On Hobbies Still Going, MOJO Realignment, and Projects Yet To Got Off The Ground

Photography – Telling Stories Without Words

My interest in photography began in the early 1980s, when my family lived on the Murray River. One photographic memory from that time has stayed with me.

We had a very white, long-legged Bull Terrier who was quite a character. I remember taking two photographs from exactly the same angle. In one, the dog and his cushion were in focus. In the next, the focus was beyond the dog, through the window and towards the Murray River. The contrast between the two photographs was poetic.

I remember realising that photography could tell a story without using a single word. People could look at the same image, interpret what they saw and fill in the gaps for themselves. In a way, it was writing with pictures, and I’ve always liked that idea.

Over the years, I’ve owned plenty of cameras, starting with an old Instamatic and moving through various film cameras during the 1990s. They weren’t exactly the cream of the photographic crop, but they did the job. I even took film photographs at one of the Adelaide Grand Prix. Among them are shots of the winners coming around the final turn, then spraying champagne across the melee at the trophy giving. Those are moments you can’t simply recreate years later.

After I married, we each acquired digital cameras. I’ve upgraded some of my lenses over time, and my Canon 18-400mm is one I particularly enjoy using.

I’ve shared my photography online through galleries on Redbubble and Fine Art America/ Pixels. I’ve had other galleries scattered around the internet, too. I also displayed upon Flickr for more than twenty years!

What I love most is capturing a moment, a landscape or some small detail that might otherwise go unnoticed. Some photographs become more than pictures. Certain images are practically embedded in my mind and can take me straight back to a particular time or place. They might remind me how different things once were, or bring back the comfort of something familiar. They’re memories, reminders of people and places, and little windows into earlier versions of my life.

A photograph doesn’t have to be technically perfect or worthy of a gallery exhibition to mean something. Sometimes it’s enough to see something worth capturing, press the shutter and create a memory I can revisit years later.