Nicholas Hopkins has been taking pictures continuously over the past 20 years and has an archive of over 20,000 images. He is self taught, and enjoys distilling striking images from everyday scenes. He uses little equipment; just a simple mechanical camera (a 35mm range finder) with a standard lens, almost all images taken hand-held. Nicholas always uses natural light and takes unstaged pictures. Each image is hand printed and treated with selenium to prevent fading.
Nicholas employs all weather conditions to bring out the textures of his subject matter, either profiting from clear sharp days to maximise detail and contrast, or, especially in city scenes, using rain to let reflections shine off the tarmac or off cars and trains.
Although contemporary in subject matter Nicholas' pictures are redolent of the 1950s and have a cinematic quality. Amongst his influences he names August Sander and Albert Renger Patzsch.
In his city scenes, Nicholas captures still moments against a busy urban background. Deep focus enables the subject and background to be seen in equal detail thus recording the minutiae of a city's everyday life.
In the countryside, he concentrates on the forms and patterns that are to be found in nature. He instinctively notes compositions that convey a feeling of space or emotion. Over the last few years Nicholas has been visiting selected sites around Lavenham and documenting changes in weather, crops and light.
Locations for photographs include: New York, California, Estonia and Latvia, London, Countryside, especially Suffolk, Poland, Ukraine, Andalusia, Germany, Portugal, Vienna.
