chrischesher's photostream  

Born accidentally in Melbourne in the swinging 60s (on the day La Trobe University opened), bathed in the espresso aroma of Carlton cafes, I soon returned to the relative safety of Paddington in Sydney.

After Peter Pan Kindergarten I went to Glenmore Rd Public School and later Sydney Grammar (with future captains of industry, hmm).

The first bands I saw live were Mental as Anything and the Sunnyboys, at 'Save Luna Park' gigs around 1980. At the time I was quite short, so only caught glimpses and a very muffled sound. Later when I grew very tall, I got a much better view of bands, and caught the full brunt of PAs, fostering tinnitus and hearing loss.

I enjoyed drama at Studio 228, workshops at Metro TV, mucking around with tape recorders, making radio dramas and creating really bad experimental music. I programmed our Apple II to present an animation to the first 10 minues of Pink Floyd's The Wall, including marching hammers.

In autumn 1988 I bought my first serious camera, a Canon T80, second hand from some dodgy operator in an empty apartment near Whitlam Square. It was one of the first auto-focus cameras, characterised by the unique feature of hardly working at all. Still, I enjoyed shooting a roll of film each weekend, and dropping off the pics at the chemist Monday morning before work.

The first digital camera I used was when I was working at Macquarie University: an Apple Quicktake 100 in 1994. This took dodgy images at 640x480, but had no display. Ah, dear, this narrative is descending into techno-nostalgia. I must be a geek. Damn.

I didn't get my own digital camera until 2003, one of the little Canon Ixus models. It could go anywhere, shoved into a pocket. Even if the zoom was limited, and shutter delay increasingly annoying, it was a great little camera until small hands broke the lens.

This gave me a great excuse to get the Canon S5 IS 'pseudo-SLR' for our trip to Europe in 2007. It was great to have a big zoom again, and depth of field control. Most of my shots have been family photos.

The other genre I muck around with are iPhone pics. This is a challenge because the camera is the weakest feature of the iPhone 3G,