About me
The ocean's elemental beauty and remote coastal wildness stirs me deep inside. The sight of a distant horizon conjures a wonderful sense of boundless scale and freedom. The dynamic optics in a raging tempest sets my adrenaline coursing. While the molten hues and mirrored reflections in a fiery dawn or dusk never fail to fill me with awe.
This is why I find standing on a remote shoreline with my camera so fulfilling. My 30+ year professional career covered many imaging disciplines, but Seascape photography is what truly inspires me. It's a fundamental feature in my enjoyment of life. A driving passion that challenges, inspires and excites. It's fair to say not a day goes by without a thought of where I could head to or what I can shoot.
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For I'm lucky enough to live on the magnificent Atlantic Coast of Cornwall, and able to dedicate my days to furthering my approach to this exciting and demanding genre of Fine Art Photography.
So if you're interested in finding out where all this came from, please read on...
Background
Dad, a big bass and little me
​The call of the sea has been there since I was a small kid. For while I grew up in leafy, land-locked Surrey, my father was a keen sea angler and alongside our every school holiday, he would head to the Kent or Sussex coast at every chance.
I always wanted to join him because, after I'd helped dig the bait - big, juicy Lug worms that stained your fingers bright green when you picked them up, and impressively voided their guts in a bright orange jet when you threw them down! - I could go and play in the sea. Something I loved more than anything.
Dad was relaxed about this, but Mum had a phobia of swimming. Therefore, to calm the fears of her darling youngest drowning, she made Dad promise to always go in with me. Which ate into his precious fishing time and limited my play time. So we devised a cunning plan. I would - in Mum's words - 'join a grown up's swimming club and learn to swim properly'. Thereafter, every Tuesday and Thursday evening, and early on a Saturday morning, Dad would take me training at the Gorringe Swordfish Swimming Club in Wimbledon.
Aged 11, I came home waving a certificate proclaiming I could swim a mile. A declaration that ensured I was now free to play in the waves any time I wished! With our mission accomplished Dad and I settled into our new agreement, yet he continued nurturing my watery affinity by coming home with goggles, fins, or on one memorable occasion, a full face mask with integrated snorkel...
Surely I was Jacques Cousteau!
While this was the murky English Channel and I could hardly see my hand in front of the glass, I was in and out of the sea all weekend. Staying in until my teeth chattered and my lips turned bright blue! Then I'd dry off and help out with baiting the nightlines (at low tide), or picking shrimps out of the big net Dad pushed through the surfline (on a lowering tide), or sitting by the rods at all hours of the day or night, waiting for a bite with the tide on the rise.
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​So with all this, I was completely at home in and around the sea and my affection for the coast grew and grew. But in 1973 this relationship was forged forever when I first laid eyes on the mighty Atlantic Ocean.
It was on a summer holiday to Porthleven where the big breakers on Loe Bar and the impossibly clear turquoise waters around the harbour, had me transfixed for two incredible weeks. In snorkelling, fishing and body-boarding, I had found my element! It was profoundly moving and when time came to go home, through a wobbling bottom lip, I precociously vowed that one day I would live in Cornwall. And I meant it!
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As for my photography, it all started around this time too.
Both my Grandfathers and my Dad were keen amateurs and I loved their magic lantern evenings where the fruits of their labours were projected up large and in glorious Fuji, Agfa or Kodak Colour. This was back when the TV was a small black and white. So their big, colourful images made a huge impression, and this was duly noted. As was my constant pestering to have a go with Dad's fab new Minolta set-up. Subsequently, for my twelfth birthday I was given a Kodak Instamatic and the world of imaging opened up before me... Or as far as my paper round money would stretch!
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"A COCKY TWERP..."
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Education-wise things were changing too. After ascension to Senior school and initially showing scant enthusiasm for academia but a willing ability to get into trouble, the outgoing Headmaster turned things around for me. For Mr. Bowerman (an ex-RAF Typhoon pilot who smoked a pipe and spoke in ebullient Queen's English), had ruled Ruxley Lane with an acerbic tongue and, if required, a swish of the cane, for years. He constantly reminded us, his "wide-eyed minions ", that he "had no truck with shabby behaviour". Something I found out in my first months after being hauled up in front of him "Thrice!". As a result he'd pigeon-holed me as a "cocky little twerp with less than bugger all to offer!"
Bacchanal - Figures reclining and drinking in a landscape - A. Bowerman
However, coinciding with my move up, the Comprehensive system was introduced and Mr. Bowerman had resigned his position in protest at this "educational travesty created by namby-pamby farts!" Luckily for me though, he didn't go far. Because as a noted Landscape artist in his own right, he took up the post of Head of Art. A fortuitous move in that this was the one subject I paid attention to.
Upon entering his new department, he saw my paintings. And in a move new to the school, he had some framed and hung around the buildings. The first I knew was when standing in the dinner queue and looking up to see my seascape of a lifeboat rescue displayed on the corridor wall. Somewhat surprised, I pointed it out to my friends, who duly informed me there were two others up the main staircase.
