When did you choose photography as your main means of expression and when did you start working with images?

In 1972 (aged 18) I was passing through Panama and purchased a Praktica Super TL to take photos of my trip. Within a month I was buying lenses and accessories, I was no longer interested in just recording my journey, the taking of photos had become the reason for the journey. On my return to Australia later that year I got a job in photography.

Do you prefer using a traditional camera or a digital one?

I would prefer to use digital, but the good ones aren't cheap enough, and the cheap ones aren't good enough. For my large format work digital is still not an option, but I'm getting very close to going digital for 35mm subjects such as wildlife.

We ask it to all our photographer guest artists, which are the pros and cons of using a digital camera and a reflex? Which are the main differences between the two in your opinion?

For small format, apart from expense, I can see no reason to hang onto film, especially for someone like me who works in the field constantly. There are still some issues with digital, for example, wide angle lenses and batteries. I recently spent two weeks in the wilderness with not a power point in sight, no problem for a film camera, probably a drama for digital, but maybe ok with enough spare batteries.

The wide-angle lens problem is finally being addressed by manufacturers.

For the most part the quoted advantage of digital, that of being able to review a photo to see if you "got it", I don't find to be of any real importance, it's nice to satisfy one's curiosity, but a good photographer should know if he captured the photo or not. The exception to this is with fast action subjects like wildlife.

One real advantage to digital is the option to upload and catalogue the images every night while the information is still fresh in my mind, rather than have to do 1000 at once a month later when the film is processed.

For prolonged periods overseas I think digital wins as well. You can mail home CDs with the raw photos as a backup, and there's no problems with film fogging in x-ray machines at airports. It's no fun trying to convince a machinegun-toting border guard to hand search you camera case, I know, I've tried.

The only disadvantage I can see to digital is the complexity of the technology, you need computers, digital wallets, CF card readers etc., not always practical in the field.

Have you ever tried other forms of art in your life?

No.

I read in your biography you have been a darkroom technician, what did that experience teach you?

I worked in London and Canberra as a darkroom technician. The London job was very technical, involving stripping of line and tone negs with high accuracy, whereas in Canberra it was often "do 300 8x6s from this neg by lunch time". The end result was a solid technical base from which to work, years later, in my own darkroom making fine prints..

Do you elaborate and retouch your photos, either traditionally or digitally and if so, which darkroom and/or digital techniques do you use?

In my darkroom days I treated the negative as just the raw material, from which the final product (the print) will be produced . I used most of the usual techniques such as burning, contrast dodging, enhancing contrast with ferri etc. These days I'm half analogue, half digital, which is to say that I still shoot film, but immediately convert it to digital by scanning as soon as it's processed. I miss the darkroom, but as I live in a truck in the middle of nowhere, this is the only way I can make it work. The scanned image is then "photoshopped" as much as necessary to obtain the look I want.

I use all the common methods such as adjustment layers, mixing channels etc. All my recent B&W photos have been shot on colour negative film then converted to mono in Photoshop, this saves a lot of decision making, like filtration choices, in the field when things are often rushed, moving it to the post processing stage when there's time to play with options.

Do you look for a certain effect and atmosphere or are they just be the result of a casual process?

I'm basically a "found object" photographer, I just wander around looking for things that are photogenic. However I am a little more structured than that, for example I may check for tomorrow's sunrise location with a compass, and return next morning, but found object is my basic modus operandi.

I don't really previsualise the print as some photographers apparently do, but I often look at a scene and say to myself "That top corner can be darkened later" or some such.

Do you have an alternate favourite subject than nature?

I really like environmental portraits, and even had the provisional nod from a publisher to do a book along those lines a couple of years ago. But I find it very difficult to stick my camera in people's faces.

You have a special attitude towards Black and White photography, can you tell us why?

When I started working in photography B&W was still the norm for reportage and indeed most photography, I could also process and print my own B&W films at work, so B&W just became the way I saw things.

It grew from that though. I now use B&W when I want to impart the "mood" of a scene to the viewer, rather that the "look" of a scene.

Are there photographers and other artists inspiring you?

Well there's the obvious choices for someone into B&W landscapes, like Ansel Adams, John Sexton, Bruce Barnbaum et al. I also like what Dan Burkholder and Jerry Uelsmann do with manipulated images.

From the non-photographic fraternity I love Escher's scenes, and have just created my first such image photographically, a set of impossible steps that appear to flip from going up, to going down, half way through the photo.

Where does your inspiration come from?

From my subjects I guess, I see something that looks good and I want to photograph it. I just love the whole process of capturing an instant of time, something that was often just there for my eyes, then transforming that instant into a silver halide print, or a jpeg on a computer screen, something that everyone can see.

Is there something you want to communicate through your photos either overtly or covertly?

One of my best photos is of a waterfall pouring through a hole in the roof of a cave. Some time ago I received an email from a fellow who's brother had died jumping through that very hole, he discovered the photo on the anniversary of his brother's death, and with the name "God's Portal" he was very moved by the image, as was I by his story.

