Jun USA, Guyana shoot

Photo-shoot

The next book called for 1000 brand-new, specially-shot illustrations. Although I have useful sets from working with SONY, from the TV series in Singapore and a crazy chateau party in France, I needed more. We planned to shoot in USA, then Nicaragua but a week before we were to leave, the dangerous condition of politics in Nicaragua forced a change of destination. Wendy had always wanted to visit Guyana with its well-preserved rain forest, so that's where we headed after a spell touring the Southwestern States of the USA. In Guyana we were fortunate to meet conservation heroes (and the gorgeous blind Giant Otter, Buddy - nearly 2m from nose to tip of tail). Between us, Wendy and I shot 12,000 exposures in the USA, Guyana and Trinidad. A great trip - thank yous to Jean, Alice, Diane, Colin, Terry & Jim! You'll see the results next year, but I'll be posting a few tasters the Gallery when I take a breather from working on the book.

Jan Talk to London Photographic Meetup Group

Career

Gave a 3-hour talk (how did I get talked into that?) at The Tabernacle, London W11 on Saturday 22 Jan to the LPMG. Showed over 360 images sampling much of my work over 30 years to a group of about 140. The venue was excellent (particularly liked the informal, revue-like arrangement of people sitting around tables) and the group was very receptive and enthusiastic. Profits for the talk went to Practical Action, and people donated generously for book-signings. Thank you, all LPMG members! Check out LPMG. This picture of me waving airily at a shot of New York is courtesy of Alex Laberge, who put me and the event together.

Jun Scene City - Singapore: 8-part TV series

Television

In May and June I shot a series in Singapore on digital photography for Channel News Asia, with funding from MediaCorp, with production company Originasians, executive producer Lionel Chok. It was great fun. A link to the trailer is below. More details will follow as this whole video department is under construction; sorry about the rubble. For pictures taken for the series and some production shots, look for Singapore pictures in the Gallery. A DVD is being made of the series, due out early next year.

Apr Auckland

Photo-shoot

Exhausted from a long, long flight including hours at the wretched stop-over in Los Angeles, I arrived in Auckland. As we drove out of the airport, we saw this scene a minute later: it perfectly encapsulates New Zealand. Beautiful, peaceful and pastoral but not far under the surface you can also see a poverty of trees and industrial-scale farming. In an exchange that is typical, I told myself I was content just to experience its beauty (actually I was too damned tired to pick up the camera) but Wendy swung the car round anyway, so I got out to shoot the scene. And I’m glad I did. This trip provided many images for Digital Photographer\s Handbook, all shot on the Canon D30.

Apr Dictionary published

Books

“The Dictionary of Photography and Digital Imaging: The Essential Reference for the Modern Photographer” was a mouthful of a title for a title of a book. I’d had lots of fun pulling it together, buying lots of reference works even with a trip to Hay-on-Wye to gather up old photography dictionaries. It was decided not to use illustrations at all – in retrospect an egregiously obvious error of judgement – but there was no budget for any images at all. I’m very fond of the book, and there’s at least one happy reader who says he failed to catch me out with ‘specialised words’ and recommends it to every contemporary photographer ‘as a good read’ (!). I’d love to up-date it now.

The book is out of print, but I have good news for you. IT'S ONLINE! Yes, it's on iDigitalPhoto, a blog I started writing for . Click here to get to online version.

Oct Tao of Photography published

Books

From pitch to publication, this book was produced in record time. We were only racing our fears, really. It had such a good title, the feeling was it had to be rushed out before anyone else did it. I created the basic book design which was set in Futura (the favourite of so many designers). Of course I’d love to do it all over again but its basic premise – that the practice of photography is the resolution of a dynamic, energetic balance between the yin and the yang of numerous factors – is as sound as ever. Hmm; maybe that’s what I should have written the first time.

