Photo Live Magazine First Issue Photo live - cat's add in 2017 versioin | Page 101
Starting his photographic journey
in the dark room, Tony Buckingham
tells our correspondent, Charlotte
Nicholson about the journey into
digital... phers work and someone from the
newly started children’s newspaper
asked who had done certain pic-
tures, which were mine and gave me
some work.
Welcome to Photo Live Tony, please
can you tell us about yourself and
how you got started in photography? From there I also began to work
for the daily paper doing the ‘stan-
dalone’ pictures they rarely have
now. Finding an interesting event
happening and trying to take a pic-
ture that summed it up. From there I
began to get commissions.
I am a 55 year old freelance pho-
tographer married to artist Gabriella,
previously living in London but now
based 5 miles from the sea in Nor-
folk to give our 2 children some fresh
air.
I studied graphic design with pho-
tography in the early 1980s but left
the course and saw an advert in the
West End of London to work in a
darkroom at an advertising art stu-
dio. I luckily got the job and worked
in a few other darkrooms, before
buying a houseboat and moving to
London.
I did a fair amount of architectural
photography when working free-
lance later for The Evening Stand-
ard, there are always interesting
new buildings going up in London. I
enjoyed this but newspapers always
want to be the first with a new pro-
ject which often meant the site was
mostly still a building site! I always
thought it would be great if you had
proper access and time to picture
the buildings properly.
I went for an interview for a job I saw
as an independent black and white
printer thinking it meant freelance. It
was for The Independent, a nation-
al newspaper that was driven by it’s
photography , more magazine style
than any other newspaper. This was
printing news, sport and features
photographs in black and white of-
ten to very tight deadlines. A friend who is an architect asked
me to photograph a project he had
done for a chain restaurant and a lot
work came from that initial project..
As often the case it is who you know,
networking now is really important.
How did you get into your chosen
genre of photography? Originally all the photographers work-
ing at The Independent Newspaper,
especially Brian Harris and Norman
Lomax. Norman would always take
chances , he would rate Kodak tmax
at ridiculous speeds and process it
in a secret recipe when photograph-
ing boxers in the gym and they would
have amazing detail and grain. He
also bought a 5 by 4 view camera,
tried it once then used it ( and 35mm
as well) to photograph Kirk Douglas.
Of the 4 pictures he took 3 were out
of focus and one was perfect and
amazing! I think he influenced me
into thinking it is always worth trying
something extra even if you think
it may not work out, it’s only a few 101
Having access to excellent dark-
room facilities (as well as Leica en-
largers) gave me a new interest in
photography and I often took street
photographs in my spare time.
From working in the darkroom I saw
first hand what the photographers
did and often what we ‘saved’ in the
printing. All pictures then were taken
in available light.
Myself and other darkroom printers
decided to put our pictures up in the
darkroom instead of the photogra-
Which photographers influenced
you, and did they influence your
thinking and career path?