Just maybe, every now and again, someone will look at one of my images and be moved by it, hopefully for happier reasons though.

You chose to live on the road and be as close as possible to the wildest nature. What is the most challenging aspect of this experience?

Physically the driving of the truck is quite demanding. It's a 14-tonne 6x6 ex-army vehicle with no power steering. But this is something that can be fixed with some weight training.

What does weigh on my mind is the fear of a serious breakdown. So far I've fixed things that have broken, but maybe one day I won't be able to, and you don't just call the AA from a central Australian desert.

Also, maintaining a website from the middle of nowhere can be a challenge.

Many artists like you now have websites presenting their works on virtual galleries in the Internet. What do you think about this way of presenting one's work to the public?

It's fantastic. I have photos hanging in a couple of bricks-and-mortar galleries, but my website has viewers from all over the world. I've conversed with, and sent prints to, people from Alaska to Algeria. The down side of course is the limitation of current technology with regard to presentation, that won't
be fixed for many years I fear.

Another good thing about having a website is that people can find you. I currently have photos being published in two books, one with an English based publisher, the other in Switzerland, neither of these publishers would have found me in a pink fit without my website.

You chose to depict the Australian landscape in your work. What does fascinate you most of that land?

To photograph something well you must know about it and have the time to study it. Naturally this is a lot easier to do in your home country or district, so I always recommend to emerging photographers that they find subjects where they live. I'm simply following my own advice.

The Australian continent has just about every kind of landscape, we've got deserts, tropical islands, mountains, and more snow than Switzerland. When it's too hot you can move to the southern areas, and in the winter head back north. It's safe to camp just about anywhere there's a landscape to photograph, and you can easily find places with no people.

The Australian landscape fascinates me because it's in front of my camera, if I was in Bolivia or Bulgaria I'm sure I'd be just as fascinated by the landscape there.

We are getting the most frightening alarms from the state of our environments. The weather is changing dramatically, water supply will be a big problem in the future and so on.
What do you think we should do actively to protect our environment?

Of course Australians are no stranger to water shortage, and yet I still see people trying to maintain a European-style garden by soaking the yard with water every day. In many areas of Australia there are restrictions in place, to the extent that it's often illegal to wash a car or use a sprinkler.

We carry 700 litres of water in the truck and can make it last a heck of a long time, most households use that per day. We also run entirely in solar power, and have become very frugal with our electricity usage. Some examples of how we save resources are, we don't leave a light on that's not being used, we don't open the fridge and stand looking at the contents while all the cold air pours out, we turn the tap off while soaping up in the shower. We do all this because we're not connected to any utilities, but really everyone could do the same.

Manufacturers aren't helping, with the current trend for appliances not to have a real "Off" button, just a standby mode. I can't remember the figures off the top of my head, but this small "feature" alone uses megawatts of electricity which has to come from somewhere, often as not from a new dam that's flooding an irreplaceable piece of wilderness.

We can also stop consuming at the rate we do, you don't need three TVs, huge houses, new cars.

The fact is that if there was only 3 million people in the world none of the above would matter, but there's 6 billion, and most of those people see our western lifestyle and want the same. That's fair enough, who wouldn't the way we flaunt it, but I'm convinced it will be the end of the Earth as we know it.

Unfortunately I don't think there's enough people who care to make a difference. I see no answer to the problem, short of mass sterilisation, or another meteor strike…well you did ask :-)

Are there other places in the world you would like to visit and photograph?

Everywhere, but Antarctica and the sub Antarctic islands like Macquarie and South Georgia are high on the list, mostly for the amazing wildlife. Also the USA, UK and Europe, I've spent time there in the past, and hope to return soon.

What are your future projects?

My photography seems to be veering away from the large format landscape genre and back to a more "nature" orientation, ie. plants and wildlife as well as scenics. So I guess one of my future projects is to build up a body of work along those lines.

I'm also playing a lot with computer manipulated images, I'm still not sure if this will become a serious pursuit, but I am liking some of the results, for example the Escher-like steps I mentioned before.

If you were to list the most important values in your life at present, which would be at first place? Are they the same as when you were younger?

When I was young I wanted to be a famous photographer, I wanted to be rich, and I wanted to be good looking. It's probably fair to say that I didn't make it on all three counts.

Now I'm really more interested in enjoying my photography, I can afford to photograph what interests me and no longer have the pressure to earn a living. I still sell my photos, and get a real kick out of that, but I only sell what I created in the first place because I wanted to, not because I was told to.

That's a lot of freedom, it took me years to achieve it, and it's important that I don't squander the opportunity.

What is your biggest fear these days? And what makes you happy anyway?

Engine failure in the middle of the Simpson Desert :-).

The other day I spent a couple of hours on my knees photographing kelp and the bugs that live in it. I came away soaking wet and smelling of rotting seaweed, then sat on the deck of our motorhome with a beer as the sun set. As they say in the classics, it doesn't get any better than that.