Mark Fletcher

Bio

Someone who was very close to me at the time once remarked that I didn’t see the colours around me only shades of grey. Similarly, they claimed rightly, that I had no appreciation of light and shadow and that the world around passed by me whilst I rushed through it at over 100 miles per hour. They were right.

I grew up with little appreciation of art and a total inability to use even the simplest of cameras. My portraits were decapitated or so “soft focused” they were unrecognisable, my landscapes bore very little if any resemblance to the world in which I lived and more often than not included at least one of my digits. I read somewhere recently about someone who couldn’t even draw by joining the dots or paint by numbers – that was me and I was tone deaf to boot!

Then two or three years ago I had a renaissance. My sporting career was rapidly coming to an end due to the onset of old age, aching limbs and increasing myopia so I invested in a Fuji Finepix S5500 in the hope that I could capture some of the moments I would witness as a spectator in the years to come.

So began an addiction.

As my ability to point the camera in the right direction, keep my fingers out of the way and get the shot reasonably sharp so did my appreciation of what was going on around me. Twelve months or so ago I discovered Flickr and my addiction got worse. I began not only to see action shots but landscapes and macros too. I looked longingly at the work of some of my fellow Utatans and began to read about composition, aperture, exposure, shutter speed and light.

Suddenly, I not only see colours but also tones, shades, shadows and light in my shades of grey. My photographs are not snaps any more and draw some pleasing as well as constructive feedback from within the Flickr community as well as those outside it. Indeed my photostream has had over 71,000 views since 4th July 2006.

The World I now see is very different to the world saw for before my shades of grey are now monochrome images and I see the colours in terms of velvia, hue and saturation. What is more I have a new hobby that I can continue for many years to come. I have now graduated, if that’s the right word, to a Canon EOS400D with a selection of 18-55mm, 10-22mm, 50mm and 75-300mm lenses.

Oh BTW – I’m still tone deaf is there a music equivalent of Flickr?