Photography

I was given a Voigtländer Vito B in the 1970s and started taking photos. Since then I’ve never stopped taking photos but am only now beginning to understand how difficult photography really is. I make images that satisfy my inner need for simplicity and tranquility.
I haven’t arrived at a ‘style,’ but I recognise that my frames do have a ‘look.’ Always distracted by light and practically addicted to contre-jour images—I have no explanation of why that came to be my way of making images. It may be just the edges and contrasts backlighting brings to an image. Also, I like my images to capture drama and serenity in equal measure—and landscape really helps with that.
Because I learnt photography on film and with old-school chemical darkroom technique, I had to unlearn a lot of technical things about exposure when transitioning to digital. I can get wrapped up in the technical aspects of photography, sometimes even to the point of losing what I’m shooting for! I’m more likely to get a keeper by simply responding to the light of a scene.
I was born on the north-west coast of Tasmania and grew up there before running away to sea, and then becoming an educational systems designer by way of industrial design and teaching. I live and work in Hobart and most of the images in the gallery are from Tassie.
I’ve been lucky to travel to Iceland twice and have recently been to Cornwall and Japan. There are only a couple of frames in this gallery from those islands but plenty more on flickr.
Nigel Cross