David Thorpe

I was born in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, England. I trained as a press photographer on The Kent and Sussex Courier and moved on from there to a career in Fleet Street.

I left the staff of the London Evening News in 1977 to freelance, covering everything from wars, show business, fashion, and studio to publicity work for rock stars like Paul McCartney.

I have always had a keen interest in the latest camera technology and consider the Micro Four Third cameras from Panasonic and Olympus to be the peak of those developments so far.

A penalty of that development has unavoidably been complexity. One of the things I most enjoy is mastering that complexity myself and then passing on that knowledge to others, whether in print or via my videos on Youtube.

Photography has given me access to many, many fascinating people, famous and not and a fund of funny and touching anecdotes. Here's one from a shoot with Paul McCartney.

At a studio in Wandsworth, SW London, he was shooting a video for a song. One of the sparks asked him how much money he would make if the song was a hit. "A lot", said McCartney. "How long did it take you to write the song?", asked sparks. "Easy one this," said Paul, "about 20 minutes." "Blimey!", came back sparks, "money for old rope, innit?". "it is", said McCartney, "you ought to do it."

My interests outside of photography include music, guitar playing and cycling.

I live in south west London and a small hilltop village in Languedoc, France.