Photography started for me at a very young age when I was loaned a Kodak Box Brownie and given a roll of film; the results were not great but it was a start. Next I was given a Kodak Instamatic 126 camera for my birthday; that would have been about 1975 (or thereabouts). I can remember getting up early to take sunset shots for which the Instamatic was hopelessly inadequate.

When I got my first job working as a labourer in a steel factory I could afford a ‘proper’ camera, this was a Pentax K1000 and it started my lifelong love of photography. Eventually I moved up to a Hasselblad medium format camera with a few lenses and then my first large format camera, an old Graflex Speed Graphic. After a stint doing industrial radiology I managed to get a job with the Australian Antarctic Division as a, mainly, scientific photographer and even got to travel to Antarctica (which was great but cold). Then followed jobs with Kodak and the iconic Walch Optics before I moved into the IT industry and eventually became a teacher of IT at TasTAFE.

The interest in woodwork started around 2015 when I built a workshop under our new house, bought a few cheap secondhand tools and it all blossomed from there. Maybe it was the escape from sitting in front of a computer all day, I don’t know, but I loved the physical part of actually making something that you could hold in your hand (unlike IT). In 2017 I started selling on Etsy and registered my business name as Blue Swallow Designs and made the commitment to only use recycled, reclaimed, salvaged and scrap timber.

I’ve now done away with the Blue Swallow Designs business name as I became really sick of all the business related stuff you have to do in Australia. Now I concentrate on my woodwork, woodturning and photography. The workshop I have is full of nice machines and hand tools, I have built a small darkroom and a print finishing room. I have a good selection of film camera gear from 35mm up to the mighty 8×10″ camera, eventually I’ll update my digital camera stuff, but that can wait for a bit.

Photographs can be ordered by going to my Contacts page or check out my Etsy store to see what timber crafts or framed photographs are available.