New boy, my first attempt

Hi if anyone is out there, this is something totally new to me so I am sure I am going to make lots of mistakes as I go along,

I hope this little blog will maybe turn into a mix of information and interesting stories.
A little bit about me, I have been a photographer for almost 45 years and I'm still learning, I am principally a Portrait photographer doing mostly Families and Children.

I have a Studio in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I have concentrated on B&W and up until recently it was all hand printed in the darkroom. Almost 4 years ago I bowed to the inevitable and bought a digital camera, a Nikon D70.

I experimented with that and after many hours working with Photoshop I was convinced that I could turn out work as good as anything I was doing in the darkroom. Nowadays I think I can do more and better.

People ask me if I have missed the darkroom and I can honestly say no, I have absolutely no desire to return to that dark and smelly room. I sit as I am now at my computer looking out onto the street I live in and watching people passing by taking their dogs for a walk on the beach about 100 yards from my front door. I can live without all the chemical smells of Fixer etc and the long hours of washing prints, especially as they are now going to charge for water.

So what do I do now? Well I have 2 printers at present, an Epson 3800 and an Epson 4000 which I am now setting up as a dedicated B&W printer. I used to have Epson 2100 which was a dedicated B&W printer using Jon Cone "Piezetone" inks from the States, it died on me, so I decided to use the 4000 as my B&W printer but this time I am going to use MIS inks. I also like the idea of the bigger B&W print from the 4000.

This is my first post and I will try to add some pictures to make things a bit more interesting.
Thanks for looking
Gerry

I welcome your feedback so please leave a comment or email me - gerryATgerrycoe.co.uk Replace AT with @