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"Don't get excited Simmons, they're only hiding cracks" he teased. Yet as a lowly first year, such recognition made me really proud. Plus, in 'Games' we'd just had our first swimming session at Epsom Baths where I'd left my peers bobbing in my wake. The mightily impressed sports master, Mr. Gillette, had come over at the end of the session.
"Come on then Simmons, show us what you can do" he encouraged. So I walked around to the shallow end, dived in and swam a length underwater. I climbed out the deep end to Mr. Gillette's applause and on the coach back to school, he appointed me Year 1 Captain of 'Livingstone' Team.
These two events had a really positive effect. I settled down and started paying attention. From then on, other than a few dodgy reviews in Maths and from 'Spud' the Rural Science teacher, my school reports started to shine.
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A 'FINE ART' ATTITUDE
Yet Art was my favourite subject. And for the next seven years Anthony Bowerman took me under his wing. He used photography in his preparatory works and taught me to use a camera as "a creative tool and not a bloody scientific instrument". He urged me to adopt "a Fine Art attitude where only one's best efforts suffice".
"Never accept giving your less my boy" he'd say when dismissing what he termed "lazy attempts" out of hand.
I thrived on his challenge, and by 5th Year, I'd been given a key to his preciously guarded Photography Department. Armed with an Olympus OM1 and endless rolls of 35mm Ilford film, I sought expression through experimenting with manual settings and darkroom techniques.
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From this point I gave up my childhood ambition to follow in Monsieur Cousteau's wake and become a marine biologist. Now I knew the creative arts were going to form the foundation of my career in one medium or another. And while my level-headed Mum wasn't so sure, my Dad - whose own considerable artistic skills were left frustratingly un-tapped until he discovered evening classes in his late 40's - gave me his full encouragement. Throughout my teens he took me to many art exhibitions and galleries. And on one such visit to The National Gallery, I came across the works of Joseph Mallord William Turner RA.
What a star! I thought as I stood in awe before 'The Fighting Temeraire'. A single moment that sparked an appreciation and affection to last a lifetime.
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When time came to leave 6th Form, Tony Bowerman's shining reference got me in to Epsom College of Art & Design and thereafter a Junior Art Director's role amongst the bright lights of London's West End. My creative career was up and running!
Alongside my own photographic commissions, I got to work with a range of noted Photographers and Colour Houses. Witnessing how experts worked their light and processed imagery was both a privilege and huge boon. ​Also the timing of all this could not have been better. For while I had my photographic roots set firmly in film and the darkroom, this was the mid 80's and the digital revolution was on the horizon. In the coming years I was ideally positioned to embrace the new technologies that would change Imaging forever.
The Fighting Temeraire - JMW Turner
By the late 80's the creative industry had been turned on its head. Bustling design studios and processing labs full of of hugely talented artists and technicians were being replaced by sterile computer suites manned by a few techies. Good graphic output dried-up as 'Imaging Technicians', who knew their way around the multi-million pound IBM kit but lacked the creative juice and processing power to get anything special from it, floundered around. This was the period when the dismissive term 'photoshopped' was adopted and the reputation of professional photography reached its lowest ebb.
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THE WILD WEST END
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Yet the drought was soon over. Apple came to the rescue with their affordably capable, graphics friendly hardware. Armed with a 'Mac' and handful of software packages, newly re-trained 'Creatives' staged a comeback. When the Power Mac was launched in the early 90's, the phenomenal imaging capabilities of the notoriously unstable Adobe Photoshop were fully unleashed, to herald in the new 'Wild West End'.
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Small Creative Hotshops popped-up all over to take on the big Ad agencies. I set one up in Covent Garden with a couple of talented freelance friends, an assistant and a studio junior. It was a fantastic time. With our potent computers, software and imaginations the business boomed.
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However, I didn't embrace every aspect of digital. The one area it really struggled in was the digital camera and the shoddy files they produced. This was not Fine Art and in my mind I could hear Anthony Bowerman remonstrating "You're only cheating yourself my boy!"
As a result, other than for pack shots and family snaps, I shunned digital photography for over 15 years. Insisting instead on working only with hi-resolution film scans - and in so doing, mastering Photoshop's full potential.
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SET ME FREE!
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It wasn't until 2009, with the advent of the Raw file and Full Frame Sensor (and video capability) that I finally invested in a DSLR. An impressive Canon EOS 5D MkII. And in so doing, not only did it bring the lucrative revenue stream of commercial Photography fully in-house, but out on my beloved coastline, it set me free!
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Film's creative shackles of frame counting and a fixed ISO were suddenly gone. The exposure triangle had been rounded off and, with a few big memory cards, I could shoot to my heart's content. Plus, back in the studio, my editing, proofing and printing skills gave me the same experimental edge I enjoyed in the darkroom.
I invested further in a superb Canon 1DS MkIII alongside a range of lenses and Lee filters. Now, working with the best kit, programmes, papers, inks and printers, the world of Fine Art Seascape Photography opened up before me.​​​​​​​
Establishing credentials
When it came to creative inspiration, I found it good to have a hero to put front and centre in all I did. A guiding star to strive toward and judge my efforts by. And for me, this was not going to be another photographer. It was Turner.
