Photography for me started when I was really young. My first camera was a ‘Brownie’ that took 120 film and was old when I got it, aged around six. I only really used it when we were on holiday because it cost too much to get the prints developed, but I soon got the idea that a photograph was not just about recording what was happening right in front of you, it was an image that could be manipulated with filters or by changing the angle you were shooting.
After that I got my first 35mm camera, a Halina 135 (that I think I might still have somewhere). It was a viewfinder camera that you had to focus manually by guessing how far you were from the subject. It also had no light meter, and so although you could change the aperture and shutter speed you were guessing with that as well. I soon got a little hand-held light meter to go with it, and that made everything a lot easier.
After a brief experiment with instant photography (like Polaroid, only not) my father got me a Zenith SLR with a couple of lenses. This was revolutionary to me and opened up a whole new world. Up until then I had been primarily interested in landscapes, but the addition of some long focus lenses meant that wildlife was suddenly in my sights. I took hundreds of pictures of birds, sometimes hanging off cliffs or sitting in dusty hides for hours on end to get the right shot.
Taking things a bit more seriously by then I decided it was time for an upgrade, and bought a Ricoh KR-10 aperture-priority camera. This was really revolutionary for me and again raised my game. New lenses and flashguns meant that I could now keep going with the wildlife, but also start to look at sport as a subject. The glass itself was much higher quality on the Ricoh than the Zenith as well, and so everything was just that much sharper and clearer. Photography just got amazing again.
Around about that time I started to take and develop my own black-and-white film. Creativity then started to split between the field and the darkroom as I spent hours in there playing with contrast and density to get the particular effect I was interested in. Looking back I have no idea how I managed to spend so long in such an oxygen-deprived chemically-rich environment without passing out, but that was the moment I changed into being something that I could actually call a photographer.
In my final year of school I upgraded again to a Canon A1 and kept that for years. In fact I still have it, and if I am shooting film it is still my camera of choice. It is as versatile as anything on the market these days, and as light and easy to use as you could ever hope.
About six years ago I converted to digital, first with a Konica-Minolta Dynax 7D, then a Sony A700. I then acquired a Canon 350D as part of a job lot of equipment, and very recently I added a Canon 550D to the set. And the latest acquisition? An adaptor ring that allows me to use lenses that I bought back in 1984 on the new Canon cameras. It is still excellent glass.
These days I do quite a lot of portrait work, particularly art-nudes. But I still prefer to use natural landscapes as my backdrop rather than a studio, and so much of my work is set in the “studio without walls”. I hope you enjoy it.
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I do a number of things other than photography so you might be looking for one of those. If so try going to either
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