Clive Blair Photography

Get to Know Me

So where do I start? Do you want to know about my personal life or my business life?
Let’s start with getting to know a bit about me as a person.

So where do I start. Do you want to know about my personal life or my business life?
Let’s start with getting to know a bit about me as a person.

I’m happily married to my wife, Marie and we both love cats. We have 2 adopted cats – they actually live next door, but they’re round our place so often, it’s as if they live here. Which is ideal as we often cat-sit for our neighbours when they’re away.

I love silly jokes. My current favourite comedian is Tim Vine with his silly puns like: “I’ve decided to sell my Hoover – it was just collecting dust.” or “My mate’s motto was: “Always leave the theatre with them wanting more!” Great guy, but terrible anaesthetist”

I love languages. I loved learning French at school and picked up a few German and Spanish words from my school friends who chose those languages. Latin wasn’t my favourite, but it has come in useful, as many English words/languages have a Latin root.

A friend at school taught me how to write my name in Urdu. Then several years later I had the opportunity to learn to speak and read the language, which I jumped at!! So now I can also speak and read Urdu, but I’m rubbish at spelling so don’t ask me to write anything, unless it’s my name! 😀

I love jaffa cakes. If you want me eating out of your hand just offer me jaffa cakes and I’ll do whatever you ask!!

I hate tea (yuk!) but love coffee. My other favourite drink is red wine.

My passion for photography started at a young age when I was given a box brownie camera. I must have been about 7 or 8 years old at the time. I taught myself the fundamentals of photography, built my own darkroom to develop and print my own black and white photos, then progressed to colour.

It’s funny how those same skills and understanding of how to colour balance photos are still useful in the digital era. In fact many of the tools and names found in Photoshop are actually carried over from the darkroom era. For example dodge and burn means to lighten or darken a part of an image, which was a technique we used to use back in the day.