This is an ongoing personal project in which I pay homage to and photographically reference works from fine art, photography and cinema. The work referenced ranges from highbrow classical art, such as the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio, to lowbrow kitsch and erotica, such as the work of Vladimir Tretchikoff and Tom of Finland.

This series came about through collaboration with Canadian physique model Kedori. The idea is based on a recurring dream I have: I’m in a public place and I’m feeling uneasy. I have this feeling that something’s wrong. But I can’t put my finger on what it is. Sometimes I’m looking for a particular place like a toilet. But I can’t seem to find it. I’m feeling frustrated and anxious. It’s only when I wake up that I realise the cause of my uneasiness. In my dream I’m inappropriately dressed, in a state of undress or totally naked.

These are all unpublished portraits where I have contacted the model or the model has contacted me directly mostly through social media to collaborate on personal work for each of our personal portfolios.

All of these still life photographs are illusions. Most of the subjects aren’t real. They’re replicas: replica food, statues and collectable statuettes, life-size and miniature replicas of iconic characters, and sixth scale articulated action figures. I‘m more interested in the illusion of reality than reality itself. I’m interested in injecting life into something fake, creating the illusion of reality through lighting, composition and careful camera framing. I like the irony that something fake creates the same emotional response as the real thing. It’s the way I feel when I see replica food displayed outside Japanese restaurants.

In this series I explore the beauty and sensuality of fetish. As a photographer I believe I have a fetishist’s sensibility. I obsess over the details like reflections and texture. As an art student living in London in the 1970s, I first became interested in the subject of fetish after discovering the work of British pop artist Allen Jones. I remember buying a Roxy Music album just for the cover art: a night cityscape featuring Amanda Lear, clad in shiny black leather, opera length gloves and six inch stilettos, walking a black panther.

Most fetish wear is black. With a subject wearing black there is a limited colour palette, basically an arrangement in grey and black. My challenge to myself is to create and use colour to engage the viewer, creating drama and intrigue, while still working with a mostly black subject matter. The context is fetish but the treatment is studied and formal. Each composition is carefully lit, composed and balanced.

Using continuous tungsten lighting, filtered with coloured gels, in this series I explore the gym-toned physiques of my models. Working with willing and trusting models, comfortable and confident in front of a camera, I am able to explore various scenarios, poses, lighting techniques, colour palettes and concepts based around the human form.

One of my first photographic inspirations was the work of Hollywood portrait photographer George Hurrell, who worked almost exclusively in black and white. He was a master of light and shade. I loved the way he worked with shadow and the careful placement of a light source to create drama, mystery and glamour.

All these images were shot in colour and converted to black and white. Once the colour is removed the images take on another life. I have to focus on working only with light, shade and tone. And without the distraction of colour I am drawn to the form and texture.

Sometimes I approach a shoot with no preconceived idea, taking inspiration from the moment. And sometimes I come up with an idea or concept first and need to find a model, source a costume, a prop, a location or whatever. I also need time and space to reflect and work out how to go about executing the concept. Sometimes I have a theme I want to explore and generate ideas around that theme. The theme may germinate from an object I acquired, like a mask or a fake gun, and somehow want to utilise, so it serves a purpose and is put to use, rather than just sitting around adding to my collection of dust-catching useless objects. Sometimes I just add on a concept later by re-editing the shot, adding more information to create a narrative or a context. Whatever the approach I take, the end result is an image with a concept.

These black and white body shots were all shot in colour and converted to monochrome using preset filters from Nik and Luminar 2018. The removal of colour helps to focus the viewer’s attention on the chiaroscuro lighting.

I grew up with black and white: black and white television, 35mm black and white film, black and white school photos. It used to be the default mode. Even my first computer, an Apple Classic circa 1990, had a black and white monitor. I remember the first time I saw colour television in 1973. It was a magical moment for me just like that scene in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ when Dorothy opens the door to Munchkinland. Colour has a powerful effect. And a lack of colour also has a different but equally powerful effect. For me this is an exercise in returning to Dorothy’s Kansas.

I have chosen to revisit these fetish shots, which were all shot in colour – colour I originally added to the light sources with colour gels to create a specific colour palette and for dramatic effect to enhance the mostly black clothing and accessories the models are wearing. Removing the colour I consciously designed and added changes the focus. To get the monotone effect I desired, I used black and white tonality filters to make the blacks richer and the highlights brighter. They are still the same original files hidden away underneath the adjustment layers. But without the distraction of colour they are now totally different images. The focus is now only on form and texture – texture of skin, leather, latex, PVC and fishnet.

