About Me

As a retired active mature person, I am as passionate about photography and cinema today, as I was when beginning to explore those areas in the late 1960s.

I am attracted by various different types of subject matter, styles and genres of photography. I like to "see" a picture, and then just take it as it is in the viewfinder. I personally prefer and admire photographers who involve the minimum of manipulation and digital post processing of their images. I very much admire photographic work that stands on the merit of the original observation and the whole original viewfinder composition, using the absolute minimum of manipulation and processing of the image. It is something that I attempt whenever I can.

With the advent of digital photography I am staggered at the huge amount of modern photography that is dependent on large amounts of post processing of the image for its impact. To me these often highly processed images pushes them to become far more like photo illustrations rather than "true" photographs that accurately represent what was originally seen. Admirable and full of impact as these are - to me such an approach goes down the path of being imitative of other media and art forms. I can really admire such work but personally prefer the less laboured, less pictorialist, less imitative, more spontaneous modernist approach to photography. As you may gather I have missed the joyous simplicity and pleasure involved in traditional analogue photography. Perhaps I am a bit of a reactionary to the tyranny of Photoshop and other software packages? As well as continuing to work digitally, I have also recently began taking pictures again with traditional analogue film and an analogue camera.

I have enjoyed three careers in my life, the first working within the audio visual/media production industries.

The second was working within creative media education, latterly as a Head of a large Creative Studies Faculty.

Lastly I have worked as a cinema journalist, a consultant and national accreditor to UK University media and film school courses, and a volunteer worker and archivist for a media organisation based at Pinewood Film Studios.

Film Projectionist Joop DeGruiter 2014