The Start of Something Good.....

OK, this is the first time I've 'blogged' so, welcome to you and welcome to me. Basically I've seen a couple of other guys use this to great effect and figure this could be a great outlet for me to communicate and share some images with anybody that wants to take a look.

So, who am I, well the quick skinny is I was born and raised in the UK. I am now living in Vancouver, BC with my lovely wife Davina and rockin' dog, Oscar.

As a young lad I used to love colourful imagery, like comic books and record album covers (yes I know that ages me!), they were like great pieces of art to me, I used to draw a lot, but really found peace and enjoyment with a camera in hand, taking photographs of any and everything. My other interest in my younger years was with the American car culture which introduced me to drag racing. So growing up I'd get out to Santa Pod Raceway when ever I could and just loved the audio-visual spectacle that was the drags.

Career-wise, unsurprisingly, I wanted to be in graphic art but in a strange turn of events I ended up in an engineering apprenticeship which I completed after five years. Well, after a few more years I found myself working in motorsport as a race car technician, and spent the next 12 years turning wrenches and fabricating parts for many different kinds of race car (but none of then were a drag car). It was a fascinating career with tons of travel that took me to most major continents around the world, especially with the last three years working on the Formula 1 circuit. Drag racing and hot rods were considered, for the most part, a joke by the guys in circuit racing, so as a result, I didn't keep in touch with my interests from my younger years and photography had to go on the back burner even though I was in some pretty cool locations, there just wasn't any time.

So, in 1997 I left F1 and motorsport for a new life in Canada, initially distancing myself from all forms of racing. One of the first things I found myself getting interested in was a return to photography, it wasn't long before the spark had me, once again, looking at the world as a gallery of cool images and seeing potential images everywhere I looked. Within a couple of years I was discovering a strong N. American car culture that exists up in the N.W. and it wasn't long before I found my local drag strip; Mission Raceway Park. Mixing my love of photography with the wonderful imagery of the drags has been a joy ever since and from the local response to my work, people are seeing how much enjoy photographing every aspect of this great sport.

Seeing work of other photog's like the very awesome Mark Rebilas it inspires me to continue to try and produce images that are different to the normal third angel start line shots you see so often in drag race photography.

I am hoping to share some of my work and give you the lowdown on my weekends at the drags in the weeks to come and hopefully, you to, will see just how much I enjoy this work and maybe get a kick out of it as well.