I used to be a professional photographer with my own studio; lights, backdrops, portraits, weddings and even ran my own School of Photography. This all fuelled my passion for B&W landscape and nature work and exhibiting accordingly. All in the days of film (thousands of negs), print, chemicals and colour slides (thousands of cs). I then died and went to heaven!
Well not quite. I then returned to remote practice as a health professional, with years spent in areas like Central Australia, the Kimberley, SW WA, the Christmas and Cocos Keeling Islands, Kangaroo Island and now have retired to the Riverland of SA aboard a houseboat, surrounded by birdlife.
To say the past 20 yrs, from a digital perspective, has passed me by, would be an understatement. Again not quite, having owned a couple of digital Pentax cameras. But, as with film, what I composed through the viewfinder was what I filed, albeit with some minor cropping. Post processing seemed false, manipulative, even conniving with reality a distant dream.
I then joined Birdlife Australia/BLP submitted some images for assessment and received a thorough and comprehensive response from Simon Pelling. Oh Simon you have embarked me on a journey and not one that will endear you to my wife, my superannuation and my time...but boy am I going to enjoy myself.
So thats me.
PS I've spent the past two days ploughing through BLP newsletters, stunning images, cameras, lenses and even new words, 'bokeh?' Please be gentle with me and I look forward to a long and fruitful shared passion for birds. Now to get my head around 'post-processing'.