Sundown

As the sun sinks slowly into the reeds on the Kenai peninsula, Alaska, and the Red Arrows

settle down for a hot cocoa and an early night and the boats at Felixstowe Ferry are tied up

to collect more rain overnight and the Butt and Oyster at Pin Mill calls "Time, gentlemen,

please", we say farewell to the work of one Mike Howlett, ex-medical and industrial

photographer, sheet-metal worker, postman, draughtsman, cinema projectionist, IT

engineer, unemployed layabout, bus conductor, mini-cab driver and lighting cameraman. Of

the pictures on this site, some are old but still relevant, some have been improved with a

judicious crop, a fair number have been tweaked one way or another, and many others will

be of little interest to those who weren't there at the time. I hope you have enjoyed looking

at these, my 'babies' of many years collecting; I wish I had another lifetime in which to do

it all over again and get better at it.

I once saw a Turner in the National Gallery in London that almost reduced me to tears. It

was just a swirl of colour and tone, light and dark, thick paint and thin, but with no

identifying features or objects within it. And yet it was unmistakably Venice. When a

photographer can do that, his skill will have truly become an art form.

As the sun sinks slowly into the reeds on the Kenai peninsula, Alaska, and the Red Arrows settle down

for a hot cocoa and an early night and the boats at Felixstowe Ferry are tied up to collect more rain

overnight and the Butt and Oyster at Pin Mill calls "Time, gentlemen, please", we say farewell to the

work of one Mike Howlett, ex-medical and industrial photographer, sheet-metal worker, postman,

draughtsman, cinema projectionist, IT engineer, unemployed layabout, bus conductor, mini-cab driver

and lighting cameraman. Of the pictures on this site, some are old but still relevant, some have

been improved with a judicious crop, a fair number have been tweaked one way or another, and

many others will be of little interest to those who weren't there at the time. I hope you have enjoyed

looking at these, my 'babies' of many years collecting; I wish I had another lifetime in which to do it all

over again and get better at it.

I once saw a Turner in the National Gallery in London that almost reduced me to tears. It was just a

swirl of colour and tone, light and dark, thick paint and thin, but with no identifying features or objects

within it. And yet it was unmistakably Venice. When a photographer can do that, his skill will have truly

become an art form.

At close of play