About me
The dynamic optics in the ocean as it pounds upon a wild, remote coastline stir me to the core. A distant horizon conjures a sense of boundless scale and freedom. The raging elemental energy in a storming tempest sets my adrenaline coursing. While the molten hues and mirrored reflections in fiery twilight hours never fail to fill me with awe. This is why I find standing on a shoreline with my camera so fulfilling.
My 30+ year professional career covered many photographic and creative disciplines but Seascape photography is what truly inspires me. Wildly unpredictable and exciting, it's fundamental in my enjoyment of life. A driving passion that never fails to challenge and inspire me. Not a day goes by without a thought of where I could head, and what I can shoot. For I'm lucky enough to live on the magnificent Atlantic Coast of Cornwall and able to dedicate my days to advancing my award-winning approach to this wonderful aspect of the photographic art.
So if you're interested in where all this came from, and led to, read on...
Background
Dad, a big bass, and little me.
The call of the sea has been there since I was small. For while I grew up in leafy, land-locked Surrey, my father was a keen sea angler and alongside our every school holiday, he'd head to the Kent or Sussex coast at every opportunity. And I always wanted to join him because, after I'd helped dig the bait - big, juicy Lugworms that stained your fingers bright green when you picked them up, and impressively voided their guts in a bright orange squirt 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 water. Therefore, to calm fears of her darling youngest drowning, she made Dad promise to always go in with me. Which ate into his fishing time and limited my play time. So Dad and I devised a cunning plan. I would - in Dad's words - "Join a grown up's swimming club and learn to swim properly." Thereafter, every Tuesday and Thursday evening, and ludicrously early on a Saturday morning, Dad took 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 of independence' ensuring I was now free to play in the waves any time I wished! With our mission accomplished, Dad and I settled into the new arrangement. 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 it was the murky English Channel and I could barely see my hand in front of the mask's glass, I was in and out of the sea all weekend. Staying in until my teeth chattered and 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.
We witnessed many remarkable events on our coastal adventures. Violent channel storms that tore the night apart with crackling lightning and booming thunder. Especially the one back in February 1967 that sank the Torre Canyon oil tanker and wrecked the wooden fishing boats of Pevensey Bay's inshore fleet. I was only six, but I recall how when we returned for the Easter holiday, the shoreline's high water mark was lined with a stinking, sticky, black swathe of coagulated tar and tallow-covered wreckage for as far as the eye could see. An awful sight made horrific by the rotting carcasses of hundreds of dead seabirds that were trapped in agonised throes amongst it.
Dad, Mum and Pop - my paternal Grandad - helped make a towering bonfire and my brother Adrian and I spent the rest of the week shovelling the gruesome, sticky, black flotsam onto the pyre that burned day and night. By the time the waxing high tides finally reached the fire, to make it hiss, steam and wash away, we had cleared our section and the two adjacent sections of bay between the jutting breakwaters.
Beyond the spectacular coverage of RAF jets firing rockets to set the vast oil slicks alight, the Torre Canyon disaster was the catalyst for me starting to question what we were doing to our beautiful planet. A wondrously mesmerising place where, lying back in the glowing halo of a roaring Tilley lamp and looking up into the starry heavens, I witnessed meteor showers so bright, they cast sparkling reflections across the millpond blackness of the sea as they scorched through the night. Or blazing summer sunsets, that set the waves and sand alight with molten gold and fiery amber. Or freezing cold, foggy dawns where thick haw frost covered the shoreline, and how my wellington'd feet made the stones and shingle pop and crackle as I walked through the enveloping whiteness down to the obscured and muted sea. The mournful drone of a distant fog horn my only accompaniment. Through such varied and vivid experiences, I took in my surroundings and started to feel at home in the coastal environment. But in 1973 the 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 turquoise breakers on Loe Bar and the impossibly clear waters around the harbour, held me transfixed for two utterly fantastic weeks! In swimming, snorkelling, fishing and body-boarding, I had found my element. It was all so wonderfully and profoundly moving. When time came to head home, through a wobbling bottom lip, I precociously vowed that one day I would live in Cornwall...
