Snap happy!

Brownie Vecta

At eight years old I had what I now realise was a newly launched camera as a gift - the Kodak Brownie Vecta. It took 8 pictures in black and white and my first shots were of animals in a zoo in Guernsey. I can see the light grey case I carried it around in now and recall the excitement of this magical thing!

Slide projector

My father loved to take photographs. He would spend what to us were endless hours getting his shots just right, us with rictus smiles, and equally endless hours showing them on a slide projector and screen at home. In fact these sessions were quite fun for us as at least we would see our holidays again and glimpse ourselves but what friends made of this I can only imagine - they were very patient. No Flickr then of course... I recall one evening when I was about 17 coming home to find a show in progress and I had had a couple of vodka and oranges or Dubonnets and needed to demonstrate my steadiness and was desperately trying to look sober!

A short Polaroid experience - when working with young offenders in the 1980s the face of a young lad who was being photographed for the project kept coming out black. A few weeks later he died in an accident in a car he had stolen...it always made me ambivalent about these instant cameras.

I would have liked to have had experience of black and white developing which was all the rage if you had space to dedicate a light tight room to the chemical processing. I did once take some shots to be developed at college and had the unexpected support of a tutor who was as embarrassed as I was to watch a nude torso shot of me clarify itself in the developing tray.

Cut to parenthood and one very jerky hand held video camera series of moments with young children that makes you feel seasick to watch, and a lot of regret that I could not do more moving pictures.

Now photos are my aide memoire for everything and I get so much pleasure out of digital photography and the manipulation of images in things that I do....probably the most enjoyable digital experience there is....!