BIOGRAPHY - SIMON...
More important to you than the numerous weddings and portraits I've photographed over the years is the quality of the photography, the service you receive and the experience of the day.
As a Youth
I am one of a family of five children born and raised in southeast Birmingham. “Our mom and dad” worked hard and were always around for the family. Thanks to loving, caring parents I had a good upbringing with a most memorable and exciting childhood.
I’ve always been full of energy. When at primary school I would regularly skip and run over the cracks in the pavement. We had a park across the road from our home, where I spent most of my youth playing football. Many of our football games would continue late into the evening and included the dad's too. They were wonderful days!
My Introduction to Photography
I was introduced to photography at the age of 16 through a family friend who was an amateur photographer. I purchased a second hand 35mm Praktica MTL2 camera with a 50mm lens, which cost me £25. I would travel on the bus into Birmingham city centre shooting the scenry and the people around quite candidly. Compared to today’s digital photography, shooting with film had a cost each time you pressed that shutter release button. I quickly learned to press the shutter just at the right moment.
Photography Education & Qualifications
I am Qualified with the BTEC National Diploma in Design Photography. One year at Solihull College and two years at Sandwell College in Wednesbury. I was awarded both the Humanities Award for my work and my first commission to photograph Belgium for Kodak. Two separate trips to Belgium for an exciting, challenging assignment, which helped kick-start the way I needed to think about the business world of photography. Valuable experiences I will never forget.
Photography Apprenticeship & Career Beginnings
My first job was as a salesman at Birmingham Camera Exchange, in New Street, Birmingham.
I then became a large format print copy Photographer at Alan Baker's in Birmingham city centre. I would work in the darkroom and photograph using a large format 10x8 inch bellows camera to horizontally project images and graphics onto large rolls light sensitive paper. I would unravel the paper rolls and using heavy-duty magnets, hang them up against a metal wall. I would then feed the paper through the processing machine, after which I would scrub “sulphuric acid” onto the emulsion to expose the paper of the blackened exposed areas. It was a noxious, hazardous job at times. This would create large display images and graphics for commercial and exhibition advertising.
Immediately after my studies I became the Assistant Photographer in a commercial creative studio in Aston Cross, Birmingham. Here I gained more in-depth learning about the best use of quality light in photography. Over three years graft with a lot of gleaning from one the best commercial and model advertising photographers in the UK.
Between jobs I booked a temporary work-break to take on an exciting three-month assignment as the Exhibition Staff Photographer for a youth charity in southern Chile. The assgnment was voluntary and I must say it was an exciting and satisfying experience. Driving Land Rover’s and Hilux pickup truck's to assignments on rough terrain and through rivers as far as 150 miles on some days. Taking the seat out of a Cessna light aircraft and pushing my camera lens through a small hole in the undercarriage to capture images of the terrain below ready for a mountaineering group to be sent out and explore that area. Sailing as a solo passenger on an old fishing boat down the southern coast of Chile on the Chonos Archipelago, my Spanish was very "poquito", but I managed to get by. Those were exciting days!
Photography as a Professional
I was then quickly employed as the Senior Studio Photographer for a business in the city centre of Birmingham, consisting of a team of eleven photographers. I worked hard for seven years and I became recognised as the “all-rounder photographer”. From then on I was behind the camera for almost all portrait assignments the company undertook.
Simon Delon Photography - Today
Today I have well established, successful, progressing business going back some fifteen years. My best decision was that leap of faith to do what I felt I wanted from all I had learned... wih the hope to learn and progress more.