As for my photography, it all started around this time too.
Both my Grandfathers and my Dad were keen amateurs. 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 TV was a small, grainy black and white, so their big, colourful images made a huge impression that was duly noted. As was my constant pestering to have a go with Dad's precious new Minolta set-up. For until then I had only been trusted with his clunky old Box-Brownie. Subsequently for my twelfth birthday I was given a 35mm Kodak Instamatic, and the world of imaging opened up before me... Or as far as 'point and squirt' photography and my paper round money would stretch!
"A COCKY TWERP..."
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 fighter 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 few months after being hauled up in front of him "Thrice!". As a result he 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 an "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 actually paid attention to.
Upon entering his new department he saw my paintings. And in a move new to the school, had some framed and hung around the corridor walls. The first I knew was when shuffling along the dinner queue and looking up to see my seascape of a lifeboat rescue prominently displayed. Somewhat surprised, I did a double take and, once sure it was indeed mine, pointed it out to my friends. Who nodded then duly informed me there were two others up the main staircase.
"Don't get excited Simmons, they're only hiding cracks" Mr. Bowerman teased. Yet as a lowly 1st Year, such recognition had me swelling with pride. To top this off nicely, 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 called me over at the end of the session.
"Come on then Simmons, show us what you can do" he encouraged.
So I went to the shallow end, dived in, and swam the length underwater. I climbed out the deep end to Mr. Gillette's applause and on the coach back to school, he appointed me 1st Year Captain of 'Livingstone' Team.
All this had a positive effect and 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.
A 'FINE ART' ATTITUDE
Yet Art was my 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 anything 'less' my boy" he'd say when dismissing "slovenly attempts" out of hand.
I thrived on his challenge, and by 5th Year I'd been given a key to the preciously guarded Photography Department he'd somehow managed to set up in an out-of-bounds section of the main school building. Armed with an Olympus OM1 and endless rolls of Ilford black and white film, I sought expression through experimenting with manual settings and darkroom techniques.
From this juncture 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 un-tapped until he attended evening classes in his 50's - gave me his full encouragement. Throughout my early teens he took me to many art exhibitions and galleries. And on one such visit to The National Gallery, I came across the incredible 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.
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 advertising scene.
Here, 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 could not have been better. For while I had my photographic roots set firmly in film and darkroom, this was the mid 80's and the Digital Revolution was on the horizon. In the ensuing years I was ideally positioned to embrace the new technologies that would change Imaging forever.
The Fighting Temeraire - JMW Turner - 1838
By the late 80's the Creative Industry had been turned on its head. Bustling design studios and processing labs full of talented artists and technicians were being replaced by sterile computer suites manned by a few grey 'techies'. The exceptional creative output the UK was noted for dried-up as these '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 time when the dismissive term 'photoshopped' came into everyday parlance and the reputation of professional photography reached its lowest ebb.
WILD WEST END
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, we newly re-trained artists staged a comeback. When the Power Mac launched in the early 90's, Photoshop's notoriously RAM hungry, unstable platform was tamed and its incredible capabilities were fully unleashed to herald in the new 'Wild West End'.
Small creative Digital Hotshops popped-up all over London to take on the big 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.
However, I didn't immediately embrace every aspect of digital. The one area it really struggled in was the hybrid digital cameras and their shabby little image files. This was by no means a Fine Art medium and in my head I could hear Tony 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 the next fifteen years. Insisting instead on working only with hi-resolution film scans - and in so doing, mastering Photoshop's full potential.
SET ME FREE!
It wasn't until 2009, with the advent of the Raw file and Full Frame Sensor (and video capability) that I finally invested in my first DSLR. An impressive Canon EOS 5D MkII. 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!
Film's creative shackles of frame counting and a fixed ISO were suddenly gone. The exposure triangle had been rounded off and 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, a brave new world of Fine Art Seascape Photography opened up before me.
Establishing credentials
When it came to creative inspiration, I found it good to put a personal hero front and centre of all I did. A guiding star to strive toward and judge my efforts by. And this for me was not another photographer, it was Turner.
