News
Images from a life ill-spent
13th August 2020
Some results from a three-week Covid lockdown task: sorting 60 years of images and negatives. Pix from competing in the East Africa Safari Rally to wars in Iraq, Lebanon, the Horn of Africa, Uganda and Bosnia.
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13th August 2020
Some results from a three-week Covid lockdown task: sorting 60 years of images and negatives. Pix from competing in the East Africa Safari Rally to wars in Iraq, Lebanon, the Horn of Africa, Uganda and Bosnia.Read More
Calcutta and the Hugli River
29th January 2019
29th January 2019
2019 visit to Bengal - new gallery
Images of January 2019 visit to Calcutta and boat trip down the Hugli (a distributory of the Ganges) river. 30 crew and four passengers on the riverboat Sukhapa, a comfortable ratio. Met West Bengal first minister Mamata Banerjee (penultimate pic) in the lobby of Calcutta's Oberoi hotel. She wants to be India's next Prime Minister. If she succeeds I will have met both India's lady leaders -- though one hopes she does not suffer the fate of Indira Gandhi (final pic), assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards shortly after our meeting.
Images of January 2019 visit to Calcutta and boat trip down the Hugli (a distributory of the Ganges) river. 30 crew and four passengers on the riverboat Sukhapa, a comfortable ratio. Met West Bengal first minister Mamata Banerjee (penultimate pic) in the lobby of Calcutta's Oberoi hotel. She wants to be India's next Prime Minister. If she succeeds I will have met both India's lady leaders -- though one hopes she does not suffer the fate of Indira Gandhi (final pic), assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards shortly after our meeting.
George Bush Senior
07th January 2019
07th January 2019
George Bush Senior
Sad to see George HW Bush has died. He was US Liaison Office Chief (ambassador in all but name) in China when I was a Reuters Peking correspondent (1975 – 77). He and wife Barbara cycled around the city and were great entertainers. He took Mandarin lessons seriously. Sons George junior and Jeb as well as Gerald Ford visited during my time there. George as kind enough to mention me a few times in his autobiography. Apart from being a true gentleman, he was a keen tennis player. Attached is a picture I took of him at the Peking International Club. Years later he spotted me at a Palais Des Nations press conference in Geneva and I was surprised when two secret service men arrived unannounced at my office and said The President wanted a private meeting. We discussed old friends, events in China, tennis and his spaniel “C Fred”. What appears to be a gesture of friendship was actually him counting the times he hammered me on the tennis court.
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Sad to see George HW Bush has died. He was US Liaison Office Chief (ambassador in all but name) in China when I was a Reuters Peking correspondent (1975 – 77). He and wife Barbara cycled around the city and were great entertainers. He took Mandarin lessons seriously. Sons George junior and Jeb as well as Gerald Ford visited during my time there. George as kind enough to mention me a few times in his autobiography. Apart from being a true gentleman, he was a keen tennis player. Attached is a picture I took of him at the Peking International Club. Years later he spotted me at a Palais Des Nations press conference in Geneva and I was surprised when two secret service men arrived unannounced at my office and said The President wanted a private meeting. We discussed old friends, events in China, tennis and his spaniel “C Fred”. What appears to be a gesture of friendship was actually him counting the times he hammered me on the tennis court.
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Golden Globe
18th July 2018
18th July 2018
2018 -- selection of images form the start of the round the world single-handed Golden Globe yacht race in Falmouth. Features Robin Knox Johnson's original yacht -- Suhaili.
Muhammed Ali
17th June 2016
17th June 2016
Some previously unpublished pix of Muhammed Ali added to the site:
"Sad to see Muhammad Ali has passed away. In January 1980 he and I, three of his aides, and a small State Department delegation, clambered aboard the US presidential jet, sent by President Jimmy Carter, on an ill-conceived Carter initiative around Africa. The trip started at Dar es Salaam (then the Tanzanian capital). As usual, crowds on the tarmac chanted “Ali, Ali, Ali”. By all appearances, the former champion’s arrival in Dar looked familiar enough: exactly like the humanitarian missions he had become accustomed to. But this was different, and Ali - who had been doing charity work in India the day before - was groggy. Worst of all, he was unsure about why he was even there.
In a plan that seemed like a good one when it was hatched, Carter convinced Ali to help lobby African countries to support a proposed American boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow. The boycott had been ordered by Carter in response to the recent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but the White House knew that a failure to get other nations to similarly boycott could embarrass the US and render its move to sit out the games ineffective.
