+++ This site represents the current incarnation of my online photography and web design portfolio. It has existed in numerous guises over the years, but more recently has suffered from a distinct lack of updates - not because I haven't been up to much, quite the opposite in fact, but rather more due to a lack of time to devote to shameless self-promotion given various day jobs and life generally getting in the way.

+++ Finally, I decided to pull the proverbial finger out, and get a brand-new site together for the purpose of showcasing my photographic and design work, and here we are today! ...So sit back, take a deep breath, and browse through an assortment of some of my favourite bits of (alleged) creativity drawn from the archives and encompassing over 14 years' worth of work - hope you enjoy it!

+++ If you've come across this site somehow, then you might just have a passing interest in me (or possibly not, who knows!). Anyhow, I am the eponymous Alex Stanhope of this site's title (and domain), and I reckon it'd be pretty rude for me not to attempt to introduce myself! So, here goes...

+++ I am a 37 year old designer/photographer/sometime educator born and raised in West London, England. I currently live and work in the sunny city of Chichester, West Sussex, having done the unthinkable and moved away from the "Big Smoke" way back in the last century (well, 1999 actually!).

+++ Getting into photography was a bit of an accident in all honesty. If you'd asked me if I'd consider a career as a professional photographer or designer when I was at school, it is more than likely the response would be "no" - at the time I specialised in modern languages and history, and to all intents and purposes would probably have ended up in a nice quiet university somewhere reading one of the above (or possibly both).

+++ However, things change, and in 1991, I decided to go to art school to do a Foundation Course in the dreaded "Media Studies" at the London College of Printing (subsequently rebranded as the London College of Communication) - At the time, I was very interested in cinema (I still am), and thought this might well be the first step in a stellar career in the film industry(!). While on the course I developed (no pun intended!) a love of analogue photography, with the magic of darkroom processes becoming increasingly beguiling. When the time came, I applied for a position on the Batchelor's degree at the same institution.

+++ In 1996 I hit the big bad world with a certificate in my pocket, and worked in London in the fashion, advertising and editorial fields for a wide range of clients. As previously mentioned, I moved on in 1999, and arrived on the South Coast in search of new and non-metropolitan horizons. I found myself undertaking a raft of freelance commissions, and spent four years as a lecturer in photography, website design and graphic design at Chichester College. All things considered, this was a great experience, and the interaction with those that were at the time "the youth of today" was uplifting and hugely rewarding.

+++ In 2005, I bid farewell to my tenure at the college and returned to freelance work, mainly in Web design and development, and was swiftly offered a full-time position as a graphic designer and New Media specialist at an established local agency - Design Distillery - creating a range of advertising materials for a huge gamut of clients, from small local firms through up-and-coming IT and telecoms concerns to massive blue chip corporations ...so it's all good in the proverbial "hood"!

+++ I've always had a bit of a soft spot for computer programming - this goes back some way to a time when Windows™ was a mere glint in Bill Gates' eye, and the first Apple Mac™ was yet to say "hello" to the world at large. In the very early 1980s I was the proud recipient of a series of Sinclair computers (starting out with a whopping 1 Kilobyte of RAM) and quickly set about writing dodgy adventure games in BASIC - you know the kind of thing; "You are in a cave. You see a fierce dragon in front of you. Do you: (a) Fight the dragon, (b) Talk to the dragon, (c) Run away very fast" - things "progressed" further, with my feeble attempts to recreate some of the classic arcade games of the day in Machine Code.

+++ In 1984, I came across the initial iteration of the Apple Macintosh™ at a friend's place - windows/mouse/icons/graphics - awesome! Moving on, fast-forward style to 1992, I started to work with Adobe Photoshop™ while attending my degree course...it was love at first sight, well, more or less! In 1995, I came across the "graphical Web" for the first time at the UK's only "Cyber Cafe", and this was a far cry from the green-screen e-mail at college! I had a feeling it just might amount to something one day!

+++ After continued exposure to the Web, I decided to create a personal home page/portfolio site - very much like this one, only even worse - in 1997. If you look hard enough (and I'd much rather you didn't bother!), you can find it on the wonderful, and sometimes highly embarrassing Wayback Machine. As time went on, people started to ask me to make similar things for them, and I slowly learned more and more about this fascinating medium. The rest is as they say, history!

+++ Programming isn't the only string to my bow - I am passionate about graphic design and aesthetics in general. I surmise that this is something to do with genetics - I come from a long line of artists; painters, ceramicists and draughtsmen all feature in the mix. To summarise, I feel my artistic sensibilities are tempered with a certain "je ne sais quoi" - let's just call it essence of "geek". I very much enjoy this form of hemisphericity (now there's a word for you!), as I can attack projects with the eye and imagination of the creative, but also draw on some reasonable problem-solving skills if so required.

• Adobe Creative Suite - Photoshop / Illustrator / InDesign
• Adobe / Macromedia Studio - Dreamweaver / Flash / Fireworks
• Languages: Standards compliant XHTML & CSS design - PHP / ASP / XML / JavaScript
• MySQL Database creation and administration
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Website marketing (online & offline)
• Viral marketing
• e-Commerce development
• Digital and analogue photography (studio and location)
• IT Training

+++ This version of the site was born out of a desire to experiment with a rather lovely Web technology called AJAX - Asynchronous Javascript And XML - as such, certain elements may display or behave differently if you have JavaScript disabled on your Web browser. Don't say I didn't warn you!

+++ The portfolios require the viewer to have Adobe Flash Player installed on their computer - if you don't already have this, you can get it here...

+++ Given the fact that some comparatively large image files are displayed in the portfolios, page loading times for those of you on older connections to the Internet such as 56K might be a little on the slow side - for this, I do apologise if you happen to experience this while viewing the site.

+++ This site is optimised for 1024 x 768 screen resolution (or higher preferably), though it will work at 800 x 600 and below. However, at lower resolutions, some vertical scrolling will be required.

+++ Finally, and this should be something of a "no brainer", the designs and images featured on this site are copyright © Alex Stanhope 1992 - 2009, so please don't try stealing them and saying they're yours! If you want to reproduce or purchase images, then please don't hesitate to get in touch and we'll see what we can do!

+++ Some images are available for download at istockphoto.com

+++ The flower pattern "damask" background image was adapted from a fantastic series very kindly made available for download to designers at The Inspiration Gallery