It's nearly me

Thought I'd start with a semi self-portrait. I'm not especially keen on loads of photos of me, as the world beyond is at least as important, interesting and aesthetically pleasing. So there won't be many more.

I'm somewhat extrovert, in that engaging with strangers is part of who I am, and comfortable in my own skin. But the image of the outer man - ageing, grizzled - is superficially at odds with the inner ten-year-old who still finds farting funny and the world's self-importance amusing.

Back in my twenties, I found myself (somewhat literally as well as metaphorically) in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and was intrigued by the self-portrait of Rembrandt as a young man (1628). It looked very vaguely like I did then, at least in the hair department, and I was quite pleased in a strange way.

Like him, I have to accept that I am older, occasionally but not always wiser, and physically declining: even if not in all the detail, then in the spirit of the self-portrait of three decades on in 1659.

It is not a bad place to start, with a little bit of introspection, but we have plenty of that already all around us. So, like Rembrandt, most of what I present here will be, to use a pretentious word. "other" if not always quite so portentous as The Night Watch. I can visualise, and think I know what I like, but unlike Rembrandt I cannot paint or draw to save my life.

The camera, or in my case for now the BlackBerry, allows me to have a say in the visual world through my astigmatic, short-sighted, wrinkle-framed eyes.