On approach

Cessna coming into land - Burnham airfield, Norfolk

I sometimes wish that I'd started my photographic education much later. I was a bit of a photography purist at college and university, my views on colour photography, photoshop/digital imaging and certain photographers were, shall we say, rather negative.

The purity of the image was all that mattered to me. NO cropping, NO digital manipulation and not much time for colour work either. I wasn't alone - my HND documentary group were of a similar mind. We were like a photographic Taliban who couldn't be swayed from our staunchly held views on photography and photographers. What I can't work out is whether it was a reaction against the tide of progress or because i was naive. Both i think. Photography was changing at a fast rate and i didn't like it.......at least i thought i didn't!

It's been nine years since i left university and in those nine years photography has changed immensely. I came out of a film based photographic education into a world that was starting to go digital. Yes we did have computers and a digital camera on the degree but film was still the main medium. These days universities have photography students who know nothing of the pre-digital days. Darkrooms, enlargers and film are things of the past to many of those student snappers.

As for me? Well, in the nine years, i've become more aware of photography as an art and my approach to viewing photography has changed too. I've freed up my perspective and my photography has improved as more of my work is influenced from new directions. I think getting older has played a large part in the process. I've mellowed with age and my photography and music tastes have mellowed too. The youthful purist constraints of my photographic Taliban days are long gone.