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?