Early Days

My father, though he was partially sighted, was a keen photographer. He gave me my first camera when I was 7 years old. I still have my first photos somewhere, I think at my brother’s house, and will soon get round to scanning them. My father gave me a more serious 35 mm camera while I was at university which I took on vacation a few times together with my hand held light meter. I fondly remember receiving my prints and sharing them with my dear mum. She would flick through all of them, look at me quizzically and ask, “Where are you? You aren’t in any of these photos.” “I’m the photographer, mum!”

First SLR

After leaving university, a few months into my first job in the oil and gas industry, I bought my first serious SLR, an Olympus OM-2. This camera lasted for a good ten or fifteen years and somewhere, I think with my ex wife, I have some great photos of the Argentine Andes, the Bolivian jungles and the Brazilian Amazon. I must ask her to borrow them for a while and scan them all. The OM-2 finally succumbed to mould during one of the Bolivian wet seasons.

Assorted Cameras

My next batch of cameras were an assortment of self winding automatic Kodaks and others. One died as a result of sea water on a diving trip in Barbados. On returning to my hotel, I laid down for a nap when the camera started spontaneously clicking and whirring. Its last photos were of my disappointed face looking at the camera, realising it was in its death throes. Another, the winding lever snapped off, too flimsy to wind on a 36 exposure film.

The Digital Age

I had a few cameras at the start of the digital age and vaguely remember one that stored a handful of photos on a floppy disk. A few of these photos are in my digital library. These were followed by a couple of Casio Exilim slim cameras. My library has my trip to Itaparica in Brasil, but my wild girlfriend from my midlife crisis disappeared with the photos from Cuba. After she spray painted all my clothes with bleach on leaving, I doubt I will see these photos again.

First DSLR

A few years ago, I married again. After a quartet of boys from my first marriage, another boy with my new wife, I finally contributed to the creation of a girl in 2009. I decided I wanted to have beautiful photos of my daughter and that I would purchase my first DSLR. My work had taken me to Mexico at the time and Mia was born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I bought a photography magazine in the airport in Mexico City on my way to Santa Cruz to be present for the birth. After flicking through the magazine, I decided I would buy a Canon Rebel.

Duty Free in Panama

On my way back to Mexico, I had a short stopover in Panama where there is a decent sized Duty Free. With just 40 minutes to make my purchase, I went into the first electronic goods store and told the salesman, “Sell me a Canon Rebel.”” We don’t sell Canon,” he replied. “Where can I buy a Canon?” I asked. “Nowhere here in the Duty Free,” he replied, “The owner of all these stores had a fight with Canon.””OK,” I said, “Sell me a Nikon.” And I ended up with a Nikon D5000. It turns out that I paid a little bit over the odds, maybe around 50% more than I should have; you’re supposed to bargain in Panama, apparently.

Durable D5000

But no regrets, 10 years later and the D5000 is still going strong and pretty much in mint condition despite travelling to more than 15 countries and spending long periods in the sun and sand of the Sahara, a week at 49 DegC in southern Iraq, and -20 DegC in Astana, Kazakhstan. The camera body and kit lens were soon joined by a 70 – 300 mm zoom, a flash, tripod, remote release and a magnificent AF-S Nikkor 18 – 105 mm which fits perfectly on the camera in a soft carrying case, the main reason (along with tender loving care) for the longevity of this camera.

Nikon D3s

The D5000 was soon joined by a Nikon D3s, the top of the range Nikon body at the time of purchase. I had definitely fallen in love with photography by then and just over a year after buying the D5000, I came into a bit of money and bought the very best available on a trip to Edinburgh to introduce my new son and daughter to my ageing parents and my brother and his family. The D3s came together with an AF-S Nikkor 24 – 70 mm f/2.8 zoom (which fits in the soft carry case), an AF-S Nikkor 70 – 200 mm f/2.8 zoom and an AF-S Nikkor 50 mm f/1.4 lens. This impressive arsenal was soon joined by an AF-S Micro Nikkor 105 mm f/2.8 macro lens, bought on a trip through Miami. 

