I started photography in my early 20s with an old Minolta camera. When I began scuba diving in 1995, I found myself drawn to the underwater world and realised, that to share my amazing adventures with friends and family, I would need to have photographs to show. My obsession with photography began.
During an April dive in 1997 at my favourite Sydney shore dive, Shark Point, off Clovelly, I photographed a seahorse-like fish that I had trouble identifying. I shared images with an ichthyologist at the Australian Museum. I was told that it looks like a new species. Melbourne-based ichthyologist, Rudie H. Kuiter, wrote the scientific paper on the new species of Syngnathid and named it in my honour. The ABC approached me for an interview in early 2003 and the subsequent piece was aired on TV on the 7:30 report hosted by Kerry O’Brien. You can watch the report right here if you wish.
From 1998, I became a regular contributor and columnist in Sportdiving magazine and Dive Log Australia, but made many contributions to Dive New Zealand, Dive Pacific, Asian Diver (Singapore) and Sport Diver (UK) magazines, as well as a bunch of different websites, including the one for Apollo scuba gear in Australia.
I made my final scuba dive in October 2005 at Kurnell.
In the early 2000s, I started to be interested in bird photography and my dream was to own one of those massive white super telephoto lenses. Back then, in 2001, they cost around AUD20,000, and that was a hell of a lot of money.
In 2003, I was given the Reader’s Digest book of Australian Birds, which became my favourite thing to read. I purchased a more modern Canon SLR body, a fairly cheap zoom lens that zoomed as far as 300mm, a macro lens and started a more serious approach to photographing birds and the macro world around me above sea level.
2006 brought the biggest change to my world of photography when I bought my very first DSLR camera, the Canon EOS 30D. My passion grew even greater and I was out shooting as much as possible (sometimes four to five times a week) from that day in early March when I received my DSLR camera.
I quickly found, that the standard kit zoom lens was a complete waste of time if I wanted to get professional quality images, so I saved up and purchased my first true professional lens, the Canon EF300mm f/4L IS USM lens and two matching teleconverters, the EF1.4xII and EF2.0xII. This changed my world completely and the obsession and hyperfocus to the art of bird photography started to develop even more. I spent every spare moment at Nepean Weir from 2006 October, or around the Castlereagh woodlands and some big properties around there to which I had private access.
In the last 19 years that I’ve made the digital switch, I spent close to 15,000 hours in the field using mostly Canon, and since 2020, OM System gear.
2020 was a turning point in my photography career, as Netra and I changed systems completely after falling in love with the portability and exceptional image quality of the Olympus system. We now shoot with the OM-System (formerly Olympus) and have not regretted the move one bit.
I recently calculated the number of digital images captured since 2006 and the cost of processing and film had I have still been using film. Though the costs were not taking inflation into account. I have now shot close to 1.9 million digital frames in the last 19 years that equal approximately 51,000 rolls of film. The cost of which would be in excess of $900,000 based on costs of slide film and processing in 2001! No one would spend that much money!
I’ve used many camera bodies and lenses over the years, but have found that the best results are taken with professional grade equipment and they withstand the weather and other environmental factors they face when I am out in the field.
