I can’t remember when I first developed an interest in photography, but I must only have been about fourteen or fifteen. I’d wanted to take up photography as a hobby for a long time, perhaps starting when I realised that I loved art, but couldn’t sketch or paint. My Uncle Bill (a cousin of my mum’s and the son of great Aunty Phoebe, for those who are paying attention) had a lovely camera, and although I’m now unclear of the course of events, I ended up possessing it. I don’t recall any money changing hands, but during the mid 1970s, I owned (or at least had exclusive use of) a Yashica-mat twin lens reflex camera. This was a fantastic piece of kit, but hardly practical for what I wanted. A twin lens reflex is the sort of camera you would expect a wedding photographer to use. It took 120 roll film which gave 2¼” square negatives which allowed an impressive level of detail to be captured and was also was great for me to practice my own developing and printing which I fancied doing. I loved that camera, but it was about the size and weight of a house brick and was entirely manual, which meant I also had to carry a light meter, which, despite its name, was also quite weighty. I used that camera for several years, eventually part-exchanging it for a more suitable modern single lens reflex (SLR) camera made by Ricoh.
I acquired an enlarger and boxes of old photography equipment (once more, I don’t know where from!). [I think now that it came from a former school friend, Michael Sutton] when I was about seventeen. It was ancient stuff, and I spent ages finding spares to make it work. The enlarger didn’t have a lens, so I bought one only to find that it didn’t fit, so I had to buy a flange to adapt it. Once I got everything working, I spent many an hour in the dining room at home messing with chemicals and photographic paper. I won’t say ‘happily messing with’, because many times it wasn’t enjoyable. Things would go wrong all the time, and I didn’t have much success overall. I only ever tried monochrome, and that cost me a fortune in paper. I also managed to ruin several rolls of negative film before I realised that it would be more prudent to pay a professional to develop the film first, then I could make prints off it. I still have some of the prints I produced, and of the hundred or more that I kept, perhaps three of them might be any good.
(St John’s church in Whittle-le-Woods)
I joined the Leyland Photographic Society in 1981 and stayed for about three years. I enjoyed it, but was never as keen as most of its members. Like cyclists always hankering after the best gear, the photographers appeared focused solely on possessing the most expensive camera body, the biggest lens and most powerful flashgun. The photographs they took with the equipment seemed almost secondary. I found that I simply couldn’t (or wouldn’t) compete. The society required all competition entries to be on 35mm slides, so for a while I converted to slide photography, which I never really enjoyed. The only piece of advice that I took away from three years of competition entries was that when composing an action shot (be it a car, bike or plane), the photograph must be framed such that the object has a space to move into. I’m still very conscious of that ‘rule’ today whenever I find the need to crop images. I was always able to spot a good composition, however, and even now, I’m never happy with taking just a snap: I have to frame it correctly and take time over it.
Digital photography is now so easy, that everyone is able to take terrific photographs, although, in my experience, they rarely do. I cannot understand with today’s technology how anyone can take a photograph which is not correctly exposed and focussed. And then having taken a poor photograph, whatever possesses people to proudly post said image on Facebook (or wherever). [Rant over]