We didn’t have a careers advisor at school. The only jobs we knew were those around us; bus-driver, postman, insurance collector. There was an article in the paper on a local commercial artist. I had no idea what it meant but I quite liked the idea. There was also an ad for a Systems Analyst.
After I casually mentioned I wanted to be an artist several aunts and uncles came to visit. Over the course of a weekend they each took me to one side and advised me to ‘get a proper job’. I could always paint in the evenings or weekends if I really wanted to.
1969 – I got O-levels in Maths and English, and a handful of GCSEs. My favourite subject was Science – Physics, Chemistry and Biology – how stuff worked. As it was a new school they wanted us to stay on to create a sixth form, but I couldn’t see how what we were studying bore any relation to getting a job.
When I said I wanted to be a Systems Analyst everyone said I had to have a degree in maths, and go to University, and probably be a genius, so I shelved the idea.
My mate Steve showed me an ad for the Police Cadets. We both applied and I got in but he didn’t. Out of an initial intake of 200 I was one of 20 that finally ‘passed-out’ and went on into the Met. For anyone who saw the series ‘Life on Mars’ http://www.tv.com/life-on-mars-uk/show/51334/summary.html it was vaguely similar but much more boring. We mutually agreed that I didn’t have the right temperament.
Homosexuality, drugs and porn were criminal activities. Everyone smoked on the bus, on the tube and in the cinema; can you imagine!
1974 – After working in a shipping office in Barking I got a job with an insurance firm in St James’ Square, just off Piccadilly; not far from the Royal Academy, and Cork Street. There was still plenty of Pop Art about – trivia, I saw exhibitions of Abstract Art – meaningless trivia, and the Tate were shortly to buy a pile of bricks.
My firm relocated to Bristol in 1975 I moved down to the West Country with them. Although briefly working in the pensions department I was allowed to transfer into IT as part of the first phase. For nearly 30 years I worked on and around mainframe computers; initially Scheduling, then Operations and latterly Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery and, yes, Systems Analysis!
I had started fishing when I was 12 but it was pretty dire in East London, yanking tiny fish out from between push-bikes and shopping trolleys. On the first day I went fishing on the river Avon above Bath a kingfisher landed on the end of my rod. We sat there looking at each other for about ten minutes, till it got bored and flew off. The next day I went out and bought a camera.
There were no courses in photography in those days so I joined the local camera club; Keynsham Photographic Society. I thought I would learn all about photography in two weeks and then go back to fishing – I’d seen owls, badgers, foxes, herons, moles and wild mink; including catching some of the biggest fish I had ever seen.
The first six weeks at the club were all slide orientated – 35mm colour transparencies. Either a ‘slide battle’ with another club, a touring lecture or an audio-visual sequence; so I bought slide film. Although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, personally that was the best start I could have had. I quickly discovered the exposure had to be right; probably two thirds of each film were either over or under-exposed; and the composition had to be tight – I hated having to physically mask or crop slides.
It occurred to me that if I put in a bit of effort – walked forward, lay down or climbed up on something – I could get the image right before I pressed the button. And if most of my shots were effectively wasted due to wrong exposure I may as well use the film constructively and find out how the meter in my camera worked. It rarely agreed with what I was looking at, in much the same way that my arm rarely agreed with my eyes when I played darts or snooker!
Ian Snaden gave me a roll of black & white film, showed me how to develop and print it, and I was hooked. After setting up a darkroom in the loft so I could do-it-myself, I got a Saturday job in Jessops, up Whiteladies Road in Clifton, Bristol, so I could pay for film and paper. I didn’t see why my kids should go without shoes and food just because I wanted to take up photography.
Working in the camera shop gave me access to all the second-hand stuff. We didn’t open on Sundays, so as long as I got the kit back for Monday morning I could borrow whatever I liked. It wasn’t long before I moved up to medium format – Bronicas and Hasselblads – and eventually to large format 5×4 sheet film.