Learning to Use the D3s – Theatre Photography

The D3s was a bit of a challenge after getting used to the D5000. It doesn’t have an Auto mode. I learnt to use the D3s by reading the manual cover to cover, by reading a book on the D3s/D3x by David Busch, again, cover to cover, and from a baptism by fire, taking over 6,000 photos in a week in a dark theatre. On returning to Bolivia after the family trip to Edinburgh, my wife volunteered me to take photos for the Santa Cruz Theatre Festival. I went to more theatre productions in a week than I had been to in my life. It turns out that the D3s is spectacular for theatre photography with ISO up to 102,400. (I remember ISO 400 was pretty much the limit when using film).

400 mm Telephoto Lens

There was still a bit of money left over from my windfall. Within a few weeks of returning to Bolivia, I ordered a massive AF-S 400 mm f/2.8 telephoto lens from the States. Almost 6 kg of lens and close to $10,000. I really had fallen in love. A petroleum engineer can afford better equipment than most professional photographers.

The Demise of the Macro Lens

I really look after my equipment and haven’t lost anything more serious than the little plastic accessory shoe cover. Though I did have the D3s confiscated for a month in Algeria. I’ll tell you about that in a little while. The one exception was the macro lens which I dropped onto a ceramic tiled floor from waist height. It stopped working. You can’t get photographic equipment repaired in the third world. I learnt this a few years ago when the electronic zoom on one of my Exilims stopped working. I took it into a repair shop and after a few weeks, the technician gave up and returned me a boxful of parts which included most of the Exilim and maybe a few parts from other assorted cameras that he had given up on. It took a few years and a couple of trips to Glasgow to visit my older kids to have the damaged macro lens repaired at an authorised Nikon repair shop. It took six months to repair and cost close to what I had paid for it. But the repair was perfect and the macro lens is now my preferred portrait lens.

Introduction to Aerial Photography

I had another stroke of luck in 2012 on my return to Bolivia from working in Mexico and was between jobs (unemployed). I met a friend at a wedding who owns a helicopter company. He invited me to be his Commercial Director. Helicopters and photography go magnificently together. Within a few weeks of starting the job, we had to do a test flight for one of the helicopters. We took the doors off so there would be nothing between the cameras lens and the spectacular views of the city. I read a few tips on internet the night before the flight, set the mode to shutter preferred, 1/1000 sec, avoided leaning on the structure of the helicopter to dampen vibration and snapped away merrily for the entire flight. Half expecting blurred images, I was astounding at the quality of the photos when I downloaded them immediately after landing. For the next few months, every test flight became a photo opportunity. I have over 3,000 aerial photos of Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Aircraft

I had a beautiful office at the helicopter company’s hangar. Just being at the airport was a tremendous photo opportunity. On quiet days, I would hide in the grass near the head of the runway and practice panning as the planes landed and took off. I also took hundreds of photos at Air Force Day and at a separate Air Show. The 400 mm lens was spectacular for these occasions.

First Professional Experiences

The helicopter company provided services to the oil and gas companies, principally for seismic acquisition projects. The companies started finding out about my aerial photography. We were contracted by the companies to take aerial photographs of their projects. Two of these companies have multiple framed photos of mine on the walls throughout their offices.

Football

My 13 year old son is turning out to be a serious football player (that’s soccer for my friends from the States). He has trained continuously since he was 4 years old and plays for one of the top two or three clubs in Santa Cruz. The 400 mm lens is also spectacular for football photographs. Set up on the touchline with a sturdy tripod and I have hundreds if not thousands of action photos, from training sessions, matches and tournaments in various cities in Bolivia and two trips to Cordoba, Argentina.

