Photographer's Philosophy

" I was sharing a dugout canoe with a National Geographic photographer off a northern island of Papua New Guinea waiting for the light to change, when we both started talking of all things photography. We appeared to be getting on quite well I thought until I mentioned that if I had taken a picture of a young Melanesian boy with snot hanging from his nose, I would have no hesitation in removing it digitally back at the studio. With that the photographer stood and unleashed a most incredible tirade of abuse that lasted a good five minutes, aligning me with satan and calling me a digital whore and a corrupter of the photographic art.

The two of us then sat in absolute silence for the next two hours."

In my view, photography is an art form, no different to a painting or a sculpture in that it is both a record and an artist's interpretation of reality. My objective as a photographer is to create memorable and pleasing images and I'm happy to utilize whatever tools are available to make that happen. This may involve coloured filters, specialised camera equipment, subjects doing things they wouldn't normally do and, in some cases, computer manipulation (i.e. removing snot from a young kids nose which, apart from anything else, is not something he or his mother would like to see in a national publication). I am eager to embrace all new technology likely to broaden and improve my photography and I have discovered that much of what computers do is merely a convenient way of doing what has been done in darkrooms in the past. So I sharpen pictures that become "softer" in the scanning process, I tweak colours to bring the image closer to what appears on the original transparency and I use the cloning tool to clear a beach of debris as a sensible option to physically doing it myself. These are decisions I make consciously, weighing up each opportunity according to its merits - comfortable on completion that I have maintained the integrity of the subject.

Of course, photography is a subjective call but at the end of this process there can only be one arbitrator who decides what is right or wrong, what is pleasing to the eye or what isn't, and what will see the light of day and what won't – that is the photographer.  It is he or she who proudly stands beside their work and ultimately takes responsibility for the photograph and makes the choice to share it with others.