GLADYS PERRIER LRPS
My Interest in Photography
When I was about 7 years old my Dad produced his box brownie and gave it to my siblings and me to share. I think we might have had an arrangement where we took turns with it, changing hands every Saturday. It was enough to whet my appetite. By the time I found myself studying 'O' level art, I decided that sketching portraiture was definitely not my forte so I chose a photography module. My project was all about 'water' in monochrome. I borrowed the school camera and it was enough to make me realise that I needed a camera of my own. I had to wait until, at the age of 20, I received my first pay packet and I purchased an Olympus 10. The OM10 had aperture priority but before long I purchased a manual adaptor so that I could also control the shutter speeds and I would buy rolls of 25, 100, 200 and 400 asa film which I would change out mid roll depending on what subject I was photographing. So, for me, I have never resorted to 'automatic' settings. It's a bit like learning to do maths before calculators were introduced. I would still rather work it out for myself which is perhaps why I prefer to use manual focus today.
In the late 80s I had to abandon my loyalty to Olympus, having been given my first auto focus camera, a Canon EOS10 and having built up a kit bag with Canon lenses I have remained loyal.
For a few years I dabbled in colour developing and printing having converted a spare bedroom into a dark room, lining the windows with heavy duty tinfoil to block out light. It was a time consuming and anti-social hobby so I did not re-establish a darkroom when I moved to Berkshire.
However over the years I find myself spending as much, if not more, time in the digital darkroom as I develop my day's photographs. Every outing seems to require many more hours sifting through shots and then converting from RAW to JPEG endeavouring to reflect the reason why I took the shot in the first place.
I used to spend hours sitting in bird hides waiting for the action to come to me. However, in 2015 I was invited to supervise a group of young people on a trip to Snowdonia when I discovered beautiful landscapes and I realised that I had to get out and walk long distances to find those breathtaking views. I returned home from Snowdonia and started walking the Ridgeway National Trail and it was from there that my interest in landscape photography really took off.