Confiscation of the D3s

The windfall lasted only so long and I had to go back to serious work. An opportunity opened up in 2013 to work in the Sahara Desert in Algeria with one of my friends. I asked ahead what I should take with me. “Bring a thick jacket,” he said, “It gets chilly at night in the desert… and bring your camera.” I did, I took the D3s and some expensive lenses. On arrival at Algiers airport, security took exception to my photographic equipment. Algeria had a bit of a terrorism problem at the time, Al Qaeda and later ISIS. Though cameras as such are not prohibited, binoculars and telescopes are considered terrorist-interesting pieces of equipment. Cry as I might, they confiscated my camera and lenses. They gave me a receipt and told me that they would return it all when I left the country. Did I believe them? A month later, to my astonishment, all my equipment was returned to me exactly as I had handed it to them. Since then, my travel camera is my D5000.

Shooting in RAW

One good decision I took when I bought the D5000 was to shoot in RAW. I was well aware when I started on the DSLR phase of my photography that I did not have the skills, knowledge or the experience to properly process my photographs, even if I did have an eye for a good photo and the ability to use the camera. I was confident that the day would arrive when I would mature to a fairly fully-fledged professional photographer. Hence the decision to shoot in RAW so that I can go back to the photos taken back in time and make the required tweaks and adjustments. I am confident that the time has now arrived.

Aperture

A more-or-less decision I took ten years ago was to store my RAW files in Aperture. I can’t remember why I didn’t consider Lightroom. For whatever reason, I didn’t, and pushed ahead for all these years with Aperture. I started my first Aperture Library in 2010 and after three years, it had grown to 750 GB and was getting too heavy to handle and make backups. I started a new library and thereafter a new one every year, then every six months, then every quarter. I accumulated something like sixteen libraries spread around on numerous external hard disks. Two of these hard disks have failed, though thankfully, I have been sufficiently diligent with my backups that I have not lost any photos. I could generally find any photo I was looking for, though with sixteen libraries, it would take some searching for if I didn’t know the date the photo was taken.

Photoshop

I started working with Photoshop in 2010, in parallel with Aperture. I would do most of my post production in Aperture – cropping, straightening, exposure adjustments – and only take to Photoshop photos that needed special treatment. I pretty well taught myself to use Photoshop, reading books, mainly, and recently I took a 270 hour course with the New York Institute of Photography which was excellent.

Aperture to Lightroom

Apple announced a few years ago that they were discontinuing support for Aperture. They gave us a heads up to start looking for an alternative. I procrastinated for a couple of years and finally made the decision last year to go for Lightroom. I started off gingerly, trying to be as methodical as possible to make sure I didn’t lose any data and to maintain the 1,300 albums I had built up. It took a pandemic to allow me the time to be able to make the full transition. After a few weeks work, I now have all 187,000 photos in one library and have managed to conserve the albums. I had to make the choice between the Lightroom Classic and the new Lightroom CC cloud version and went for the latter, thinking cloud storage is the future. One drawback, it takes ages to synchronise. I am keeping a copy of all the photos on an external hard disk locally, and my third world internet speed allows me to synchronise a maximum of 1,000 photos every 24 hours. It is going to take a full six months to have the entire library backed up to the cloud.

Working with Lightroom

Working with Lightroom is a dream. To have all my photographs in one library is also a dream. With the photos organised by date, by album, with ratings, tags, locations, by camera and facial recognition, it takes less than a minute, typically, to find any single photo taken over a 15 year period. Lightroom works hand in hand with Photoshop. I would say that over 90% of post processing can be done in Lightroom. Anything more fancy that requires the special capabilities of Photoshop, a photo can be taken to Photoshop at the press of a button and the final product returned to Lightroom when closing the file. Any adjustments made in Lightroom prior to opening in Photoshop are carried over into Photoshop. All work done in both Lightroom and Photoshop are non-destructive with the original RAW file preserved.

Lightroom a Work in Progress

It will take me six months to synchronise my 187,000 photos to the cloud. During this time, I will work through my albums to sort, select, tag, tweak, post process and fine tune. My intention is to share the results of this project on this web site, posting albums as I complete them accompanied by a description of the capture and post processing. Wish me luck. Any feedback, comment or recommendation will be very helpful, ideally positive, but I’m man enough to take the negative.