Adrian King

Adrian King is a trained Hydrogeologist who was born and raised a sleepy village on the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire. Adrian has recently returned home to the south coast after spending a number of years in Berkshire, South Wales and Bristol, and can now either be found at his family home in the New Forest or with his fiancée in Dorset.

Adrian’s interest in photography was sparked at the age of 14 when a relative let him borrow an Olympus OM2 to take a close-up photograph of a bumble bee, and gave him the resulting photograph (which he still has in an album somewhere).

After seeing the image, Adrian was firmly bitten by the bug and started out with a Pentax KX and 50mm f/1.7 kit lens, and with this camera, he achieved an A grade when studying for GCSE Photography at Brockenhurst Sixth-Form College.
Adrian subsequently upgraded to a Pentax Program-A, then to a Ricoh XR-X and finally a Ricoh XR-X 3PF before his interest waned and he fell into taking mostly snapshots.

A job in the IT industry then gave him a regular bonus that was used to buy photographic kit, and the purchase of a Canon EOS 400D and kit lens re-kindled his interest, although the limits of the EF-S 18-55 kit-lens very soon became apparent. This unfortunately led to furious saving to enable the purchase of better quality glass.

Living in the New Forest meant that Adrian has always had a keen interest in wildlife, and has therefore naturally gravitated towards wildlife, close-up and macro photography, with his Canon EF 100mm Macro lens rarely being removed from the camera body between spring and autumn.

Adrian still specialises in taking images of plants and flowers, insects and butterflies, although the macro does occasionally get turned on what are normally mundane household objects which become unrecognisable when shot at greater than life-size through a macro lens.
Adrian is currently working on broadening his photographic horizons by working on more landscape photography, and after discovering the Strobist website has also invested in some lighting stands, shoot-through umbrellas, reflectors and wireless triggers and been experimenting more with studio photography and portraiture.