His experimental, multi-media approach to expressing the effect of directional light on weather and sea became the leading light of my Seascape approach. He too had loved Cornwall, and after taking a rowboat ferry across the Tamar for the first time in 1811 - long before the Newlyn School's artists had pinpointed St. Ives Bay's microclimate - Turner attested to the different kind of light he had witnessed all around mid and west Cornwall's shores. I had often seen this bright, clear, colourful light, and armed with my DSLRs, I headed out with visions and aspirations of capturing just a little of what Turner had so masterfully conjured.
THE OCEAN RULES!
In so doing, I really started to get attuned to shooting out on the coast. For beyond the land-locked water features in a landscape - the rivers, waterfalls, lochs and lakes - that are restrained by their surroundings, out on the coast the ocean rules! It provides a dynamic, powerful, reflective, vitally expressive visual element to conjure with. Creating a demanding yet exciting fluid environment where all my experience in surfing, fishing, diving and kayaking 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.
From here on, commercial commissions saw me travelling up into the Arctic Circle and circling exotic equatorial climes. Yet in my personal work, it was always the UK's Celtic coats that drew me back time and again. In particular Scotland's NW Highlands & Islands that are so stunningly majestic. The first time I laid eyes on Sandwood Bay, far up near Cape Wrath, I walked its vast, golden shoreline with tears of wonder streaming down my cheeks. The same happened when I was given freedom to roam across the Ardtornish Estate in Morvern and discovered its many incredible yet rarely shot coastal outlooks.
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 coastlines. Where, after going digital, my 'Cornish Seascapes' went from strength to strength.
In 2011, at Sam's insistence on my 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 began to see a new way forward.
When the time came for my two wonderful kids, Connor and Meghan, to go to university and art college, Sam and I headed west.
A new vision
When I finally 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 recognise the current photography market, utilise my professional skill set, dovetail with our new lifestyle and exploit my knowledge and love for this wonderful part of the UK.
After a decade of burgeoning growth, DSLR sales were still on the up. This had created a booming 'Enthusiast' sector that was catered to by a multitude of diverse group tour and day trips. And this had got me thinking.
I COULD DO BETTER?
On my travels I had come across many such courses. Where alongside the obvious revenue potential it offered, I could see there was much scope for improvement in terms of individual client learning experience and lasting reward. Surely I could create something better?
Soon the germ of an idea became 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 focussing on the seascape discipline, but breaking the mould in terms of course content, client experience and exclusive focus.
In October 2013, my first paying client, Jen Beresford, a professional lifestyle photographer 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 reputation for excellence and reward in photography training. After investing in the design and build of a new studio/gallery and guest apartment annexe, under the banner of the Cornish Seascape Academy, my extended range of multi-award winning courses and photo-holidays go from strength to strength. While down in the littoral, I continue to thrive on my personal seascape challenges in furthering my approach. So all is good... with the exception of the ominous, dark cloud looming over the fine art horizon... Artificial 'intelligence'!
'KEEP IT REAL!'
My heart sinks when I see AI migrating from social media outlets and less capable imaging software platforms and creeping ever further into today's workflows. For this blinkered acceptance is diluting skills, dumbing down creativity, questioning the integrity and threatening the credibility of the art form I have cherished since school.
I know this flies in the face of the progressive attitude the imaging industry and media are blindly embracing and espousing in order to remain 'relevant' (whatever that means?) and drive sales. And I will agree there are AI applications that are artistically relevant. For example, image file expansion software, where one remains in full control of the output is fine with me. But surely, when it comes to embellishing and falsifying photographic imagery through overt re-touching, or using 'Pre-set plug-in filters', 'HDR', 'Effects', 'Brushes', 'Sky replacement' etc. etc., then this is spoon-fed, artificial image making? As such, photo-composites created using AI, should be labelled separately, judged in their own category, and kept well away from Fine Art Photography.
In the face of lazy, accessible AI fakery, my mantra as I head down to the beach, is and will always remain... 'Keep it real!'
