Friday afternoon. About 3.30pm. I'm alone, music is playing in the studio which is only lit by a few small lights and then my two lights, with large diffusers on them. I look over at my mamiya rz67 and think to myself "this is awesome." I do a little dance around my camera, table and copy stand before I stop and return to my work.
I'm currently do a side project where I am digitising an album from 1888's Centennial Exhibition in Melbourne -- images of men in the Victorian Courts. 544 men with varying degrees of facial hair. The images are rather small albumen prints, so it takes some time to focus properly on them.
I sit down and my computer, fiddle around the images in Capture One and I stop for a moment. I realise at this very moment how hard I've worked to be back in a photo studio. How hard I have worked to work with collection material. And there I am, sitting in a studio on a Friday afternoon, shooting various collection objects from an amazing cultural institution in Melbourne.
I like this very recent memory, because it makes all the old memories from previous jobs seem like nothing. It makes all the mornings spent emptying dishwashers, getting old men coffee, operating copiers and answering phones seem worth it. Because now I can put photographer after my name. Because now my most important work tool is a camera (a pretty sexy camera) and not a photocopier.
And that...is pretty cool.
