About me

Is this where I’m supposed to tell you my whole life history? It’s probably not very exciting, but here is a brief summary of ‘me’.

I was born and brought up in West Dorset, living most of my life just outside Charmouth until I was 17, then moving to Lyme Regis when my parents bought a guest house. I was never very interested in school so I left before completing my A Levels, and set about going to get a job. I was too young to receive funding for some basic IT training so I did some voluntary work in a community learning centre, in exchange for attending one of their courses. As a result I gained a basic computer qualification, and ended up getting a full time job there as an admin assistant.

While working there, I really got the bug for computers and technology, so I used to sit awake all night at the weekends, learning about databases, spreadsheets and HTML, all fairly basic stuff if you’re in the industry.

Over the years I developed my skills and began to offer technical support services to local homes and businesses, then I began teaching, and also became a part time tutor for the local adult education authority, and for a further education college. I spent several years teaching a wide range of subjects from beginners’ level computing, to Photoshop and Dreamweaver courses. From here I also branched out into providing commercial web and graphic design services.

In 2011 I moved from Dorset to Horsham in West Sussex  and I got a job in a coffee shop as a stop gap to provide an income. I left my Assistant Manager position there to return to the IT industry, and am now working for a training consultancy firm in the development team, providing IT Support and getting into SQL Server development.

I have also long enjoyed photography, but had never really done very much until I started A Level photography in 2005. I used a Canon SLR camera as old as I am for most of my studies, and after completing it, I rewarded myself with a (used) Canon Digital SLR, the EOS 350D, my next upgrade was to a (used) Canon EOS 40D, and I eventually upgraded to a 6D with an L series.

I have spent some time recently with film and old cameras, and have started processing my own black and white films again. I am hoping to try out lots of different old cameras to see what I can do with them.

This blog was set up as a sort of drop zone for my thoughts and ideas, and to share with the online world things that interest me. In my spare time I like to develop my photography skills and look after my blog. Initially this blog was hosted on wordpress.com, but that didn’t give me the control I wanted. I tried Godaddy hosting, which was absolutely shite, so I moved it onto a self-hosted installation, and now I also spend a lot of time messing around behind the scenes of it. I like to think it’s to keep my hand in on the web development stuff. The site is a sort of constant hobby, as I can play with the appearance and themes, plugins, or just simply write a post.

I hope that also through my website I can inspire people to try out something new; some of the photography projects I’ve posted are really simple, and anyone with almost any camera can do them without spending any money. I’ve posted some other things for inspiration that are cheap to do, antique cameras are incredibly cheap on eBay or at car boot sales, and colour film is relatively cheap to process. If you see something you like the idea of trying, share your results with the #Convexum tag on Instagram or Twitter, or share it on the Convexum Facebook page.

Find me on Twitter, Facebook, 500px, Flickr, Google+ and Instagram