Peter Hemment LRPS, LSWPP


I am a retired research academic with a passion for the visual and performing arts. However, I trained as a physicist and made a career in microelectronics and materials science working both in government employment and in academia.

Thanks to retirement I now have the opportunity and time to pursue my interest in the arts mainly through the medium of digital photography. Although I have experimented with drawing, oil and watercolour painting and even wood carving, it is photography that I find most satisfying and also challenging. My interest in photography developed during school days when I used a little Kodak Six-20 Junior folding camera (1940’s vintage) both to capture family ‘snaps’ and also to record landscapes and travel scenes. Subsequently, like so many of my contemporaries, my photography progressed from B&W prints to 35mm colour transparencies and then to colour prints – however, in those days I used mainly commercial print houses.

About eight years ago I purchased a compact Sony digital camera. After a while I advanced to Nikon D300 and D3X DSLR cameras and since then I have been working to improve my understanding of image capture, manipulation and printing using Epson Large Format printers:- Stylus PRO 3800 (Ultrachrome K3 inks) and Stylus PRO 7900 (Ultrachrome HDR inks) to produce giclee prints on museum grade fine art paper and canvas media. Adobe Photoshop has been an invaluable tool. I am entirely self-taught through extensive reading and participation in inspirational workshops and specialist courses delivered by the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) and Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers (SWPP) – I am a member of both societies.

Thanks to my chosen profession before retirement, I was privileged to be able to travel extensively and experience different cultures, peoples and places which have all been captured on film. In retirement these travels have been replaced by more frequent visits to galleries, exhibitions and attendances at concerts and theatre. My photography is all about people – where the images are captured digitally, processed with Photoshop (CS5) and printed with Epson inkjet printers using archival materials. The images range from scenes of people in urban environments to studio portraiture, from traditional to contemporary. I like my images to suggest a story line and convey the emotion of the moment. Ideally every image would carry an implied narrative.

A selection of my photographs are included on this web site.