NOW ON SALE!!

 

Redcar, Saltburn and Guisborough Tourist Information Centres are pleased to announce that they are now selling the ‘Cleveland – Whitby’ 2010 Calender.

This beautiful calendar has been produced by local landscape photographer Gerald Hickey who recently enjoyed the success of his debut photographic exhibition at Kirkleatham Museum.

This high quality calendar is awash with outstanding, atmospheric local scenes that reflect our unique and picturesque region.

 

The calendar is priced at just £6.99.

 

 

 

 

If you are unable to visit one of our Tourist Information Centres to purchase your calendar feel free to give one of the centres a call where we would be happy to take your order and organise the postage of your calendar.

 

Gerald Hickey Biography:

 

Gerald Hickey was born in Saltburn-by-the-Sea in 1959.  After initially training as an apprentice Pipe fitter for William Press and Sons based in Darlington, Gerald went on to work on a number of local contracts at ICI and Shell Oil Refinery and also worked abroad in South Africa.  When recession hit, Gerald returned to his main love and enrolled at Cleveland College of Art and Design in 1983 where he completed a two year BTEC National Diploma in General Vocational Design, specialising in 3D.  From here Gerald went onto Teesside University between the years 1985 - 88 where he completed a B.A. (Hons.) Degree in Interior Design. 

 

Gerald next went Freelance as an Interior Designer working for Lister Interior Design Associates in Hartlepool and Teesside Universities Assistant Director in Middlesbrough.  More steady work came that year when he began work for Ray Elysee and Associates based at Broadcasting House in Middlesbrough.  Although a relatively small company they carried out work for a number of big name National and International retailers i.e. ‘Vision Express’, ‘Lunn Poly’, ‘Peters Cathedral Bakers’ and ‘City Electrical Factors’ to name but a few.

Recession hit the company so in 1995 Gerald looked to retrain once again and enrolled on the one year MSc Computer Aided Graphical Technical Applications Course at Teesside University specialising in Computer Animation.  On completion of the course and after a spell teaching at the University while looking for a job as an animator, tragedy struck when his wife Lesley Hickey was diagnosed with a Brain Tumour. It then became necessary for him to put his career on hold in order to care for her and their two young children.  Any spare time Gerald got he worked hard on improving his skills as an Animator and Film Maker and completed three short films; the first one ‘Cursored’ was shown as part of Animex Town at Teesside University’s Animation Festival and had showings at The Ritz Cinema in Thirsk and York City Screen.  The Second was an animated version of Dannii Minogue’s pop video ‘Put the Needle on It’, used to gain character modelling and facial animation experience  I sent a copy to Dannii who kindly replied saying ‘What an amazing Video’. The third film, named ‘Copout’, involved him working with Newcastle-based Film Agency Northern Film and Media.

 

In 2007, on Gerald and his wife’s 25^th wedding anniversary, while visiting Staithes, he took a number of photos of the harbour in the hope of joining them together later.  When he found out how good Photoshop had become at performing this task his love of Landscape photography began and that Christmas he bought his very first quality camera: a Canon Eos 40D with Wide Angle Lens.

 

Sadly on the 1^st of October 2008 after numerous major surgeries combined with Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy Lesley died and the family were left devastated.  Since then with support from his family & especially his daughter Laura, Gerald has devoted his time to visiting local areas and touring the United Kingdom in the hope of capturing its beauty.   Gerald believes in making the photo fit the view rather than being restricted by the lens or a single shot so the majority of his photos are panoramic.  This can result in distortion on occasions which he also finds interesting. 

 

Gerald had his first solo Photographic Exhibition at Redcar’s Kirkleatham Museum ‘Escaping the Lens’ which lasted from Saturday 4^th July - 9^th September.  This was fantastically well received and he sold 26 of his 51 prints.  Since then Gerald has turned professional and has produced a panoramic calendar that covers between Cleveland – Whitby and plans to produce Greeting Cards very soon.