About Steve Hawkins

Born in Ludlow, Shropshire in 1962 from Isle of Wight stock, and educated (or sort of) at a 1970’s comprehensive in Daventry, Northamptonshire, the foundations were laid for a long, rewarding and fulfilling career doing….well…..something!!

A visit to the Naval recruiting office with my list of useless C S E’s proved successful and I joined the Navy in 1978 as a junior seaman. Free digs and 25 quid a week allowed me to buy my first proper camera, an all singing and all dancing Olympus OM 10 which I pressed into immediate use recording drinking sessions around Europe and the UK with the occasional landscape thrown in, just to remind myself I’d been there!

Unfulfilled by a life on the ocean wave, I left the Navy in 1985 to take up a career in……well…….something else!!

Needless to say, job opportunities for seamen in Northamptonshire are not that great, so what followed was a list of jobs over several years which included:- Rigger, Farm Labourer, Machine Setter, Paramedic, Furniture Maker, Antiques Dealer, Lock-Keeper, Able Seaman (again) and finally Train Driver.

Since buying that first camera in 1978 which I still own today, my passion for photography has grown continuously, along with the size of my equipment bag. So, just maybe, all of those unauthorised overdrafts, early starts and back-breaking hikes might have been worth it!

My work since starting as a freelance has been used widely for calendars, greetings cards, postcards and in magazines.