Peter is an obsessively keen amateur travel photographer, winning the 2020 Travel Photographer of the Year competition, ‘Colours of Life’ category, which attracted over 25,000 entries from 147 countries. He served as a trustee of the Royal Photographic Society from 2021 to 2023, helping to direct the Society’s transformation to bring better photography to everyone, and continues to judge competitions and give talks to photographic societies and clubs around the south of England.

Peter uses his interest in photography to better understand new places and cultures. He travels extensively for both business and privately, having worked for high technology organisations such as Nokia and Panasonic and the public sector including the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development. He has particular experience of South Asia where he lived in Delhi for 2 years (2018-20), as well as frequent visits to Afghanistan.

For his personal trips, he plans his own itineraries off the usual tourist trails to better understand the history and culture. Examples include visits to Nepal, China, Bhutan, Madagascar, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Myanmar, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, the Silk Road, and a comprehensive tour of south America.

Peter’s talks use his photography to tell stories about the locations he visits, together with insight into how the images were taken so that his audience can learn the techniques. This unusual mix was used in his first book ‘A Picture of India’ to provide a better understanding of Indian culture and which is now published and available through Amazon.

Click here to visit Peter's website >> www.evocationimages.co.uk

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PHOTOGRAPHY TALKS

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Travel Photography – Taking better holiday pictures
This introductory talk for beginners to advanced photographers uses audience participation to explain what makes a good image and then goes on to explain how to plan a trip for better pictures, using one of the ports of call as an example. The main points of technique are illustrated using photographs from the speaker’s own collection and the talk finishes with a checklist of ideas that the audience can copy with their camera phones to take away.

Smartphone Photography - NEW FOR 2025
Over 90% of photographs are now taken with smartphones rather than conventional cameras and whilst we photographers will always say that capturing a good image is not about the equipment, there are some significant differences in approach between smartphone and conventional photography. This talk looks at the development of smartphone cameras in terms of some of the key technologies, to the point where photographic quality (from 2024 onwards) is arguably very similar to higher end conventional cameras. The speaker poses the key question: is it time to make your smartphone your main camera? The talk also includes pointers on of some of the major features of smartphone cameras such as night modes and Live/Motion Photo.

Street Photography – Story Telling through pictures
Presented as a subset of travel photography, this talk builds on the techniques of the talk ‘Taking better holiday pictures’ to show how to take street pictures which tell a story about the place being visited. The talk starts with some images taken by the speaker – if possible using examples taken during the same cruise so that the audience can relate to them. A brief history of street photography is described together with the laws and ethics of photographing people in different countries. The audience is then taken through a 6 point plan which enables them to create stronger images for themselves and which can be tried at the next port of call.

Landscape Photography – Story Telling through pictures
Presented as a subset of travel photography, this talk builds on the techniques of the talk ‘Taking better holiday pictures’ to show how to take Landscapes with greater impact and which give a stronger sense of the location, paying attention to foreground, middle-ground and background elements. The talk starts with some images taken by the speaker – if possible using examples taken during the same cruise so that the audience can relate to them. The audience is then taken through a 6 point plan which enables them to create stronger images for themselves and which can be tried at the next port of call.

Photographing Aurorae and Night Sky Photography
This talk was prepared to help guests to understand the conditions and requirements for taking good aurora and night sky images and the right camera settings to use for both traditional cameras and camera phones. Content includes light pollution and the geo-magnetic index as well as practical aspects of taking images from a moving ship.

Image critique - What makes a good photograph:
This talk starts with a look at some iconic images and invites the audience to consider what makes them iconic. Using his experience of judging camera club competitions, the speaker then describes what makes a good image taken by more typical photographers and explains the difference between snapshots and ‘made’ images. Technical quality and design quality in an image are covered with examples after which the audience is invited to pull it all together with a (kind) critique of some of the speaker’s images. This talk also builds on the first talk (Taking better holiday pictures).

Shooting for Stock - selling your pictures through a stock library
This is a more specialist talk which gives an insight into what it takes to sell your pictures through a stock library such as Getty Images or Shutterstock. The talk explains the typical application procedure, the requirements for stock images and the monies that photographers can earn from selling their photographs.

History of the UK Foreign Office - NEW FOR 2025
Although not obviously connected to travel photography, the speaker uses his travel photography as a tool to understand different cultures around the world which is a necessary requirement for delivering UK foreign policy. The speaker spent 14 years with various parts of the Foreign Office, living and working in Delhi and Afghanistan and as a senior member of the team which integrated the Department for International Development with the Foreign Office in 2020-23. His view from the inside enables him to tell the not-so-well-known story of this major Department of State.

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LOCATION TALKS

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Location talks - A Picture of India
Having lived in Delhi for 2 years, the speaker has recently published a book titled ‘A Picture of India’ in which images taken in over 40 different locations across India are used to better describe and understand the culture of the country. In this talk, the speaker chooses a selection of images to illustrate a particular point of tradition (e.g. the Mumbai dhabbawalas who provide a lunchbox service to the city workers) and adds fascinating detail about how the picture was taken.

Location talks – Other countries
Having travelled extensively (see biography) the speaker can provide an illustrated talk similar to ‘A Picture of India’ above for a variety of other countries including Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bhutan, Nepal, South Africa (Cape Town and the Garden Route), Madagascar, Myanmar, Japan, Borneo, Albania and China, together with a variety of European cities.

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WORKSHOPS

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Workshop – Introduction to image processing in Adobe Lightroom
This workshop suits a smaller room in which the audience can see the detail of a projected laptop screen. The speaker takes the audience through the fundamentals of Adobe Lightroom showing how its functionality can be used as a master image catalogue and, using images taken on the cruise if available, showing how various adjustments such as cropping and exposure control can be applied to substantially improve an image. One such talk resulted in a member of the audience buying Lightroom as a download the very next day.

Workshop – Image Critique
This workshop follows the talk on ‘What makes a good photograph’ (see above) but is organised as a workshop format in a smaller group of no more than 20 persons. Each individual brings one or two images for discussion by and within the group with the facilitator encouraging comment and pointing out features which strengthen the images and areas which could be captured in a different way.

Speaker for Fred Olsen aboard Balmoral (In search of the Northern Light: October 2024), with talks on 'Photographing Aurorae', 'Landscape Photography'; 'Image Critique'; and a Lightroom workshop.

A selection of unprompted guest comments from the above cruise included:
"Thanks again for explaining the technical aspects – I downloaded the instruction book but it was still not very clear."
"I particularly liked your talk on composition."
"I want to say how excellent the photography talks have been. Do we get a feedback form to say so?"
"Thanks for the interesting talks."


Speaker for Fred Olsen aboard Bolette (Summertime in Lapland and Scandinavia: July 2023), with talks on 'Working in Oulu'; 'Better Holiday Pictures'; 'Street Photography'; 'Image Critique'; and a Lightroom workshop.

Regular speaker on destination themes such as India and specialist photography subjects such as image licensing and copyright; judge for camera clubs photographic competitions across the South East UK; past Trustee of the Royal Photographic Society (2021-23).

The following recent Cruise History has been recorded for this candidate.