In what now feels like a previous life, I once spent sixteen years as a member of the English folk-rock band Steeleye Span.

As the Everly Brothers so rightly sang – We did it for the stories we could tell. But after a few years of travelling too-fast around the world I got myself a camera, a Pentax Spotmatic, in order to provide a more substantial, and accurate, archive of memories.

As it was a part of my job to be photographed regularly, I was able to befriend a number of gifted photographers. They usually knew little about our music and felt more comfortable chatting about photography as we travelled to locations, so I was able to pick their brains to my heart’s content.

At this time, the early 1970s, my main interest was to capture the many places we visited and document the informal life of my own band. But gradually I began snapping other entertainers, enjoying the experience of being behind the lens for a change. I also branched out into landscapes and street-photography, some of which went on a touring exhibition in the USA. This was all in black and white..

The 1980s were, for me, a transitional decade, and by its end I was living on the small Canary Island of La Gomera with my musical career safely behind me and my darkroom in boxes. The first task of my new life was to find a new wife and build us a place to live, which took some years. During this time British tourists began discovering the island, a guidebook in English became necessary, and I was delegated the task. I was required not only to write it but to take the photographs as well, almost 500 as it turned out, and in this way I rediscovered the pleasures of photography. Except that this time around I was working with pixels instead of grain.

Digital SLRs had come of age while I was busy reorganising my life. They now worked like real cameras and achieved a quality close to film, and in colour as well. All that was required was a brain-aching struggle to master the technology. I also had to teach myself the tricks of photographing wildlife – mostly crawling, bending, climbing, standing still and waiting – which provided an effective counterbalance to the zombiefying effects of staring at a computer screen.

I still use a Pentax, a K10D, a complex machine that allows me to use my accumulation of lenses from my Spotmatic days.

And now my inexhaustible subject is La Isla de La Gomera.