Feb Start gyoju-ryu

Home life

Cicely and I started gyoju-ryu style karate with Sensei Gavin. It was very tough indeed, and it was the first time in my life that I really sweated, really exerted myself. And I loved it. Though sparring with boys twice my size and half my age has its risks. Eventually I graded to Green Belt and won the Club Badge. Sewing this on my gi seemed to signal to the young ones ‘This one can look after himself. You may try to beat the shit out of him.’ I decided to leave while I had my goolies, knees and teeth intact.

Jan To Zanzibar

Photo-shoot

Wendy came across a great half-price deal, so she bought some tickets to Zanzibar, a place she’d always to visit. Our stay started badly, being put next to the water tank in the hot roof. But the rest of the time was bliss. And it was here, at Matemwe, that I felt the meaning of 'paradise' .

Nov Digital Photography, Silver Pixels

Books

‘Digital Photography’ was my first venture in, well, digital photography books. It was illustrated mainly with scanned-in images. This was rather controversial at the time: I didn’t see what problem some people had with it: the digital cameras of the time were either rather inferior or very expensive, and commonly both at the same time. But scanning opened the way to being able to work on images as never before. This notion was fully taken up in ‘Silver Pixels’ which was expressly a ‘bridge’ book, explaining what exciting possibilities were opened up by pushing the nineteenth technology of silver halide into the 20th century domain of the digital.

Dec New Zealand, Fiji

Expeditions

With all these books needing not only words but pictures, I was pleased to go on my first trip to New Zealand. Despite a few awkward moments – crashing into the future in-laws’ lampshade in my jet-lag, being bitten by a giant Dane dog, yelling at future mother-in-law – it was a great trip. Oh, and I borrowed a then fabulously costly dSLR but it was delivered the evening before we flew off without a battery charger: what followed was a lot of time wasted trying to track a charger down over Christmas, and a very expensive hunk of useless metal and glass. This is one of the dozen or so images I managed to take with it before the battery gave out.

Oct Unpaid leave to write books

Career

Some time earlier in the year, my head of department had been approached by a publisher needing an introduction to digital photography. When he learnt it was for a popular readership i.e. not valuable for gaining research points, he sent the enquiry my way. As it happened, some years earlier I’d done some consultancy for the publisher. A good start. I offered the book to other colleagues to share in the writing but there was no interest. This was to be one of the first full-colour books on digital photography to be published. Other book ideas came started to come together so that, by the autumn of that year, I had at least four ideas in hand, and in various stages of contract negotiation. I asked for a sabbatical to do the work but was turned down. So I had to take unpaid leave.

Sep Picture Editing published

Books

It was clear from all my experience that picture editing was not recognized as a specialist journalistic and photographic skill as, say, investigative reporting or photography itself. But I thought it needed a specific set of skills, so I wrote a book that brought together all the issues I thought were important. I wanted to show that it wasn’t merely about choosing the best shot, that the ‘best’ shot was a highly relative notion. And I brought in legal and ethical issues too. Sadly, the publisher never understood that it should be sold to photographers but marketed to journalists, thereby guaranteeing limited sales. It ran to two editions and is still the only coherent text that deals with the whole image-making chain rather merely shooting and choosing. It is time it was up-dated to include digital image management.

Jun Power Mac arrives

Career

I don’t know why it took me so long, but I’ve finally bought my first Apple Mac. I immediately load it up with software, including a thing called Macromedia xRes, said to be a Photoshop killer. Turns out it’s a hard-disk killer: it used virtual disks so heavily, it trashed my hard-disk in weeks. The whole experience was hard work: I dreaded starting up, fearing a freeze. Then it would crash at least twice a day. There was also the fun of working with SCSI devices that had to be plugged in the right order or they wouldn’t show up. But the result was that by overcoming all the difficulties, I became a power user.

Mar ‘From Silken Threads to Woven Images’ at Ilford Gallery

Exhibitions

I liked the idea of working my Central Asia images with my sketches. I experimented with double-exposure shots of sketches and colour prints. These I then scanned and gave them to a student to work on. These were mildly successful and were also chosen for three group shows.

