I come from a farming background which probably couldn't be further removed from photography if I planned it.
Have spent a lot of time travelling in Asia, India, Europe, North and South America.
Returned to New Zealand and began work with the New Zealand National Film Unit in 1976 as a colour timer working on various projects but mainly feature films.
The NZNFU ceased to exist when bought by Television New Zealand in the late 1980’s but the motion picture laboratory side of the operation was retained. Peter Jackson purchased this in 1990 and I still work for the organisation (Park Road Post) as Head of Laboratory, also responsible for the Optical Effects Dept. and the Archives preservation side of the laboratory. This is interesting and demanding work with involvement in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong.
I suppose working in this industry I was bound to get hooked on some aspect of photography. The nature of the movie industry in my early days was such that although there were a lot of very busy times there were also many quiet periods as well.
Having a huge chemical store at my disposal I was able to experiment with various processes. These included gelatine dry plate negatives, cyanotypes, albumen printing out paper and kallitypes.
While I’ll not go into an explanation of the various processes, suffice to say they were a good introduction to alternative photography and taught me much – including patience – which was to help me in my work with the collodion wet plate process.
I started experimenting with wet plate in the early 1980’s and had many failures and only the odd – very odd success. I’d get out all of the gear, spend a day of getting very poor results and would throw it all back in a box for 6 months until I’d forgotten how frustrating the whole business was , then drag it all out for another go!
These failures were due mainly to very limited information of the process and the inability to obtain correct chemistry.
I belong to the Photographic Collector’s Association of New Zealand due to my collecting interests and it was at one of our conferences that I met Sandy Barrie from Australia. He was presenting a session on early processes and I was able to get some ideas and help from him. This renewed my interest and after obtaining the correct chemicals I searched the internet for information. I found Will Dunniway of California, a working collodion artist who offered help, encouragement and friendship. Also the Ostermans from Rochester who were also a goldmine of information.
Armed with fresh chemistry and ideas I started having more successes than failures and this encouraged me to stick with it. Now, years later I feel that I’m actually fairly proficient with the process but am nowhere near mastering it as there is still much to learn and it still has it’s surprises.
To make it possible to travel away from my darkroom I built a small dark tent which although quite successful was always cramped, hot and rather unstable, especially in windy conditions.
Around 1998 I built a small portable darkroom styled on a 19th Century. Photographer’s van. Not really authentic but enough to look the part at historical events and to be roadworthy. With this I have travelled the country, attending The Oamaru Victorian Heritage celebrations in the South Island numerous times.
For an exhibition featuring the work of Wellington wet plate artist James Bragge, I built a large wooden camera to take 10” x 12” plates to experience the difficulties Mr Bragge would have encountered when shooting plates of this size in the 1870’s.
As far as the collector side of me goes, I have been an avid camera collector since the early 1980’s concentrating mainly on wooden plate cameras and accessories but also cameras that interest me from all periods. I suppose my main passion is for cased images, i.e. daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and ferrotypes. Not really specialising in any subject or genre but just for the pure magic and beauty that these little images hold. Certainly being a practitioner of the wet plate art I have come to appreciate the craft that created these wonderful pieces of history.