andrew berry
My name is Andrew Berry and I am a Jewellery Designer, Goldsmith. My team and I run a jewellery shop and workshop in South Wales, United Kingdon and CEO of AtThe Bench.com, an Online Jewellery Training website. I also write for several jewellery making magazine and demonstrate jewellery tools and products for a well known jewellery tools suppliers around the UK .
My passion for photography started whilst I was in school, back in the early 1980′s when I had a Praktica MTL3 SLR camera for my birthday. My father always had an instamatic 126 camera, one with those square rotating flash cubes that fitted on top of the camera. He always was taking photographs of the family on holidays, on our birthdays and at Christmas.
The camera was superb allowing me to actually see what I was taking a picture of as opposed to my fathers photos with people heads too close to the edge of the frame or even their head missing. I shot hundreds of rolls of film and spent loads of money experimenting with techniques and styles. Then for my 18th birthday I had a Pentax ME Super. This camera was superb and over the next couple of years I purchased several lenses for it and started to become interested in developing and printing my own black and white photographs.
The family moved house which enabled me to set up a makeshift darkroom in the bathroom with a russian enlarger bought off my good friend, Mark Cleghorn. I remember carefully selecting the correct paper at my local photographic shop and rushing home to test it out. I loved the smells of the chemicals and the magic as the images just appeared on a blank sheet of paper. Amazing!
My photography then was placed on the ‘back burner’ as I went to University, gaining an Honours Degree in 3 Dimensional design. I started up Andrew Berry Jewellery in 1988 and my girlfriend (now my wife) gave up her job in the ‘bank’ to help develop and build the business. My triplet daughters came along in 1997 and only then did I start to re-kindle my love for photography.
In 2009 I purchased a Nikon D90 (my first digital SLR) and was amazed at the versatility of digital era. I now want to try my hand at all aspects of photography, except for wedding photography. I was an occasional assistant for Mark Cleghorn whilst I was in University and was a ‘second shooter’ taking pictures of the guests as they arrived and then rushing off to the lab to then rush back with the guests prints to sell at the evening reception. I absolutely hated that pressure. But loved the creation of the photographs, changing the 105 Hasselblad backs, getting the reflector in the right place. It was like putting together a recipe with the final picture as the finished dish.
So this site is just an overview of the latest photos I have taken. I am slowly learning all about lighting and post production too. I am still unsure when a photograph stops becoming a photograph and becomes a piece of art when it is enhanced or altered in Photoshop though.
Any way, just have a mooch around and if you need to get in contact with me, check out the Contacts page.
Thanks for taking the time to read this far.
XXX