Aug Central Asia

Expeditions

A glorious 6-week trip around Central Asia: fixing up meetings and setting up academic links with lots of photography on the side. One of the highlights was a visit to a tiny nature reserve on the out-skirts of Bukhara: our driver, moonlighting from his job as a policeman, didn’t know the way. He was astonished at what was there. Przewalski Horses, Ulan or desert asses, desert tortoises and snakes, and this beautiful but lonely cheetah. Said to be the last Central Asian Cheetah, but she could have been a cross with an African cheetah in Moscow Zoo.

Jan ‘Silken Threads’, Samarkand

Exhibitions

One of our sponsors, BAT plc, supported us because it was negotiating a joint venture with the Uzbek government to farm tobacco and make cigarettes. We took part of our show to Tashkent, and Samarkand to celebrate the sealing of the deal. It was beautiful to see Uzbekistan in the snow, especially Samarkand.

Nov ‘Silken Threads’ at University of Westminster

Exhibitions

We took over the main entrance hall of the University of Westminster on Regent Street as well as a space in the café, we had the ambassador to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan write our text panels, had a Cabinet Minister to open the show, served vodka at the reception, erected a yurt on site, had the whole thing sponsored … and naively completely forgot that I’d been in my post for only a couple of years. The warmest comment I garnered from my colleagues, the head of department, was that I ‘shouldn’t have painted the panels’. The other comments were, under the best light, rather less supportive. Still, everyone else thought it a fine show, and it was the first time anyone had seen anything of contemporary Central Asia in London.

May ‘Slippery Slopes’ at Photofusion

Exhibitions

While in the Marghib of Tajikistan, I indulged in landscapes taken on my Leica. They made a nice set: I must show them again one day.

Aug To Central Asia

Expeditions

This time a much longer, more ambitious trip. Best of all, it meant we could work with our dear friend Prof. Yuri Badenkov, who had accompanied me on the Russian leg of the Marco Polo Expedition. With him we spent all too brief a time in the Marghib Valley in Tajikistan – remote, gorgeous and rough. It was a great trip for photography. Both Wendy and I shot a lot, got very tired in the 2000m air and had the time of our life. Even when grimacing through a bowl of Army-grade gruel and sleeping on the floor of the head-master’s office.

Apr To Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Bishkek

Expeditions

The Central Asian adventure really began the previous November, when I suggested to Wendy that we should go to Central Asia for the University of Westminster: there must be opportunities to build academic links in the newly independent states. By the time we took the flight to Uzbekistan, we had secured funding from both the university and British Council. Apart from the small matter of a visa not coming until about half-an-hour before we had to leave for the airport, the start-up was pretty smooth. In only two weeks we logged dozens of meetings in Tashkent, Samarkand, Dushanbe, and Bishkek. It was wonderful but having no Russian was extremely frustrating. But it was a wonderful place and a great time to photograph. Besides, I was returning to Central Asia which I had fallen in love with on the Marco Polo expedition. We returned to London with a report that Central Asia needed accountants, auditors and bankers very badly. It made sense to start up accountancy courses, we said. Excuse me, which department are you from? Yeah; I know: you don’t expect photography lecturers to propose accountancy courses, but it was no use proposing photography courses. They needed accountants. Naïve and innocent, I was not prepared for the corruption that we encountered. In London, I mean. Money I raised to pay for Uzbek bankers to come to London to study instead funded English lecturers to jolly in Uzbekistan, drumming up nice little consultancies with NGOs.

Sep Start at PCL

Career

To my surprise, I was short-listed for interview. Touring the building with the other applicants, I decided to go through with it although all the others were already lecturers. Then I was introduced to the interview panel as not need any introduction. Way to go! I pulled out lots of tear-sheets and made up a course on the spot. When I was offered the job, the Head of School apologised that the starting salary was lower than my last job (on the newspaper), but after a year, it would be nearly the same: would that be alright? I said I’d think about it over the weekend. A bit cheeky, in view of the rest of me saying ‘Yes? YES!!’.

