Martin Henson (Born 1952) was born in West Yorkshire; here he was brought up with all his family; father, mother, siblings, grandfather, aunts and uncles. He says it was a wonderful time of his life, from those early years of living on the farm, he learned a greater appreciation of the countryside. Henson now lives in a small market town in Otley in Wharfedale. The place is also in West Yorkshire; he works from home in his digital darkroom and does all printing and processing from there. His first camera was bought for him when he was twelve years old and it was a Kodak 120 roll film. He still has it and admires it so much. It was a baker light box camera, leaf shutter and fixed lens but it was a bit hit and miss in quality and took large negatives.
It is the camera that started his interest in photography and he has never looked back. Henson’s first claim to fame was when he won 1st prize in the Leeds show. This gave him the inspiration to enter into more and more shows. Since then, he has won many competitions over the years, and had his images published in nearly every popular photo magazine on the market. He first started in black-and-white developing and printing, then slowly transited to color but he was always drawn back to black-and-white as the preferred medium, for him it’s simple but effective, not garish but dramatic, and for landscape, he says it can’t be beaten.
