COLIN GEORGE JOHNSON 1944 -2005

When I was 8 years old my uncle gave me a Minolta automatic camera. This is him, reluctantly posing for one of the first pictures I ever took with it. He also bought me my first set of paintbrushes, my first SLR camera and my first version of Photoshop. Most of these were gifts I didn't even know I wanted at the time, but now I can't imagine life without them.

He was a keen amateur photographer, working for hours in his darkroom on pictures he'd taken everywhere from travels abroad to his back garden. But he rarely showed them around, and when he died in 2005 he left behind boxes, stacked four feet high, filled with photographs we'd never seen. So that a few of them will meet the wider world, and in memory of his creative gifts to me, here are a few of my favourites. I hope he would approve.