These shots are all of structures on or near water. They include beach huts, boat sheds, kiosks, bus shelters, lifesaving huts, residences and other miscellaneous structures. The water featured includes oceans, bays, harbours, lakes, ponds, streams, canals and even rain, at various locations including England, The Netherlands, Copenhagen, Sydney, Melbourne and Ballarat.

Scrolling through my portfolio of still life shots, deciding which ones to convert to black and white, I realised some shots worked well in monotone and others didn’t. A skull is still a skull in black and white or colour. It’s not its colour that identifies it. But without its identifying colour, it’s hard to decide if a spherical object is an apple, orange or tennis ball. And while I was converting these shots to black and white using tonality filters, I was also inspired to reformat some of these images to the square format favoured by some social media sites.

These urban landscapes were all taken at blue hour just as the lights come on and the sun is setting or later. They were taken with Sony RX100 compact camera while out and about or during my travels cruising the streets for photo opportunities.

These shots of regional Victoria were taken on with a Sony RX100 compact camera on train and bus journeys to the locations.

All of these images were taken with a Sony RX100 compact camera while travelling.

I’m a night owl, a nocturnal animal, a creature of the night. I get my ideas at night. Things come into focus. My head clears, I feel calmer and more alive after midnight. All the boring stuff that needs to be done during the day disappears. The layer of dust covering everything in my apartment evaporates in the warm glow of artificial light. The shadows hide all the cracks and decay. For me daylight is prosaic. There’s something mysterious about night, something intangible. It’s why I love film noir.

When I travel, once I get my bearings, I like to wander the streets at night. If it’s been raining everything is gleaming. The streetlights cast an eerie glow over everything. While the harsh reality of daylight illuminates everything, leaving nothing to the imagination, even intruding into the shadows, artificial light creates pools of light that fall away into blackness. What you can’t see, you imagine. The glare of daylight leaves nothing to the imagination. It is finite. Darkness has no boundaries. It is infinitesimal. Welcome to the night.

I didn’t consciously set out to take multiple versions of the same shot, at the same location, from the same angle, at different times of the day. I discovered I’d returned to the scene of the crime the next day after editing a night shot from my 2019 holiday. The more I searched, the more matches I found. It makes sense. I’m obsessive. If I find a location that interests me, I return to it at various times of the day, just to see it in a different light… literally.

Once I discovered my habit, I began to consciously exploit it, getting up before dawn to catch the first light, or arriving just before blue hour and waiting until that moment when the ambient light matches the artificial lights. I’m interested in light, how changing one variable, the light source, its quality and direction, while keeping the other variables consistent, can change the whole tone and mood of the shot.

I believe colour and colour palette can often carry a shot creating a particular mood: warm colours, cool colours, primary colours, secondary colours, tertiary colours, saturated colours, subdued colours, summer colours, winter colours, complementary colours, analogous colours, monochromatic colours, neutral colours, too many colours fighting for attention. It’s what we notice first. It’s what I notice first anyway. Just like the male bowerbird’s obsession with the collecting blue objects, I’ve been known to follow people in the street wearing a certain shade of intense red. But sometimes less is more.

In stripping away the colour in these shots there is a change of focus. All of these high-key images were shot in colour and converted to black and white using Luminar 2018. I chose images that I felt could stand on their own, without colour, and which stood out because of their strong lines, shape, form, or their tonal range and texture. For me this is an exercise in creating a mood, through the use of high-key tones, without the distraction of colour. The dominating tonal range goes from white to mid grey. For me it’s not as simple as just dialling the colour saturation down to -100. Without colour the contrast needs to change. I experimented with different black and white pre-set Luminar filters, settling on a filter that emphasised the light and airy feeling of the shots without bleaching out the highlights. The high-key tonal range gives a feeling of space.

When I was a kid, like most little boys, I was given plastic model kits as presents. I remember getting racing cars, jet planes and even an antique gun. I assembled them all but I found it an empty experience. I never really connected with these objects. I also got a couple of model kit houses; English houses, probably designed for model train sets. I remember the brand name: Tri-ang. I connected with these small-scale dwellings. Everyone needs somewhere to lay their hat. I think I like the symbolism of houses. They represent security. Every man’s home is his castle.

But I’ve also always felt like an outsider. Like Groucho Marx, I never wanted to belong to any club that would have me. I like photographing houses at dusk, when the lights have just come on and residents are settling in for the night, safe and sound, while I’m outside prowling the streets, looking for photo opportunities. Symbolically and literally I’m on the outside looking in.