Now the president was in bad need of assistance in selling the plan abroad - and the boxing legend was needed in Africa. Ali, offended by the Russian invasion himself, agreed to lend a hand. These are a few pix I took in Dakar, Senegal. We also visited Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Ivory Coast and Liberia. The one picture without Ali in it was taken by him with my camera. I am second from the right with the members of his personal staff and a lady from the State Department.
As an aside, in April, just two months after he had received us at his beachside residence in Monrovia, Liberian president Tolbert was murdered in a coup d’état, reportedly "disemboweled in his bed while he slept", by coup leader, Samuel Doe.
On a happier note, in Senegal, we were received by the cultured and pleasant president Léopold Sédar Senghor. He and Ali, who both enjoyed writing poetry, recited their poems to each other on a beach under palm trees. Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the Académie Française."
"Sad to see Muhammad Ali has passed away. In January 1980 he and I, three of his aides, and a small State Department delegation, clambered aboard the US presidential jet, sent by President Jimmy Carter, on an ill-conceived Carter initiative around Africa. The trip started at Dar es Salaam (then the Tanzanian capital). As usual, crowds on the tarmac chanted “Ali, Ali, Ali”. By all appearances, the former champion’s arrival in Dar looked familiar enough: exactly like the humanitarian missions he had become accustomed to. But this was different, and Ali - who had been doing charity work in India the day before - was groggy. Worst of all, he was unsure about why he was even there.
In a plan that seemed like a good one when it was hatched, Carter convinced Ali to help lobby African countries to support a proposed American boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow. The boycott had been ordered by Carter in response to the recent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but the White House knew that a failure to get other nations to similarly boycott could embarrass the US and render its move to sit out the games ineffective.
Now the president was in bad need of assistance in selling the plan abroad - and the boxing legend was needed in Africa. Ali, offended by the Russian invasion himself, agreed to lend a hand. These are a few pix I took in Dakar, Senegal. We also visited Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Ivory Coast and Liberia. The one picture without Ali in it was taken by him with my camera. I am second from the right with the members of his personal staff and a lady from the State Department.
As an aside, in April, just two months after he had received us at his beachside residence in Monrovia, Liberian president Tolbert was murdered in a coup d’état, reportedly "disemboweled in his bed while he slept", by coup leader, Samuel Doe.
On a happier note, in Senegal, we were received by the cultured and pleasant president Léopold Sédar Senghor. He and Ali, who both enjoyed writing poetry, recited their poems to each other on a beach under palm trees. Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the Académie Française."
J Class Yachts - Falmouth Bay
26th June 2015
26th June 2015
Eight new images of three J Class racing taken in Falmouth Bay on 25th June, 2015. They are Velsheda, Lionheart and Ranger.
October 2013 Bhutan assignment
20th October 2013
New gallery: A photo essay of a journey through the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan undertaken in October, 2013.
20th October 2013
New gallery: A photo essay of a journey through the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan undertaken in October, 2013.
Griffopix News
01st March 2013
01st March 2013
New gallery VIETNAM:
- Images taken in January/February 2013 on a journey from the northern highlands bordering China to the Mekong Delta in the south. It was our second visit to the country. Liz and I travelled to Hanoi overland from China nearly 50 years ago just as the war was drawing to a close.
Asked how he was capable of getting such amazing images, photojournalist Arthur Fellig long ago replied “Simple. f/8 and be there.” Since that time this simple statement has become the mantra of every documentary cameraman, be they Fleet Street snapper, photojournalist or travel photographer. The late, great, war photographer Larry Burrows used it in Hong Kong's FCC when he was bothered by an American hackette pressing him to know what camera he used -- as if that was the secret. Larry was killed when his helicopter was shot down over Laos not long after.
Larry Burrows
- Images taken in January/February 2013 on a journey from the northern highlands bordering China to the Mekong Delta in the south. It was our second visit to the country. Liz and I travelled to Hanoi overland from China nearly 50 years ago just as the war was drawing to a close.
Asked how he was capable of getting such amazing images, photojournalist Arthur Fellig long ago replied “Simple. f/8 and be there.” Since that time this simple statement has become the mantra of every documentary cameraman, be they Fleet Street snapper, photojournalist or travel photographer. The late, great, war photographer Larry Burrows used it in Hong Kong's FCC when he was bothered by an American hackette pressing him to know what camera he used -- as if that was the secret. Larry was killed when his helicopter was shot down over Laos not long after.
Larry Burrows