As a child traveling with parents around the globe my first remembered camera was a Kodak Instamatic 35mm camera which took this photograph below.

To the best of my knowledge this is my first found photograph, I say found in as much as a couple of yeas ago my father handed me a box of slides, cinefilm and prints. Here I found this one slide dating around 1968/1969. The photograph shows in the background the first house we lived in, in the British Embassy in Ethiopia.

Addis Ababa Ethiopia - British EmbassyThis fascination for recording a world ever changing has stayed with me. As a young man I entered the world of commercial photography in the early 80's where I worked on merseyside for an industrial photographer by the name of Hal Mullin.

For a year I got to experience flying in light aircraft and helicopters, traveling the country photographing industry at work. I got to go on ship and oil rigs, the world was a busy place and professional photography in some ways was a badge that granted you access to all sorts of situations and places you would normally never enter or be allowed into.

I worked with Hal for 6 months and in the end branched out on my own away from industry into editorial/reportage photography. My relationship with Hal continued until his death some years later.

Everything for me was going to change, the year was 2002.

In 2002 I purchased my first digital camera a Nikon F1. The digital age was dawning and was going to change everything and not just in photography..... No more labs charges, no more film bills. I calculated that it would save about £25k/years in lab bills. Away with processing film and hello to the computer....

This transition Ill discuss more later.

The two photographs above for me bridge the film and digital worlds. The photo on the left a picture of me and my sister shot on film and the picture on the right a digital picture of my late father in pretty much the same position by the side of the river Medway. How things have changed in 52 years.

So is digital better than film photography. No. Just different.