digbyross' photostream  

I rediscovered photography as a hobby just over three years ago, but did so with great passion. And whenever someone has passion they are always eager to learn and express themselves as much as possible. Whilst I know that I still have much to learn, I feel my skills are improving rapidly – due in no small measure to my involvement with the Cathay Camera Club – and I am tentatively progressing from the rank of aspiring amateur to that of semi-professional.

For much of my early life I was steered by well-intentioned parents into a career in the sciences or business, eventually studying and working in the accounting profession. But despite achieving success in this field I never felt entirely fulfilled by this career choice, and always yearned to do something more creative. And it was through my belated foray into photography that I found an ideal outlet for creative expression.

I’m a great believer in the so-called “Left Brain Right Brain Theory” wherein one half of the brain dictates the technical and the other half the creative. In such tests I always find myself scoring exactly 50% left and 50% right, which is why I feel that photography is the perfect medium for my own creative expression. Because a good photographer must be sufficiently creative to be able to visualise a scene, at the same time as possessing the technical skill to operate often highly complex photographic equipment.

In my photography I like to use vivid colour because most of us see our lives in colour not in black & white. I spend a lot of time working on accurate colour rendition because I like to reproduce a scene as closely as possible to how the human eye interprets it, so that the scene itself becomes the subject of discussion rather than the photographer’s techniques.

I avoid using Photoshop wherever possible, because I believe that the real skill of a photographer lies in being able to freeze a moment in time as he or she sees it with just a single shutter-click, and without reliance on post-production techniques that attempt to create a scene or mood that never actually existed.

My main interest is portrait photography in all its forms and especially glamour, whether that be in a studio setting or on location. My secondary interest is photojournalism, preferably with a wide-angle lens – capturing an interesting subject and an equally interesting background, such that the background provides context and adds meaning to the subject.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II (digital)
Canon EOS 3 (film)
Canon 50mm f/1.4
Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L
Canon 70-200mm f/4 IS L
Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro
Tamron 28-200mm f/3.8-5.6
Canon 580EX II
Canon 430EX (x2)
Canon ST-E2
Bronica SQ-A (6x6 medium format film)
Bronica PS 80mm f/2.8
Sekonic L-358 Flash Master