No Darkroom Photography

My name is Barry Thomas and I've been taking pictures for over 30 years. I started using Ilford black and white film and then began to develop and print the best ones in my darkroom. In latter years I also printed colour photographs but left the developing to the experts.

I was never that struck on colour developing and printing and was more interested in texture and tones than pure colour. Having said that people tend not to want to see black and white holiday snaps so I started taking colour prints.

Despite now taking mainly colour photographs, my heart still belongs to black and white.

Some of the earlier images on this site were shot with a Canon A1 35mm with all sorts of fixed and zoom lenses, motor drives, flash guns, filters and a bag full of equipment.

Having decided to go fully digital I bought a Fuji Finepix S602 which was a good general purpose multi-mode camera with a zoom lens. Despite being a good camera to get into digital with I felt it lacked the quality of the Canon and 3 megapixels were a bit limiting.

I am now the proud owner of a Canon EOS 10D and two image stabiliser zoom lenses. A Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM and a Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS USM. For wide angle work a use a Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 which I picked up on ebay.

A few years ago I stopped developing and printing my own photographs as I wasn't that struck on breathing in all those harmful chemicals. I also became reluctant to lock myself away in a darkroom, lit only by a dim light, on a warm summer's day. It seemed such a waste.

Now, with the help of a good PC I can download the images directly from the digital camera, and, once in the PC, I use Adobe Photoshop to tweak any imperfections, add any special effects that I want and generally tidy up the images.

Anyway, enough about me. Feel free to contact me if you'd like to talk about the web site, the locations, how the images were produced or if you'd like any help or advice.