"The camera always points both ways. In expressing your subject, you also express yourself". 

Freeman Patterson                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

I have often asked myself why I take pictures. When I was growing up in the 50s, there weren’t many cameras around, and if people took pictures it was only of birthdays or holidays and the joke was, you often got two Christmases on the same film! Photography was for enthusiasts because you had to understand something about exposures to get the best results. My dad was a very good amateur photographer and I got my ‘eye’ and interest from him.

One day when I was young I was on the scene soon after a gas explosion near my house, and having my camera was able to get a picture of the woman who everyone thought was possibly dead inside the devastated house, return to the scene very much alive and reunited with her daughter….right next to me! This single image gave me my first genuine scoop in a local newspaper, and led to many press jobs and eventually a career in photography.

After leaving university I worked for two and a half years as a cruise ship photographer travelling around the Mediterranean, North Africa, North and South America and the Caribbean islands. On my return to the UK I worked for many years as a self-employed N.U.J. Press freelance photographer specialising in Industrial and Press & P.R. until in 1986 when I began teaching Audio Visual Studies at Cartrefle College in Wrexham. When the college merged with Yale College I went on to teach across A level Photography and Media Studies at Yale College until my retirement in 2016.

For me the continued attraction for pinhole and zone plate photography is the unknown nature of the results. As a professional photographer I can predict the results of what I am asked to shoot, no matter what the conditions…I can easily produce predictable, sharp well exposed results.  However, the images we are bombarded with in our media are constantly searching for more creative looks. The scratches and overexposed leaders of 8mm film, softened images….anything that looks different from the rest. That for me is why I would suggest that the alternative photography work such as toy cameras/Lomo camera and pinhole continue to be the most creative branch of photography and the unpredictability of the medium is an added fascination for me.

Tony Pugh