His experimental, multi-media approach to expressing the effect of directional sunlight on weather and sea became the leading light of my Seascape approach. He too had loved Cornwall, and after taking his first rowboat ferry across the Tamar in 1811 - long before the Newlyn School's artists had pinpointed the microclimate of St. Ives Bay - Turner attested to the different kind of light he'd witnessed all around Mid and West Cornwall's shores. I too had often seen this 'Atlantic Light' for myself, from Trebarwith Strand down to Sennen, and all the way up the south coast to Polkerris. And armed with my DSLRs, I headed out with vision's and aspirations of capturing just a little of what he had so masterfully conjured.​​​​​
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THE OCEAN RULES!
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In so doing, I really started to get attuned to photographing out on the coast. For beyond the land-locked water features in a landscape -the rivers, lakes and waterfalls - that are restrained by their surroundings. Out on the coast the ocean rules! It creates a dynamic, powerful, reflective, vitally expressive element to conjure with. A demanding yet wholly exciting environment where all my experience in surfing, fishing and diving offered real-time rewards. It helped me read the sea's moods, predict its actions and conduct and compose around its interplay with wild light and reflections.
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I didn't solely focus on Cornwall though. Commercial commissions saw me travelling up into the Arctic Circle and circling exotic equatorial climes. Yet in my private work it was always the UK's Celtic coasts that drew me back time and again. In particular Scotland's NW Highlands and Islands that are so stunningly majestic. The first time I laid eyes on Sandwood Bay near Cape Wrath, I walked its vast, golden shoreline with tears of wonder streaming down my face. The same happened when I was given freedom to roam across Ardtornish Estate in Morvern, and discovered its many incredible outlooks.
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I could happily have made a new life up there but for the fact that in 2001, I had met Sam. A fabulous Truro girl and the love of my life. While she had moved up to live with me on the edge of Epping Forest, we regularly returned to Cornwall. Affording me the chance to get truly acquainted with the incredible coastline. Where, after going digital, my 'Cornish Seascapes' went from strength to strength.
In 2011, at Sam's insistence on entering, I won the annual Cornish Point Of View photography competition with one of my Porthcurno images. This provided the spark that fired my confidence to do more. I launched a website and held my first solo exhibition. My image sales increased, and along with stock royalties and private commissions, I began to make a 'seascape living' and now I began to see a new way forward.
When the time came for my two great kids, Connor and Meghan, to go to university and art college, in February 2013 Sam and I headed west.
A new vision
When finally I kept my childhood promise and moved to Cornwall, it was with the aim of focussing solely on my Seascape photography. Yet I knew that to make a living would take more than selling prints. I'd need a new vision that would utilise my professional skill set, suit the new lifestyle and exploit my knowledge and love for this wonderful part of the UK.
Photography was still enjoying a spiralling uptake. And looking at the booming 'Enthusiast' market and the multitude of group tour holidays and guided day trip courses that were spinning off from it, had got me to thinking.
I COULD DO BETTER?
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On my travels I had come across many such courses. Where alongside the obvious revenue potential it offered the organisers, I could see there was much scope for improvement in terms of client experience and individual reward. Surely I could do better?
Over the years the germ of an idea become a fully-fledged new business concept. Drawing on my photographic passion, extensive professional skillset and wide-ranging coastal experience, I would host 'Cornish Seascape Workshops' from my new studio/home on the Atlantic Coast. Unique, one-to-one, residential courses that would focus on the Seascape discipline but break the mould in terms of course content, client experience and exclusive focus.
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In October 2013, my first paying client, Jen Beresford, a professional lifestyle photographer from Northern England, said in her review, "I never use the 'A' word, but my Cornish Seascape Workshop with Chris was 'Awesome'!" I used this in my advertising and it all went on from there!
Today
Today, alongside my ever growing tome of personal work, I have earned a much valued reputation for excellence and reward in photography training. After investing in the build of a new studio/gallery and guest apartment, under the banner of the Cornish Seascape Academy my extended range of multi-award winning courses and photo-holidays go from strength to strength.
​'KEEP IT REAL!'
Down in the littoral, I continue to thrive on my personal Seascape challenges and furthering my approach. So all is good... with the exception of the big, dark cloud that's looming over the fine art horizon. Artificial Intelligence. My heart sinks when I see it creeping ever further into today's modern workflows. For its blinkered acceptance is threatening the integrity and credibility of the art form I cherish.
I know it's going against the progressive digitalisation the imaging industry and media are blindly embracing. And I understand there are many simplifying, streamlining and online applications where its use is commercially relevant. But when it comes to embellishing and falsifying photographic imagery through 'Brushes', 'sky replacement', 'pre-set plug-in filters', 'HDR', 'Effects' etc. etc. then this is artificial, spoon-fed, image making! As such, these photo-composits created using AI should be labelled as such and kept well away from Fine Art Photography.
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In the face of such freely accessible fakery, my mantra as I head down to the beach, is and will always remain... 'Keep it real!'
