About
Paul Debois
Paul Debois is a multi award winning photographer. He was a category winner in Kew Garden's 2004 Garden Writers annual competition and has taken the Motoring Writers Guild Motoring Photographer of the Year prize on four separate occasions. He also won two awards in the 2008 International Garden Photographer of the Year competition for a portfolio of six images from the Pinhole Impressions series. And in the same competition in 2009 he took first place in the people category with an image entitled 43 Gardeners' Hands.With over 20 years of traditional darkroom experience, Paul developed a classic style of printing, drawing from many sources. He has taken this experience over to working with digital media, producing the finest quality archival inkjet prints.
Having worked with various 19th century print processes such as Kallitype, Salt Print, Cyanotype, Bromoil and Gum Bichromate, he started working with digital equipment in 1999, after a chance conversation with a computer imaging expert.
Initially a sceptic, he fast realised the possibilities and advantages of working with digital media. The main problem at the time was the stability of the materials, but now the current generation of inks, produced by Epson and Hewlett Packard, will at least match the life-span of most sliver based processes. In some cases they will exceed them.
The most exciting part is the fantastic range of tone and colour possible, combined with a control that would be difficult, if not impossible in the darkroom. Digital printing has developed as an art in itself, and should be seen along side traditional processes.