Bio

Hello, and Welcome to my Digital Studio 

Although my professional résumé states that I am an IT Service and Operations Manager, my real passion is Photography and Graphic Design! A passion I use to finance my expensive semi-professional photography hobby … 

This is my Story 

My interest in photography started to become more serious when I purchased my first digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 5700. I had just volunteered to manage and coach my son’s under 8s football team and took the opportunity to take photographs of games and the club presentation day team photo’s. That was back in 2002. I continued to manage the football team (Winnersh Rangers Eagles) for ten years, hanging up my boots at the end of their under 18 season 2010-2011. As the football progressed so did my camera equipment and my technique in capturing sporting events, especially football. 

It was after a photography shoot of my daughter’s football team when I was first approached to photograph a football game as a commission. I suppose this is when my photography status changed from amateur to professional! The mistakes I made and the specialised skills I learned from football action photography has given me the opportunity to photograph other sporting games and events, and through this exposure I have been offered commissions to photograph weddings and promotional events. 

During my early digital photography days when my photographs were, shall we say, in need of some minor adjustments, I started dabbling with Photoshop. At the time my wife Sue was a PTA member at my son’s secondary school. After one particular meeting she produced a poster of the up and coming Christmas Fayre. My comment at the time was that it didn’t look very inviting and was full of clipart. I spent the evening producing an alternative poster with Photoshop – I have been producing posters, event programme’s and programme adverts (for local company advertisements, including Barclays Bank in Wokingham) for the Forest School Summer, Spring and Christmas events ever since … me and my big mouth! 

By accident I have become “quite good” at producing digital graphical media. Through my connection with Winnersh Rangers Football Club I was asked to produce a photograph presentation for each football team that could be projected onto a big screen in a theatre as part of the annual presentation evening. As is typical with me, I took a simple Powerpoint photograph slide show idea and turned it into a display of photographs, graphics and music all produced and presented as a video and DVD movie to offer players and parents at the end of the evening. The amount of time and effort needed to produce the graphical display, and my determination to always better the previous year eventually lead to me taking a break from this production after four years. I had to make time for paying work, but it was an experience that I hugely enjoyed, especially the feedback I received from club members. 

The Photograph Buzz Board

As a photographer I am always in search of new ways of presenting and displaying my photographs for my own pleasure and home decoration. I have experimented with paper, canvas, acrylic, metallic and fabric materials for displaying single images, but I wanted a solution for displaying a series of photographs that was different to any other montage or collage. 

Photography is all about capturing a moment in time, an interpretation of an event or occasion that means something to you (or me). But what if you wanted to capture a single image that covered one moment in time, and then another and another that could be brought together to tell a story that covers hours, days or even years?

A film maker creates a storyboard of still images or sketches that build up to create the scene of a moving picture, a story. 

A storyboard is not a new idea. We have been printing or digitally archiving photographs and assembling them in order of date and time within a photograph album or on a PC for years. But, photograph albums and digital images get filed away on shelves and complicated computer filing systems, only to be brought out and showed off when the occasion suits. 

What if you could file your photographic story on mini-photo cards that are assembled in memory groups or in event order and then turned into a decorative photographic picture to hang proudly on a wall or furniture centre piece? It was during one of these thoughtful moments and a need to find a perfect Christmas present for my sister and parents that I came up with the DigiStudio Photograph Buzz Board. My parents had returned from a Mediterranean cruise with a storage card full of photographs that I had already produced as a DVD video slide show to music, and my brother-in-law sent me some pictures of my sister’s beloved Chihuahua’s. Gift problem solved, and they went down a treat. Once their friends had spotted the eye catching display, I started to receive some orders. Through my online store and shopping cart I now receive a steady stream of Buzz Board orders that keep my evenings busy!

Well, that’s my story, thank you for taking the time to read my Bio, and I hope you enjoy the rest of my web site. 

Graeme