Community Amigo: Steve King from Ipswich

In this new series, we talk to film fanatics from all around the UK about their passion for film photography and the best places to shoot in their home town. Today we go to Ipswich to meet designer Steve King.

Name: Steve King
LomoHome: stevek
Where I Live: Ipswich, UK

Tell us a bit about yourself.

Hello. I design and produce Optiko, an analogue photography site and printed magazine. Optiko was set up as an online project to highlight the work of predominantly amateur photographers, specializing in film photography, but I wanted to put out a printed version of Optiko too, to make something more permanent and appealing, encouraging readers to study the photographs in more detail. Issue number 5 is due out any day now.

Where did your love for film photography start?

My father bought me my first camera back in the ‘80s – a Zenit TTL, when I was an art student. I took photographs to accompany my portfolio, then sort of put photography to one side when I started work. My passion for film photography was reignited a few years ago when I received a Lomography Fisheye camera from my partner and it’s grown from there.

What are you favourite cameras and why?

I have built up a small collection of cameras now, but each one has a place in my camera bag. My overriding favourites are my Lomo LC-A and Olympus XA2, which go with me everywhere and rarely let me down. Both offer a point-and-shoot approach to picture taking, and possess a great little lens capable of achieving sharp photographs.

Tell us a bit about these photos you chose.

The attached photos are just a small selection of my large library of analogue images, taken with various cameras: Lomo LC-A, Lomo LC-W, Holga 120CFN, Olympus Trip 35, Olympus XA2, Praktica BC1 and Canon AF35ML. The photographs of the kids are my own children. I watch and photograph them everyday, whatever they are doing. My son, Archie, takes a good photograph himself. Maybe one day I will let him loose on my camera collection…just not yet!

Tell us about your Top 3 locations for shooting in your town.

1. The dock or marina. The waterfront area in Ipswich has been transformed in recent years from a crumbling reminder of Ipswich’s history as a busy port to a swanky, bars and restaurants style marina. Some of the old buildings are still standing and offer a chance to capture the old and the new side by side.
2. Any of Ipswich’s parks. Ipswich boasts some 500 hectares of green space, not least the historic parks: Christchurch, Chantry and Holywells as well as numerous smaller parks.
3. Orwell River estuary. We have some of the most amazing estuary and coastline scenery here in Suffolk. You can climb aboard an old Thames barge from Ipswich and follow the river for miles.

If you were to invent a new film camera what would it do?

Anything that would help to safeguard the production of camera film manufacturing would be fine by me.

Thanks for taking part, Steve!

written by hannah_brown on 2014-09-21 #people #amigo #ipswich #community #lomography-gallery-store #gallery-store #analogue-cameras #lomoamigo #eastlondon #londonsoho