3 with a 35mm lens, just for a bit of fun.

Finally in 2006 deciding that the age of digital photography was in full swing, I made the full changeover to a Nikon D50 with 17-55mm kit lens, a D200 35, 50 ,28-105 and 70-300mm lenses, followed later. Using a Giotto's tripod when required. For walk about street photography I use a Coolpix P7000. For the type of photography I take this is ideal. For the moment!

All my post photograph (studio) work now is done on an iMac Intel Core 2 Duo, using Adobe Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 to make either final changes or digitally manipulate images such as my infrareds and watercolour styles. This website was created using Dreamweaver in CS4 incorportaing the web galleries from Lightroom2.

I have many favourite photographers - too many to mention, but Chris Joyce, Henri Lartigue, Eugene Atget, David Noton, Joe Cornish, Michael Kenna, Michael Levin, and Sir Simon Marsden deserve a special mention.

Paul Griffiths © 2011