Facelift ! Photograph

Born in 1970 in the Bogside in Derry~Londonderry - Northern Ireland (The North). Childhood years spent through some of the most turbulent times in Ireland's armed conflict when rioting and shooting on the streets of my home town were part and parcel of everyday life. I often wish that I'd had the benefit of hindsight - coupled with a few quid for a decent camera - in those formative years. If I'd had, I would have surely captured some of the most amazing images of everyday life in a conflict zone because, even though I didn't see it that way at the time, that was in fact what 1970's and 1980's Derry was. (I patiently await the arrival of mind download technology to reproduce those images) At 15, as well as studying for exams, I became involved in Irish pirate radio in Donegal and have over the past thirty years presented radio programmes on both Irish pirate and legal radio stations. As well as starting out in radio in the mid eighties, I also developed and pursued a keen and active interest in photography, although, unfortunately in those earlier years I was, like most, limited by the costs involved in purchasing and developing film (and hampered by the absence of mind download technology.) Nowadays I work freelance, mainly in photography, and have been lucky enough to have had work published in local, national and international newspapers, magazines and also used in television productions, both in the UK and Ireland as well as the USA. I love to travel and picture the things at home and abroad that I find beautiful, ugly, remarkable, unremarkable, quirky, boring, interesting, zany, normal - I think you get the idea - I enjoy sharing images that sometimes aren't that special until you apply the narrative. What do I mean by that ? Well one of my favourite "apply the narrative" pictures is one that I took in San Diego,. It was an picture of a window. White frame with tiny diamond shaped, criss-crossing leaded glass panes. Nothing remarkable until you apply the narrative. This was the window that a 16 year old girl called Brenda Spencer fired gunshots from on January 29, 1979 as folks arrived to start a school day at Cleveland Elementary School - The incident is thought to have been America's first, but sadly not last, school-yard shooting and inspired the UK hit single - I Don't Like Mondays by The Boomtown Rats. I photograph people, landscapes many other things.