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This page contains lots of really interesting info about me (!), if you want more specific details on weddings please click here.

I am a Freelance Photographer born in Yorkshire, raised in Lancashire and now based in the North East where I live with my wife and son. I am somewhere past 30 but have not yet reached 40.

I always find these 'all about me' statements hard to do, how do I make myself sound interesting without being arty and pretentious or sounding like everyone else. Or both!
"Lets start at the very beginning" said Julie Andrews, so lets do just that- I had my first 'proper' camera when I was 14, I had to save up money from my Saturday job of picking tomatoes. I eventually saved up enough to purchase a Praktika BX20 with a 28-70mm lens. It was my pride and joy, I loved it. The only thing that interested me outside of taking the photos was developing the images myself. Much to my Mum's annoyance I 'converted' my bedroom into a darkroom and began processing my own B&W images. Again, I loved it. A couple of years later and more tomato picking I upgraded to a Minolta Dynax 7000i. And that's how it all started. I must have owned dozens of cameras over the years. I now work exclusively in digital, my reasons for taking photographs has not changed even if photographic technology has advanced beyond belief.

The whole of my professional life has been concerned with making images of one sort or another. I've been told that I'm obsessed and that's probably true. If I fell from a train I'd probably be thinking about how to photograph my fall and what lens I should be using before hitting the ground. Quite simply I cant help but be on the lookout for an interesting image, its probably some weird thing in my biological hardwiring.
I'm fascinated by a wealth of subjects and circumstances- people, nature, man-made environments, events, bizarre things, surreal things, jolly things- they all intrigue me. I feel quite flattered to call myself a photographer, someone who is 'allowed' to capture, record and tell things as they are, relay stories, possibly enlighten people or simply just make people feel happy.

All in all I've been involved with photography for the past 20 years. What initially started out as a teenager trying to make some kind of sense of the world has lead to an adult trying to make some kind of sense of the world. My visual fascination for recording and documenting a whole collection of subjects and events has never gone away and has undoubtedly become stronger over time. Over recent years my passion for photography has evolved and has allowed me to develop my skills in areas such as Portraiture, Architecture and Landscapes and more recently Weddings - I feel immensely proud that people allow me to document and capture one of the most important days of their life.
I don't do cheesy, tacky or kitsch, I have my own style that may not even have a name. I find inspiration in other photographers work but I have never tried to ape their methods or tried to 'be them'. I just do what I do and I really enjoy doing it.

Please check out the BLOG HERE for current work and experiments.

For the Technical people out there asking what equipment I use:

Canon EOS 5D
Canon EOS 20D
24-105mm f4L IS USM
70-200mm f2.8L IS USM
50mm f1.4 USM
17-85mm EFS-IS USM
Canon Speedlite 580EX II
Adobe Photoshop CS3
Adobe Lightroom
A Brain and a Pair of Eyes

Many years ago (14 to be precise) I trained in Fine Art. I still paint and you can see that work here.
Art has long been part of my life since I was about one and a half. I would sit on my potty and draw for hours. The potty has long since gone, but not much else has changed. Nowadays, my artwork generally concerns itself with both figurative and abstract elements. I am interested in the versatility of symbols and signs, as well as the dialogue and descriptive structures that these various forms depict. My artwork tends to employ vocabularies that quote and question the familiar, the surreal, commercialism, the comic, nostalgia, everyday detritus, the intangible and the personal. These images are sometimes segregated, mutated or married together in the hope of discovering foreign, nonsensical or even liberated territories. Ok, so now I'm starting to get pretentious!

 

Most photographers hate having their photograph taken,
so here's one of me taken quite some time ago when I
had no choice! I no longer look like this.

Whats on the Stereo?
Radio 4 on the way home
Stuart Maconies Freak Zone on Radio 6
Fabio & Grooverider on Radio 1
Annie Nightingale on Radio 1
Everying from The Aphex Twin to Crosby, Stills and Nash. Autechre to Zappa. Husker Du to Add N To X.

About This Site
All content and design by me, content and design copyright Rhys Baker 2008.
I have spent many many hours trying to perfect this site, learning the intricate ins/outs of HTML, javascript and various tweaks in Photoshop and Lightroom- so please do not pinch my code or concepts! Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding the site or any of its content.

Thanks:
-To Kris for having many of the answers to my questions regarding the more complex and mesmerizing world of code and web-stuff.
- To Mandy Charlton for allowing me to tag along and help out at some of her wedding shoots, without her guide and words of advice I'd still be a million miles behind.