Towards Derwentwater. Looking back towards Derwentwater, in the English Lake District, from part way up Glaramara during a walk in April 1999. It was a damp and miserable day, and the cloud dropped lower as the day went on, but the only patch of brightness just happened to fall on these sheep at the right time! Handheld, with an 85mm lens on the Nikon F3 and an exposure that was rather too long for comfort...

Greek Blue. I love the shape of small boats. This rowing boat in the Greek national colours was shot on a quiet Greek island. I think the mooring rope of the larger boat is important (for the picture as well as for the owner of the boat!), and I like the small repetition of shapes by the boats in the distance. The tiny orange float on the left provides some balance.

Autumn Time. A digital montage of an autumn leaves image and a close-up of an old clock face, the colour of the brass of the clock face providing the autumn colour removed from the leaves. An attempt, perhaps, to show the passage of time through the seasons. Not the sort of thing I normally do but it was worth experimenting. A leater version – Christmas Time – mixed the same images in a different way, and was rather more dramatic.

Evening at Buttermere. A view over Buttermere Lake in the English Lake District. Taken with a 28-85mm zoom at 85mm; exposure about 1/4 second handheld, with the camera steadied against a convenient wall. Judges and others have commented that the silhouette of the hills and its reflection – I think that must be Blea Crag in the distance, with Red Pike out of the picture to the left – are too black and solid; I'm not sure I agree, and I think the picture's saved by the thin line of bright between the two.

The Mirror. A nicely matured statue in the garden of a country house in Wales, of a lady checking her makeup in her mirror. I've rejuvenated her features by adding a not-so-mature face, photographed in the studio. In competition judges tended to comment on it as just a statue – I would have thought the eyes might have suggested that everything is not as it seems...

Rooftops. Processed into a 'watercolour' from a slide taken on my favourite Greek island with (if I remember correctly) an 85mm lens with 2x converter. I like the repetitive shapes, split by the diagonal line of the long flight of steps rising up from the bottom centre of the picture.

Beads II. Processed from an original colour print of a craft stall with a suberb and very colourful display of beads. Taken with a long lens, probably the Vivitar 300mm, and blown up from about half the negative. I've tried to give the feeling of a pen and watercolour picture, a style of drawing that I used to do for real in my late teens. The original print made it to the 1976 East Anglian Federation Exhibition, and went on to be accepted in the PAGB Inter Federation Competition.

Take One of Me, Mister! I was out walking with the old Nikkormat FTn and a Vivitar 300mm f/5.6 (a huge lens that I never did like) when this lad and his mates decided to pose. So I turned and grabbed the picture. A bit soft on focus (that 300mm was a terrible thing to focus – so far to turn) and taken on Ilford HP4 in my 1970s grainy period, but I like the (lucky) composition. It made it to one exhibition, but apart from that no-one liked it much!

Leaf. Close-up of the edge of a leaf, with deliberately narrow depth of focus to create nice cirles out of some water droplets in the background. A typical audio-visual image which would be the ideal starting point for a similar picture, with different composition, to fade up and 'exchange' sharp areas and colours. Taken on Kodak Ektachrome with a Nikon F3 and micro 55mm lens (I might also have used a 2x converter).

Harbour. An adaptation in Photoshop from an original slide taken on a Greek island. I've given it a painting effect, and tried to convey that intense brightness that always accompanies Mediterranean sun on the white houses and paths. Original photo on Nikon F3 using an 85mm lens and Kodak Ektachrome film. Looking back on it, a bit overdone!