About this site

This is www.stevesimons.uk, a WordPress instance living on a linux container (LXC) in Proxmox VE on my self-hosted network.

If you choose to read it, you’ll find some of the random thoughts and discoveries that I can be bothered to commit to writing, and some of my photography work.

I’ve been a keen photographer since my late teens when I first started out with a Zenit 12XP, a solid Russian film single lens reflex (SLR) camera that I used to learn about exposure, shutter speed, ISO values and composition. It was a good way to learn, as it cost additional money to have the exposed film developed and then prints made from the negatives, an time-consuming experience sadly lost to today’s generation of digital photographers. A little later I learned how to develop my own films in a little cubby-hole I called a darkroom, and then produce prints using an enlarger and chemicals for developing and fixing the image on paper. The practice involved quite a few smelly chemicals, specialist paper stock and other accessories that required weekly trips to the local photography stockist. Again, this is lost to today’s youngsters unless they choose to use film as their medium.

I adopted Canon as my brand of choice when I could afford a more sophisticated camera, and then followed them into the digital age when Photoshop and Lightroom replaced the darkroom, and computer screens replaced paper and frames. I now use ON1 Photo Raw and Affinity to process my captures.

I stayed with Canon until fairly recently when I switched camps to Nikon. I currently have a Z6 Mkiii, a Z fc and Z mount lenses from a manual 7Artisans 35mm f1.4 DX for walk-about and street photography, to a NIKKOR Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR for birds and wildlife.

Not a subscriber to the mainstream social media circus, I share my images on Pixelfed to connect with other photographers around the world without being subject to the whims of ‘the Algorithm’. I’m far more likely to engage with people who use hashtags properly as well as alt-text for accessibility.