Who Is Keith Jones?
Born in Barry, Glamorgan my father had an interest in photography and a darkroom under the stairs. My first camera at 14 was a Fed, a soviet camera. I built up the lenses and even had a bellows for some early macro shots, hard work since it wasn’t through the lens focusing.
I can’t remember a time that I haven’t been interested in natural history and was fortunate to spend some 6 years in the Scottish Highlands, walking, guiding, taking photos and sometimes just looking at the amazing Scottish Landscape and Wildlife. One of my best days was watching a Golden Eagle and a Peregrine hunting together and sharing a meal.
Some 30 years as an accountant and a business consultant, I decided that the call of the wild was for me. Currently completing a Marine and Natural History Photography degree in Falmouth, loving every minute and having my outlook on life changed.
Inspired by Charles Darwin and Dr. Joseph Bronowski, I was fortunate to go the Galapagos and see Darwin’s Finches, one of the foundations of the “Evolution of the Species”, a wonderful place that stole a piece of my heart. I worked with th e Charles Darwin Foundation and ran some workshops on photography and produced some images and a video for them.
A passionate ethical wildlife photographer, with a skill for teaching and mentoring I am enjoying the world of creativity, leading individual and group tours and helping people to get the best from their camera.
A recent trip to Lapland to look into climate change gave me a sense that the photographs were not doing the topic justice, so embarked on developing a plan to go back and make a film about the issues the Sami face today.
I am currently investigating how I can develop into Eco Counselling and taking people into the countryside to discover nature and how to capture their creative side and investigating nature deficit disorder.
Artists statement
My work explores the relationship between ethics, natural history, wildlife and emotional memories. With influences as diverse as Chris Gomersall and Charlie Waite, with my all-time influencer “Weegee”. Creative variations are fashioned from both explicit and implicit photography.
Ever since I was a teenager I have been fascinated by the traditional understanding of the decisive moment. What starts out as a nature-based triumph becomes finessed into a dialectic of ethical issues, leaving a sense of achievement and the prospect of a new directions.
As subtle derivatives become clarified through studious and academic practice, the viewer is left with a testament to the state of the present and the hope of our future.
As an educator I have progressed to training trainers to teach others, an aspect of my practice that provides great joy in seeing others grow and develop. I enjoy mentoring in both one to ones, small groups and running photography tours.