- Tamanawis Gallery // About -

Welcome to the gallery pages of Tamanawis. Here you'll find a collection of my photography work from the past couple of years. I've arranged the photos into a number of small projects, split by country or location, and I hope you will enjoy them.

If you're a reader of the main Tamanawis blog you'll know that I'm based in Scotland, and that I love to take pictures when I go fishing. You won't find many typical Tamanawis fish photos here in the gallery though, as most of the photos have been taken during travels around Scotland and France.

Taking pictures when I travel is one of the ways I like to discover and imagine a new place. I find it helps me to notice things I wouldn't have otherwise noticed, and to engage with my surroundings in a deeper way than when I don't have a camera. In that respect, I reckon it's just like fly fishing. In photography the camera can be a tool for insight, just like the fly rod can be when fishing.

Up to now (June 2009) most of my photography has been done with a Yashicamat 124G medium format camera. The 124G is a Twin Lens Relex camera which means it has one lens which directs light onto the film, and a second lens which sends light into a viewfinder for you to see. This means the camera doesn't need a giant mirror like a Single Lens Reflex camera (SLR), so it's quite small and light considering the large film size it uses. It takes square pictures which measure about 6cm x 6cm on the film.

The Yashicamat is a totally manual camera, and whilst it does have a built in light meter to judge the exposure, I prefer to use a separate hand-held meter. This gives you a lot more control over the exposure as well as helping you to appear like you know what you're doing. My other cameras are a Nikon SLR (F80) and a dSLR (D40x) with cheap lenses.

I personally prefer to do 'serious' photography using either black and white film or colour transparency film. Whilst I've had a few photos from the dSLR that I've liked, I just don't connect with the all-digital workflow, or with the way the images seem to look. Perhaps I'm the problem rather than the camera, but I don't really care. Photographing with film is how I started and how I most enjoy taking pictures.

I scan photos I've taken on film using a cheap Epson 4990 flatbed scanner, and use Adobe Lightroom to organise, crop and adjust them as I deem fit.

If you'd like to contact me for any reason, including for print sales, head over to the contact page.