I started making photographs with a baby Brownie camera that my mother had.
I was sixteen and had also started surfing and wanted to capture some of the action on the beach and in the water. The camera used 127 roll film and had a fixed focus and 1/125 second shutter speed. There were no adjustments and nothing to get wrong except the light. It had a tiny viewfinder you had to squint to look through and a shutter release that made taking pictures seem like an anticlimax. It was totally hopeless for taking photos from the beach of my friends surfing – the action was too far away. So I decided to get some shots from the water. I wrapped the camera in a plastic bag and cut a hole for the lens and put plasticine around the edge to keep the water out. I stuffed it inside my wetsuit and paddled out. The results were unremarkable and I don’t have any photos left, but as a first foray into photography something was awoken.
One of the older guys we surfed with was a professional photographer and he showed me how to develop film and print photos in his darkroom. The kind of gear he used was way beyond my budget but I was hooked on the idea of making my own pictures. My father let me use his 35 mm Petri rangefinder. I learned about aperture and depth of field and shutter speed and started experimenting more widely. We lived near the beach and I took pictures of sand and rocks and seascapes and landscapes.
After I left school and went to university, other interests took over and my photographic efforts were pretty sporadic. At one point I had enough money to buy my own 35 mm film camera. It came with a 28 mm wide angle lens that gave me a perspective completely at odds with everything I’d been doing up to that point. It had shocking distortion at the edges but produced some fascinating results that pushed me to think about creating abstract images.
In the following years my quest for better quality images led me to experiment with medium format and large format (4×5) and I attended workshops and seminars to learn more about correct exposure and about printing. The main problem was that it was always a part-time effort so learning was slow and erratic. I had a lot of fun but was never really satisfied with the results and always seemed to be experimenting.
The turning point came with three things – the advent of digital processing (scanning and printing), a seminar by Freeman Patterson on visual design, and being able to buy high quality lenses.
Digital processing meant more precise control over processing and printing. Freeman Paterson’s seminar taught me how to compose and structure images. High quality lenses meant that any deficiencies in my images were mine rather than those of the equipment. This isn’t the end of learning but rather a foundation for more. I’m still searching my own ‘voice’ in photography – refining what I want to express and working out how best to do this.
I was a member of the Wellington Photographic Society and served for two years as President. I was fortunate to have several prints accepted for the annual exhibitions and have benefited from the many visiting speakers and seminars hosted by the Society. I’m also fortunate that my work requires me to travel outside New Zealand, so many of the images in the gallery are the result of these forays.
Brett Longley