I've had an interest in photography for almost as long as I can remember. I'm not exactly sure where or when it started but I am fairly sure my Dad probably had a bit to do with it. He was always playing around with cameras, audi-visual type stuff and various technological wonders like real-to-real tape players, stackable slide projectors, etc.

(note: to skip this intro and get straight to the photos, simply click on the photography link or the small camera image at the top of this page. You can also access specific pages by using the side menu).

From memory (its a bit vague), my first real camera was a Ricoh SLR camera my dad gave me. I do have some recollection of playing with other compact cameras and even a Polaroid Camera at some point.... now they make great quality shots... (NOT!)

I started gaining more of an interest in photography while at High School in Tasmania back in 1977.... so that's 30 years ago. It sounds like a long time when I put it like that. I joined a Photography class and was able to take photos (black and white only) and develop them myself in the schools dark Room. Unfortunately, I don't have any of those early photos anymore. We moved around a lot when I was growing up (travelling over seas a few times) so I guess those sorts of things tend to get left behind.

Skip forward a few years and at the age of nineteen, while living in The Netherlands, I served a compulsory stint in The Royal Dutch Army. We would occasionally go to Germany for training and on a couple of those trips, I took my camera along. I still have some of those photos and will scan/upload a few of them when I get a chance.

A few months before entering the Military, I met the girl who would eventually become my wife. She is very beautiful and very photogenic (although she would probably disagree), so I had plenty of opportunities (when she let me) to take photos of this wonderful young woman! (Hey, I'm still happily married after more than 20 years and obviously more than a little biased.... So what?) I have included a few of those photo here .

Skip forward a few more years and as our family started to expand, there was a new opportunity to start taking photos of my first daughter, here)

I returned to Australia (with my young wife 'Mindy' and daughter Kylie) in 1990. Life was busy and we moved around a bit but I always found some time to make a few photos. I never saw myself as a 'photographer'. There was never anything 'scientific' of 'clever' about what I did. I had not been trained (other than a few classes I barely remember in High School), I just loved to take photos. Our family continued to grow with the arrivals of Gareb, Moriah and Nathanel, so there were plenty of opportunities to take 'snaps'.

Over ten years later, in 2000, I started working as the "Information Technology Coordinator" for the Great Southern Health Service, in Katanning, Western Australia. I was working with computers and various other technologies including Digital Cameras but the quality of these was still quite low.

Unfortunately, my camera at the time, a 35mm SLR (Minolta) had been dropped and damaged a couple of years earlier. Digital Cameras were still relatively expensive so my first Digital was a fairly basic Olympus C960Z compact 1.3 Megapixel unit. However, it worked just fine for the intended purpose at the time. That camera is still going strong and is now used by a friend of mine.

Next up, in 2004, was the Konica-Minolta DiMAGE Z3. This camera had a powerful 12X optical zoom lens and a 'rapid fire' option for capturing multiple shots in sequence. It was, as the name suggests, a 3 Megapixel camera. I liked this camera, so when the opportunity arose, I upgraded it to a newer model: the Konica-Minolta DiMAGE Z5 (5 megapixel) in 2005.

Then, less than a year later in 2006, I purchased my first Digital SLR: The Nikon D50. It's a 6.1 Megapixel camera, currently with two lenses (18-55mm & 55-200mm) capable of both 'NEF' (digital raw format) and jpeg image storage on SD memory cards. I used this camera to shoot the photos for my Daughter Kylie's wedding to Shannon Parnell (photos) in March 2007.

Your comments, suggestions or feedback are invited and welcomed.

You can view a few more of my photos here: Photo Gallery