I began taking photographs with a vengeance back in 1981 when I went to work in North Africa for three years. No phone cameras, no downloading to a computer – photography required patience… and luck; you couldn’t just fire off a hundred shots to get a single good one! However, the advent of digital photography and RAW images was a game changer. Admittedly photographic software was in its infancy but you could amend a photograph after taking the shot, and without the hassle that involved in a darkroom. Cameras rarely get it totally right – they are very much inferior to our eyes and a little tweaking could help match what you saw on the day.
At the time I was editing, publishing and writing for magazines, and photography became central to my work. It was a wonderful training platform – you had to get it right first time or you had missed the moment. This meant knowing your camera inside out and using it instinctively.
Then came Covid. Like many people I had to reevaluate my position. We lived on the west coast of Scotland at the time; beautiful, wild, and with infinite possibilities for anyone with a camera and time on their hands. I morphed into a landscape photographer, selling work through local fairs, galleries and exhibitions, and did this up to leaving for Australia in 2024.
However I had been wrong about digital photographic software – getting an image to look as it did on the day was only one possibility, and as software – and indeed cameras – improved, it provided endless opportunity not just for capturing the moment, but also for something different – a more ‘impressionist’ approach using everything from software to intentional camera movement to capture a radically different but equally valid memory of the moment an image was captured. With a more ethereal and dreamlike approach literal memory gives way to a more emotional recollection of colour, hue, shadow, texture, shape and movement rather like closing your eyes tight shut to recall an idyllic moment on a perfect sunny beach.
My own work process usually involves time at the computer, carefully considering where a particular image might take my imagination. My role is to judge how contrast, saturation, light, focus, textures and motion might affect the final result. Often an image will be more or less right as shot, but at other times a fleeting memory of the emotional experience of the particular moment in time the shot was taken can lead you in surprising directions.