Sunset at Formby Beach as the Tide is Coming In

Sunset at Formby Beach as the Tide is Coming In

Photographer Biography

The principal photographer at Zest Images is Stephen McIver. Stephen is 27 years old and was born in Liverpool, Merseyside. He still lives in Merseyside with with his partner of 6 years and their baby son - not to mention a Siberian Husky, two cats, and some goldfish!

Stephen has held an interest in photography since he was a child, where he would be keen to use his parents’ camera whenever they went on a day trip or holiday. The lack of instant visual feedback and having to wait for film to be developed a week later meant that his interest never went any further than this casual interest.

Stephen’s interest in photography started to get much more serious after he had graduated from university in Liverpool in 2001 with a degree in Information Management (a course which covered a mixture of business and IT). It was around this time that he got his first job (working in IT for a national environmental organisation in a Liverpool city centre office) and met his current partner - it was through this relationship that he suddenly found himself going on lots of day trips and short breaks. In order to record the memories from these excursions, Stephen purchased his first digital camera.

The flexibility of being able to shoot digitally and to have instant visual feedback on the camera screen was a revelation to Stephen, not to mention the lack of film and developing costs that digital brings. This freedom enabled him to experiment and really hone his photography skills - learning all about apertures, shutter speeds, focusing, depth of field, the rule of thirds, megapixels, pixels per inch, dots per inch, ISO sensitivity, and so on…

As his interest in photography grew, Stephen invested more into this hobby and upgraded his equipment whenever he could. He bought his first digital SLR camera back in 2004 and has never looked back since.

Back in 2005, Stephen realised that he was producing high quality images yet wasn’t doing anything productive with them, other than sharing them with friends and family. It was at this point that he applied to and was accepted as a contributor to Alamy Ltd, one of the UK’s leading photo libraries. Stephen has made numerous sales since then and still gets a huge thrill out of seeing his images in various publications.

Later that year, Stephen made the decision to take his photography onto the next level by starting his own company. He got excellent business advice from Business Link for Greater Merseyside and Blue Orchid, and in March 2006, the company formation took place and Zest Images Ltd started trading. The company is still trading and changed its name to Zest Media Services Ltd in July 2007 in order to reflect the growing website design commissions that Stephen was receiving, though Zest Images continues as a trading name of Zest Media Services Ltd.

Stephen enjoys all forms of photography, including landscape, architecture, nature, macro, product, and portrait photography. Having said that, his favourite has to be landscape photography and he loves nothing more than standing in a rural location such as the Lake District, in beautiful light, and capturing the tranquil scenes in front of him.