I started carrying around a camera regularly in the late 90's. I'd been taking travel images for a long time but my first real photographic excursion was to South Africa in 2000. I can't remember how many rolls of film I exposed but it was quite a lot. I followed this excursion with another two, still on film. I dived into digital in 2003, rather late compared to some, with the purchase of a Canon EOS 10D. I still have this camera and it's still my prime digital body. A simple list of the equipment I use can be found on the Equipment page on this site.

Thinking I needed a piece of paper to tell me I could take photographs, I completed a photography course in 2005 through Thomson Education Direct. The book that came part of the course was excellent and I still use it as a reference for all that information that won't stick to my brain. I recommend the course to anyone interested in photography, the tutors are excellent... they gave me straight A's after all :D

I followed up this training with a short course in Darkroom Techniques at the local TAFE centre. This was incredibly interesting and I vowed to create my own darkroom to continue my print making. This ended up being a PC and printer, unfortunately. I still harbor a secret desire to build a darkroom and get down and dirty with developing chemicals.

I am a member of the Gympie Camera club but have been rather lax in my attendance over the past twelve months. This is not through lack of enthusiasm for photography I can assure you. I show images as part of the regional Gympie Show most years.

I use Photoshop for editing my images but try to keep it real. I experiment from time to time but prefer to represent an image the way I saw it at the time of pressing the shutter button. I try to limit my editing to spotting (dust removal and negative cleanup), contrast adjustments with levels/curves and unsharp mask, colour adjustments to remove any tint, and sharpening at final output. I work with RAW files or scanned TIFS, and in the Adobe RGB colour space with calibrated monitors.

I scan my film with a Canon CanoScan FS4000US using VueScan from http://www.hamrick.com and use icc profiles created with custom film targets from http://www.coloraid.de.

I am a member of the Australian Photographic Society, Digital division.

I have sold/donated images privately and commercially and the list includes:

Cover image, in-flight magazine, MacAirways
Content image, The Most Extreme Bugs, Jossey-Bass publishers
A number of content specific Websites
A number of private buyers
Most of my images can be viewed at my PBase gallery.