I enjoy tracking my creative heroes with my pinhole camera, visiting the scenes of their inspiration. It makes for some pleasant, interesting day trips and holidays. Here you can see a selection of pinhole images created during my journeys.

June 2009 - The Church of St Nicolas, Chora, Greece - The ashes of my favourite author, Bruce Chatwin, were scattered in 1989 in the olive grove around this church, above the village of Kardymyli in the Greek Pelopponese. I thought it would be a tough job to find this church, as the online resources I could locate all said it was a well hidden place, but actually all you do is walk into the village of Chora, and follow the only path (no streets, it's all narrow cobbles and only traversible one abreast) downhill until you reach the edge of the village, just beyond the two millstones, and then vere off left in the olives. The silence was surpreme, the views - of green olives and deep blue sea - peaceful. It was only last month, May, and the wildflower were out, the most colourful scene I've witnessed in years. I rested an hour or so here, escaping from the heat, making a few images and exploring the site. The church is Byzantine but built on the site of an earlier Greek temple, and there is much to hope to find among the long grass.

May 2009 - Sissinghurst Castle Gardens, Kent - Another Virginia Woolf location, this time the home of her one-time love, Vita Sackville-West. It was 5pm, most visitors had left, light was fading and I gave this image just over a minute exposure time. It is almost spot on, the low light and long exposure time allowing more detail to shine through.

April 2009 - Kamondo Steps, Istanbul - Henri Cartier Bresson make an image of these steps once, I loved it, I don't think it was posed, 3 or 4 men standing on the steps, one woman also, a few walking past, a perfect scene of everyday life in the banking district of Pera. I tracked down the steps during my recent trip, the murky-ness of the image due to it being raining - something it did almost every day of my 10 day visit - and nearly 5pm. Exposure time was 5 minutes.

March 2009 - Winchester Cathedral - John Keats walked here. 'I take a walk every day for an hour before dinner,' he wrote to his love, Fanny Brawne in 1819, 'under the trees, past the beautiful front of the cathedral...'

February 2009 - Angkor Wat, Cambodia - I admire the writings of the French Naval Officer Pierre Loti. He travelled a lot in the early 19th century, and a photo of his that I was particularly taken with, made when he explored Angkor Wat - he was the first European to see the place for hundreds of years - showed the causeway. Here's the same view. A difficult shot to make - there were hundreds of people milling about and anybody who entered the complex had to come past me, as I was stood in the middle of the 2 metre wide doorway. A miracle that my tripod stayed upright, bearing in mind the blind actions of most tourists, who blunder about without really seeing anything (including, quite often, the legs of my tripod), especially as the clouds had just arrived, so my exposure was about a minute and half long.

January 2009 - Rome - some of the first photographs I remember seeing were taken by my Uncle John when he was a young boy on a school trip to Rome in the 1960's. Grandad had been there in the war and spoke of Italy with a great affection. I first visited Rome in 1986 and that journey was made, I think, as a result of seeing the photos and hearing the stories. Whenever I go back there now I still think of those photos, of half empty streets and the ancient monuments of Palatine and the Forum.

December 2008 - Lacock Abbey - the home of Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of photography (negative/positive process) as we know it. The first ever image Fox Talbot managed to get, in the 1830's, was of the window above the door that features on the right of my own pinhole photograph. He was using a wooden box, much the same as I do (only I have the great benefit of having stable photographic paper and chemicals to work with) and he made his image from inside the room, looking out.  

October 2008 - Godrevy Lighthouse - the focus of Virginia Woolf's beautiful book, 'To The Lighthouse'. The lighthouse is located on a headland near St Ive's in Cornwall. The day was grey when I visited and the unseasonably cold August weather suited the seals, who played in a nearby cove, perfectly.