About
The Beginnings
I recall as a child that my mother, who was an excellent cook, used to host dinner parties which often evolved into ‘slideshows’ where my parents and guests retired after dinner to the lounge room to continue drinking, chatting, listening to classical music, and viewing Marion, my mother's photographs, projected onto a makeshift screen.
I have no idea what their theme or content was, except that she was a respected environmental scientist who often ventured to remote parts of Western Australia. All I really recall was the lingering smell of cigar smoke in the lounge room if I ventured in there the following morning.
double exposure self portrait c1980
A Decade Later
I part suspect that my Dad decided to sell that house because he saw it as the most effective way of dealing with the fact that Marion had subsequently chosen to repurpose the dining room table as the depository for her seemingly countless boxes of slides which were, by then, piled as high as they could possibly go in an elongated pyramid with some, from time to time, cascading onto the floor.
I bought my first camera, a Nikormat along with three Nikon lenses, in 1975, in Singapore, on my way to spending roughly ten weeks trekking around Sumatra and Java during my end-of-year break from Uni. It cost me about $250, which was half my budget for the whole trip, having already packed 100 foot (about 18 rolls of 36 exposures) of Ektachrome film, which I rolled myself beforehand and then developed and mounted upon returning to Australia.
I still have about 60 colour slides from that trip.
Back home in Canberra, where I was studying at the time, instead of focusing on my course I was spending much of my time reading about and experimenting with the Zone System (Ansel Adams) and testing the limits of 400 ASA black-and-white film past 1600 ASA and more.
Jim Burgin, (the housemate who had inspired me to travel with his intriguing tails of Indonesia), and I decided to re-purpose the second laundry in the duplex share house that we were living in. This turned out to be the first of many dark rooms I subsequently built in various other houses that I lived in over the years (with my long-suffering wife, Prue Benjamin).
I was inspired by the novelty and versatility of photography and was keen to experiment with other subject matter. In this regard, I was extremely fortunate in having a newsagency just down the road from where we lived that was invariably allocated fourth row seats at the Canberra Theatre for any concerts that came to town. Music has always been a big part of my life and here was another opportunity and challenge - to try to capture some of the essence of the power and emotion of a concert, but in an altogether different medium.
The earliest shots on this website come from that period of time.
Fast Forward Again
Since then I have often been asked if I 'photoshopped' my images (as if it's a heinous crime, ie ‘tampering with the accuracy, or trueness, of the record’).
In response, I point out that the very decision as to which camera and lens you use, and back in the day which film, or these days which settings you select on your camera all affect the way in which an image is captured, ie things that you might otherwise do in Photoshop.
Furthermore, there are vast differences in the ways different cameras, and these days smart phones and other devices, modify the image, particularly if they are being saved as JPEG images. The brilliance of the smart phone camera is often in the algorithms used to enhance the image rather than the physical attributes of the camera, or device itself.
If you shoot RAW images, as I do, then you are faced with a plethora of decisions when converting it into TIFF, or JPEG, or whatever other format. Conversely, the very choice of not adjusting anything is a decision in itself.
Though in truth I take a more liberal stance this.
When I take a photograph, particularly one which I think might have some ‘artistic merit’, I usually have an image in my mind of what I want it to look like, which in some case goes beyond what I find presented in front of the lens. I might, for instance, look at a scene and think how annoying the powerlines are in the foreground. “If only they weren’t there.” That doesn't prevent me from taking the shot as I know that such ‘blemishes’ can easily be erased should I so choose to do so when reviewing the image. Other unwanted elements, I know from experience, will pose greater challenges and I weigh these up more carefully, considering if the reward is worth the effort.
The rock 'n' roll photographs are another case in point. Some of these negatives are approaching 50 years of age, and considering that they were all developed in a converted laundries, without filters on the scheme water, or any sort of air filtering, and their storage hasn’t always been ‘ideal’, they are as a whole plagued by imperfections.
Additionally, there were often other issues as a byproduct of their age, such as foxing and scratches on the emulsion, etc. Some of these images literally required days of work to bring them back up to an acceptable standard. Others at best, required maybe as little as an hour (or so).
So in answer to this question - yes all of the images on my website have to a lesser or greater degree been ‘photoshopped’ to achieve the image that I want to present. My overall goal being to capture the essence of the subject, scene and/or moment.
Endnote
I can confidently say that as of the beginning of 2024, none of the images on this website have employed AI in any respect.
Soon that won’t be a statement any photographer can make with confidence, as the industry has already started rolling out AI in some select, typically top-end cameras and smart phones. I’m guessing that this will trickle down to many more, if not the majority of, mass produced imaging devices in the not too distant future.
Where will I (we) draw the line then?
Those early rock 'n' roll images referred to above were all taken using manual focusing, manual exposure, and under rather difficult lighting conditions with plenty of action on stage. As such, they required a good deal of preparation, as well as intuition, or anticipation. Being familiar with the music helped a lot. Yet there was a fundamental integrity to the whole process and hence (I think) the product.
The ‘art of photography’ is very different these days, and by and large far easier, but that’s not a criticism, especially if the overall standard of photographs is improved in the process. Though I have observed that as a consequence I no longer stop to consider a shot nearly as often, or as long as I might once have, but every shot back then also had a cost attached to it. These days, once you’ve made the initial investment all there is to constrain you is the time likely to be spent sorting and culling photographs.
Without question, the technology has improved incredibly, and so too have the chances of taking a good candid shot, or any photograph for that matter.
This is not to say that I don't have some concerns about where all of this might be heading. AI fabrication is one thing. Though, I have seen photographs taken of family and friends where the device in question offers an option for removing wrinkles, and I suspect in some cases enlarging eyes, and as a result the subjects, ie my family and friends who I know well, are barely recognisable.
Though I guess this will just (significantly) expand upon an already long history of tampering with images, particularly for propaganda purposes. Indeed I saw an interesting exhibition at the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney on precisely that theme. Another interesting angle is when images in the news, which should in my mind represent the truth as accurately as possible, are purposefully manipulated. You have to question ‘to what purpose’ and might this not be another form of libel, even if ‘positively’ enhanced?