Apr Ag+ magazine

Career

Ag+ magazine started here: the three of us worked in an office of Silverprint so small that no-one could stand up without the others squeezing into their desks. I edited and designed the first issues, someone else coming up with the cover. We laid it out in Pagemaker and we printed each page as camera-ready on an office laser-printer. Each page took nearly half an hour to grind out. It was here I filled out a job application for a lectureship at the Polytechnic of Central London. But I prepared to carry on in photography magazines.

Nov ‘Orphans of Romania’ at French Institute

Exhibitions

During the Romania tour we also visited several schools and orphanages, bringing them toys and other presents. The schools we visited were relatively well-off, but were still sobering experiences. I also spent a day shooting a story on the orphans of Bucharest railway station, but these have never been published.

Sep Romania

Photo-shoot

The London Schubert Players were to tour Romania – the first English orchestra to do so after the fall and execution of Ceausescu. I went along as the photographer. It was a lovely trip: fond memories of the players gobbling up cheap scores and singing Schubert’s String Quintet on the long coach journeys. We also visited several schools. I also spent a day shooting a story on the orphans of Bucharest railway station, but that has never been published.

Apr To Japan

Expeditions

Another story idea – in fact several stories – pitched to the Sunday Correspondent, this time to look at the under-belly of Japanese society: the burakumin (a under-caste), the disabled and the refugees, a prostitute’s district, and the Ainu of Hokkaido. Partly to make up for the way the editor had treated me, I was sent on spec, i.e. not actually paid but expenses were covered, to shoot the stories. In the event, we tried to do too much in too short a time, and I kept myself on too tight a budget: we covered Japan all the way from the south to Hokkaido. But it was a fascinating trip all the same. This quiet image is perhaps my favourite from the trip.

Dec Namibia

Television

One day at the Sunday Correspondent a story was pitched about the de-horning of rhinoceros – a controversial measure meant to make them valueless to poachers. It tickled the editor, so I got quotes from photographers in South Africa. But they came in so high, it was easy to convince even him it would be cheaper to send me to shoot it. The first day we went tracking we climbed over a cliff and found ourselves face-to-face – well, 30m away, which as close as you’ll ever get – to a de-horned female with her baby rhino. We didn’t dare to move in case we alarmed the mother to charge us, then she’d surely plunge over the cliff. I found I needed my tele-converter and it was in the camera bag, under Velcro fastening. You would not believe how noisy Velcro is when you want to be quiet. And rhinos have extraordinarily good hearing. Anyway, the journalist had an aberration and wrote a poor story delivered very late. Fortunately I had also shot a nice story on the Himba, so we ran that instead, and never published the rhino story.

Jul Arles fiasco

Career

Should I not even mention this, or at least pass over the episode in silence? But no, it was an important milestone: being betrayed by two friends. In Arles the previous year, three photographers – only slightly drunk – came up with the idea of making a film on themselves. It was audacious and arrogant, but we were very different, and all prominent in the UK photography scene in different ways. So I wrote up a proposal for a film on the premise that the three of us represented three facets of the best of UK’s photography scene. Kodak liked the idea (especially its jingoistic slant) and agreed to fund it. A director friend of one of the photographers was hired. The long and short of it is that he didn’t do what he was hired to do, but shot two separate films – on the other photographers. He over-spent his budget, but Kodak gave us more money. Nonetheless, it was only enough to finish the other films, and nothing was left to make a film on me. One was shown in Arles. It was greeted with hoots and universal derision, earned by being pretentious and empty. For my part, I had kept my deal: I ran large profiles on the photographers in ‘Photography’ magazine and a feature (which I’d shot and written) on the making of the film. This was a nadir and betrayal which came within a hair’s breadth of convincing me never to trust anyone ever again. One of them died from a heart attack a year later while the other has fallen into obscurity.

