Michael English trained at Leicester School of Art and the Ealing School of Photography, studying photography and typography. Initially he worked in London as an assistant to still life photographers, John Shaw and Jeff Robbins and fashion photographer Barney Bosshart. (Barnabás Bosshart). He specialized in food photography and after a time spent in London working for various advertising agencies and magazine clients he made a switch to become a graphic designer.

After a stint at an ad agency he moved to EMAP National publications designing Bike and Practical Photography magazines. He was promoted and setup EMAP’s special publications division and was responsible for launching a number of their highly successful magazines as well as a number of co-published books. He left EMAP to become an art director at Unitam Creative Marketing (a below-the-line design and marketing company). He left to establish his own design practice in 1979. He has won several awards for magazine design and was elected a Member of the Chartered Society of Designers in 1996.

Throughout all this time, photography and image creation has proved an important part of his life. His landscape photography started with images taken on a Kodak Box Brownie and it continues today.

“At school, my passion was painting in oils. It was my ambition to become a painter. I went to Art School with the intention of following this dream, but I was ambushed by a camera. A Minolta SRT101 to be precise, followed by a YashicaMat124, and then a Gandolfi 5" x 4" plate camera.

The magic of the black-and-white darkroom had me hooked. After my "pre-dip" year I went to study at Ealing School of Photography.  I was fortunate enough to have the late, great, Michael Langford as one of my visiting tutors. He inspired me to explore the world in black and white - or more accurately in a thousand tones of grey. He "taught" me how to see light and shade, to achieve tone and balance, and how to capture the image I saw in my mind's eye onto film.

Today I work exclusively in a digital format. This is through choice. I will never cease to be amazed by the magic of creating a print is a darkroom, but the flexibility and quality of digital photography has captivated me. I use Phase One, Canon and Fuji cameras with a range of lenses. All work is processed through an Apple Mac system using Adobe Photoshop.”