Steve needed to express his creativity.

As a young man he wrote songs and poetry, made and played guitar and hammer dulcimer, enjoyed candlemaking and developing and printing black and white photos. He was successful in business without ever chasing or even wanting promotion but that desperate need for creativity was not being fulfilled. He watched “the Good Life” and “the Fall and Rise of Reggie Perrin”. His soul was urging him to find a way to “do what you want to do, not what you should ”. He even tried free fall parachuting – and became a good and popular instructor! – but it wasn’t enough.

Having met Sue and moved to Wiltshire, several things happened. Sue rediscovered her childhood passion for wildlife and the natural world and Steve absorbed that and saw “a chink of light”. They read “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” and watched the film “Local Hero” and that was it! Steve quit his IT directorship, became a TEFL teacher (with ease of course) and went to teach English in the Dolomites for three months, clutching some camera equipment. He took those first photos to the famous landscape photographer Adam Woolfit and was encouraged and inspired to succeed. The rest is history. He positively exploded into action and the creativity lifted him ever higher. From his first small commission with the AA he went on to enjoy travel, landscape and nature photography.

He has inspired many others through his photography but also through his belief that we must fulfill our dreams and his constant striving to always do things to the very best of his prodigious ability. He was not just creative, but perceptive, inquisitive, witty and generous. Many people he met or worked with became valued friends. His attitude was staggeringly optimistic, to almost the very last day of his life, despite the many cruel setbacks. By fulfilling his dreams in that short life he enriched so many others. Sue and Steve often joked that he should have lived in the Renaissance period. He was, truly, an extraordinary man and he will influence many of us for, perhaps, the rest of our lives.