Jul Joined Sunday Correspondent

Career

Soon after returning to ‘Photography Magazine’, Nigel Skelsey joined the ‘Telegraph’, leaving me in charge. The magazine moved its offices from the glorious and aptly named Golden Square to some god-forsaken suburb on the wrong side of Hemel Hempstead. I went to work as little as I could. One day the MD called me into his office. ‘Tom’, said he ‘in the last month you’ve been in only five days.’ ‘Seven; actually.’ I pointed out my magazine production was on time, which he had to agree with. But I saw the writing on the wall, and wrote my resignation note when I returned to my desk. Fortunately, ‘The Sunday Correspondent’ was soon to launch and were looking for a picture editor for the magazine, and I got the job. It was the start of an exciting time – I love launching new publications (it’s the creating something out of nothing) but a great too much like hard work for me to keep it up. Besides, I had the classic dead-loss editor whose idea of a coup was to buy a feature from ‘Vanity Fair’, and who had a rather less flair than he fancied. He fought hard against my picture spreads but lacked the grace to join in the plaudits when everyone else on the paper were delighted. Before a year was up, I had to leave. But it was a fabulous time to be working on a newspaper, what with the fall of the Berlin Wall, collapse of the Soviet Union, and the toppling of governments in Romania and Poland, earthquake in California.

Jun Journey Across the Silk Road Exhibition

Exhibitions

Don’t ask me what aberration led us to call this ‘across’ instead of ‘along’ the Silk Road. But it was a seriously major show, held in the glorious space of the Zamana Gallery, South Kensington, London. Not only was the space glorious, it was completely re-decorated – hand-painted, in fact – for my show. A beautiful catalogue was published. We put on talks, we invited local schools to events. Very grand.

May Marco Polo Expedition

Expeditions

The Marco Polo Expedition was an idea that had been with me since my school days. I wanted to emulate Marco’s journey, and to photograph the trip. I shared this idea with many people, including the writer Richard Fisher. To his credit he saw its potential and sold the idea to Hodder & Stoughton. With the advance, we had some money to fund the project. Some time around Easter I received a call “Get your passport to the Russian Embassy. Now!’ It was the instruction we’d been waiting for. The previous year was all had seemed hopeless: we’d not received any response from the Russians despite repeated letters and calls. A crisis meeting was called, at which we considered giving up. I suggested that as we’ve nothing to lose, we could write to Mikhail Gorbachev himself. It was a ludicrous idea, but it was also true that we had nothing to lose. Years later I met the lady in Moscow who was commanded from ‘Very high up’ to process our visas. The expedition was a wonderful adventure which taught me many things. One day I’ll write up my experiences. My pictures were used to illustrate the book ‘Marco Polo Expedition: A Journey Along The Silk Road’ which, inexplicably, won the ‘Thomas Cook Award for Best Illustrated Travel Book’ in 1988.

Sep Start at Photography magazine

Career

Nigel Skelsey, the editor, asked me to help him re-launch a magazine. This was the simple start to one of the most rewarding and creative periods I’ve ever enjoyed. I had just started up a little slide library with some friends, and made a good little sale to ‘Amateur Photographer’ for a booklet series (which I happened to write too) but had to give it up to work on the magazine. It was the first 9-5 job ever, except it wasn’t exactly nine to five. More like ten, then a two-hour lunch with some visiting photographer, then back for a quick snooze before dashing off a letter or two. Nevertheless we were the only magazine in the stable (which included titles on model soldiers and trains) which consistently kept to its production schedule. In no time at all, we built a reputation as the finest photography monthly, by far. We had photographers queuing up to be published, and bested even the ‘Sunday Times Magazine’ on scoop stories. Why? Simply because we published twelve-page or longer picture stories in a layout that that put images first.

Mar To Kenya

Expeditions

My first, and so far last, trip leading a photo tour, with Guerba Expeditions. We had to contend with a rebellion from some of the group who felt I wasn’t doing it right. Fortunately I had an experienced Africa hand to help. When the rebels settled down, we could all enjoy the marvellous sights and experiences. Writing this in 2009 I’m thinking it’s high time I did it again.

