As soon as Tom began his talk last night, we knew we were in excellent hands.  With a confident and relaxed presentation style, he gave us an excellent understanding of his approach to fine art architectural photography.  

The talk was very well structured, clear and informative, in essence a masterclass on how to create fine art images of contemporary modern architecture.  He encouraged everyone not to pick up the camera too soon, to look at the building(s) from mulitple positions from far and near - look for the angles, the lines or curves, the symmetry etc.   Using mostly black and white, to emphasise the shapes and lines, plus slow shutter, to remove people and make the most of passing clouds, he shared some stunning images from London, Paris, Berlin and  York.   And how to deal with those converging verticals - inevitable when angling the camera to capture the height?  Make it look deliberate, find one element of the scene to the side or centre of the image and make it vertical, to balance the image.   Whilst he usually works to remove people from his images, now and then, he found including a person added to the story and gave the viewer pause for thought.   He finished his talk with colourful images from Venice and a very quick example of his post-processing.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Tom has  been taking photographs for many years now. He originally focused mostly on macro photography of flowers, and then expanded to include landscape, architecture and portraits.  He shoots with Sony & Leica cameras, and also his phone, mentioning some very usedful apps, such as ReeHeld for slow shutter and Average Camera for multiple exposures.

As well as giving a range of talks, Tom Peck also leads photographic tours through his organisation Quest Photography  See Tom's blog for more inspiration.