How interesting it is to be 62 and doing something for the first time. Yes, this my first blog. Welcome to it. There’s some possibility it may be my last.

It’s an interesting milestone to have a website. Now can I call myself a photographer? After all, one cannot have a website full of images and remain uncharacterised as a “photographer”. N’est-ce pas? But does the obverse hold – must a photographer have a portfolio for the world to see? Of course not. All you need is a camera in some form and the desire to document, reflect, invent, imagine or interpret the world. It probably helps if you have captured at least one image, and shown it at some time to someone else. And having some idea of how to capture an image to express your vision of the world is probably also a good idea, but let’s face it, this is not an essential prerequisite.

Do I feel a little nervous about hanging out my washing in public for all to see? Not really. Competition and exhibition have largely cured me of that. Plus how many people will find their way to this site anyway! But I am looking forward to where a website could take me. The whole idea is to participate and communicate in the larger world of photography while still retaining some control (although we all know control is an illusion). Diving photographically into social media such as instagram was a thoroughly exhausting prospect. A Facebook page may follow, but to coin a phrase “FB is for old people”, and I’m way too young (lol). No, I hope other photographers will contact me, resulting in some mutually beneficial photographic relationships. Incidentally, you can buy prints from images on this site, but I care not two and a half hoots about making money from my photography.

Actually, the whole thing happened completely by chance through the agency of a haircut. My hairdresser Belinda is a networker extraordinaire, and one day while shearing my silver locks, she remarked that a friend was developing a website for her business. “Oh” I wistfully said, “I harbour a secret desire that one day I might put together a photography site”. The next I know she thrust a live telephone in my hand and I was stammering down the line to Shelley Birrell. After much umm-ing and err-ing and gee I hadn’t really though about it much, Shelley and I agreed to meet the next morning for coffee and project development. And so the project developed. Shelley incidentally is not a professional web builder in the “this is how I make my living” sense. She is however wholly professional in her approach, quality and delivery. If you like this site and desire your own, she would love to hear from you (initially though me). Just drop me a line.

So after viewing my images, of course you’re dying to know my deep inner reasons for producing the images I do. Sorry, still trying to figure it out myself. One problem is that I kind of stumbled into competition after retiring from living overseas, and have had unexpected and sustained success at the club and local level. This tends to confuse the reasons why we point a camera at something and press the release. Am I a shutterbug, an artist, a social documenter, a clever manipulator of pixels, a successful competitor or a fragile ego?  Probably a little of each. But here’s a few things I hold self-evident. I like the process of photography. I like interpreting the world. I like creating. I like the extraordinary. I like excellence (at least striving for it). I like the natural world. I like success. And above all I like to emotionally move someone with my images, on the rare occasions that this happens.

There you go.

Peter

 

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