Feb ‘Homescapes’ at Ilford Gallery

Exhibitions

Around this time, I was working at lot from home. Between picking at the piano and spending time with Louise and Cicely, I was churning out numerous camera and equipment reviews. My studio was full of cardboard boxes overflowing with polystyrene chips. In order to combine child-care with reviewing, I photographed at home much of the time. This lead to the idea of ‘Homescapes’. It showed how much around the house is worth photographing if you don’t tidy up all the time.

homescapes001.jpg

Jan ‘Wade’s Road' at Nikon Gallery

Exhibitions

The Scottish Highlands book prints were shown at the Nikon Gallery in London, which demonstrated their broadmindedness, as the work was all shot on Olympus. Then they moved to the Ilford Gallery where they were very well received.

Feb Israel

Photo-shoot

This was to be a fun trip: ostensibly to obtain stock photos for my agent, Robert Harding, it was supported by Minolta who wanted to show off their new auto-focus camera.  In the event it ranged from freezing cold to incredibly hot. Not the greatest trip but I did get some useful shots.

Nov Sanyo MBC550 computer

Career

It cost a lot of money, even though it was the cheapest non-quite-compatible PC at the time. You had to launch applications (I used WordStar) from floppy disks (the really floppy ones), and if you needed to print, you had to take out the left-hand floppy and insert another programme floppy. And I had a daisy-wheel printer so noisy it couldn’t be used after midnight or risk baby’s, neighbours’ and the bats’ wrath. Altogether a horrible outfit, but my productivity – writing several articles each week for a whole swathe of photography magazines – was tripled compared to slamming away at the typewriter.

May ‘Wade’s Road’ at Ilford Gallery

Exhibitions

The Ilford Gallery was a lovely showroom leading to their offices in central London. Bright, airy and compact it showed a surprisingly wide and prestigious range of photographers. The executives loved my large prints though now they look rather grey and flat to me.

Apr Japan, Penang, Bangkok with Nikon

Photo-shoot

A wonderful trip, courtesy of Nikon UK, which took us to factory visits in Japan followed by the reward – for all the hard work of trudging around camera assembly lines – of a couple of days in Penang via a stop-over in Bangkok.

Sep ‘Linescapes’ at Battersea Arts Centre

Exhibitions

I showed some arty, indistinct landscapes at this, my second solo show. I don’t think a single image has survived or been used since. Better have a look at the negs again; there may be something there. This comes from later work with Polachrome film but is indicative of what I was shooting.

Jul Escapade with bees

Home life

Bad bee management meant I upset a hive while checking for queens, so they attacked me with determination and sent me to hospital. I had recovered from my collapse on the operating table enough to stop an intern giving me atropine when I needed adrenaline. In short, the story of Tom Ang could have ended right there.

Mar ‘Homescapes and Landscapes’ at Fingerprint Gallery

Exhibitions

My first solo exhibition. With young children at home, I wanted to work from home to spend them with them, so took on a lot of work reviewing cameras for photo magazines. This meant a lot of shooting at home. In time, there was a decent collection of pictures taken around the house – a little project which continues to this day.

Jun Hong Kong

Expeditions

Along with a lot of nappies, I took out my Rolleiflex SL66: a great clunking, noisy camera I adored for its great imaging ability and built-in extrene close-focusing. It was great for landscapes and still-lifes – I shot many Homescapes with it and used it more than I realised when I decided to sell it: Surely it deserved better than ending up in eBay hell.

Feb Form Wandsworth Photo-Coop

Career

With a bunch of others whose names I can’t remember (do contact me to fill in the gaps if you're reading this) Wandsworth Photo-Cooperative was formed, with the aim of offering photography to help improve society. Our first project was to photograph for the local social services. But within months, there was a split with left-wing air-heads insisting that the Co-op should never take on paying jobs while others, like me, argued that paying jobs enabled the Co-op to be more effective on socially-motivated projects. I left them to wallow in their self-righteous ineffectiveness. Fortunately, die-hards kept it going and it’s now a successful, and, yes, commercial, operation which does heaps of good work. My first project with the Co-op was a group show at the Battersea Arts Centre.

