Profile
Roger Coulam was born in Lincolnshire, but wound his way to the North East of England after an education in Yorkshire and then in Newcastle Upon Tyne where he studied as an Environmental Scientist.
Always at his happiest in the outdoors, he developed an interest in capturing some of the amazing landscapes he saw in the North West Highlands of Scotland on film, on his numerous visits there in the 1990’s, and the seeds of his photographic passion were sown.
Soon after this he became interested in the extremes of nature, and took a trip to the USA to chase storms, a vacation that eventually led to him becoming part of a Storm Chasing Team in the States who every year track down tornadoes and some of the biggest storms on the planet.
Based in Sunderland, Roger now supplies a wide range of clients worldwide with high quality pictures for various publishing uses, through commissioned work and from his picture library.
He is widely known as a severe weather stills photographer, with an often dramatic and moody style, that brings a unique character to the landscape work that takes up much of his time back home.
In recent years his work has been featured on ITV, BBC TV & Radio, and The Weather Channel.
His pictures also appear regularly in various British photography magazines, and other national and local publications. He also supplies images to many government, tourist and development agencies, as well as to several stock agencies.
"I have always been a fan of dramatic pictures, crashing seas, or incredible sunsets, those moments that make you go "wow", the type of things that remain with you forever. It is the emotions we remember though as the scene fades from our memories; and it is these emotions that I try to trigger in my pictures. Capturing the mood and evoking a feeling, telling something about the location, and also about myself, is more important to me than just recording the scene, and I see pictures as one off frozen stories in time, never to be repeated".
“Much of my work is done in the golden hours around sunrise or sunset, when the quality of natural light is at its best. I work with a mix of medium format Mamiya film equipment and with Canon 35mm film and digital cameras. I generally only use filtration when it is needed to correctly record the scene I am seeing with my eyes.
I keep digital correction to an absolute minimum, and make my images outdoors with my cameras, and not by sitting in front of a computer.”