Oct Started working for Fay Godwin

Career

I can’t recall how I got to hear Fay had a job for an assistant. But I went along and when asked whether I knew how to print, I said ‘Yes’ because, sure, I had made my own prints. Years later, Fay liked to tell the story that actually I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was doing - I was a total amateur. There's knowing, and there's knowing. Yet she kept me on, trained me and made me good enough to print for her books and an exhibition. She also helped me get my first book commission, ‘Walking the Scottish Highlands’. She was hugely generous to me. I was happy to lead the first issue of ‘Ag Photographic’ magazine with her. Naturally, my pictures at the time bore her influence.

Jul Started free-lancing

Career

I entrusted a dozen of my best shots – Kodachrome slides in that neat yellow box with translucent top – to a friend’s father who offered to show them to gallery people he knew. After all,  he had already introduced me to the Mexico Tourist Board’s agency who had bought some pictures, paying enough to fund my time and pizzas in New York. On my return to UK, I sold a dawn shot of the Costa Chica to Air France for a handsome sum, and also a magazine article on Iztapalapa to Illustrated London News. Altogether it was rather encouraging, so I decided to try surviving as a freelance photographer. In the meantime, not a word from New York. One day I received a letter telling me friend’s father had had a heart attack and my pictures were lost in the chaos. I learnt a lesson there.

Feb To Mexico and New York

Expeditions

This was my first photo-trip: its main focus was the Easter parade at Iztapalapa, on the out-skirts of Mexico City. I also visited Acapulco (where a shot of a marina sold every few months - at Tony Stone, then Getty Images - for years) and explored the Costa Chica to meet the peoples descended from escapee slaves. I learnt a lot from that trip, though sadly not as much as I should have. For years I continued to make the same mistake of trying to do too much on too little money and time. A few of these images have been used in my books:

Apr To Hong Kong

Career

After a lot of agonizing, I bought a Nikon F2 Photomic with 50mm f/1.4 and 135mm f/2.8 lenses. I loved it, and still think one of the best cameras Nikon ever made. The 50mm was a very good lens but the 135mm, despite trying to convince myself it was a cracker, was never anything but a ho-hum performer. With this modest outfit, I started serious snapping in Hong Kong, with very average results. This image of a half-empty reservoir survived into the Digital Photographer's Handbook.

Jun Philosophy, University College, Londonhis

Education

Two weeks before Finals, I took myself and a tent off to Cornwall where I went hungry and uncomfortable with a borrowed Pentax KM and two or three rolls of Kodachrome 64. I realized by then that I’d only ever make a 2nd-rate philosopher. But still fancied myself a photographer: this week was for me to try out photography. A couple of pictures survive from that time: like this chestnut sapling in the light, ideal for demonstrating selection and comping techniques.

Aug Nottingham Medical School

Education

Not the most fun-filled time. I’d given up an invitation to study clarinet in Vienna in order to study medicine at what was the most exciting, innovative medical school in the land. I was disenchanted within weeks with the realization there was no interest in keeping people healthy but consuming obsessions with mechanistic interventions like drugs and surgery. Spent most of my time in Music School, performing in just about every music event, and even conducted a couple of works for small orchestra (Delius, and Schubert). I bought my first camera – a double-stroke Leica M3 with collapsible 50mm Summicron plus a Leicameter MR. As I couldn’t afford it, I was persuaded to write post-dated cheques which eventually bounced, and got into a lot of trouble. But that's where it started.

Jan Battersea Grammar School

Education

Took up clarinet: my main achievement was to become First Clarinet for the London Schools Symphony Orchestra (LSSO) and receive a small bursary to train at the Guildhall School of Music - much to the mystification of the music teacher as I showed no other musical talent. Another achievement I remember was being put in such distant out-field for cricket matches where the ball never ever went so that I did not have to change position each over. Everyone could forget me, and I could forget them and watch beetles making their way through the grass. I only ever got to bat once in six years … and was out for a duck.