• What is the oldest camera you have ever used?
  
  My father’s old Exakta from the early 1960’s. It is a ‘waist-level’ 35mm through the lens camera without a light meter (meaning you have to use an old Weston light meter to accurate calculate exposures).
  
  
• Can you remember when you first used a digital camera?
  
  We got our first digital camera in the mid-1990s, it was a FujiFilm DS-7 and had a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels! My father would let me use the camera when we were on holiday!
  
  
• Do you prefer taking photos on your mobile phone or a digital camera?
  
  Definitely digital camera — I’ve just always been used to taking picture with a camera and struggle taking many pictures on my phone. I think it’s because to pick-up a camera is to be intent on taking a photography, the action gives it purpose!
• Have you ever built a pinhole camera?
  
  I built my first pinhole camera whilst studying photography in Huntingdon Regional College. We had to make pinhole cameras using old biscuit tins, which were not very good and leaked a lot of light! This however inspired me and I have build many pinhole camera’s since, using both film and photographic paper. I have not however ever made a digital pinhole camera!
  
  
• Have you ever constructed a ‘camera obscura’ type device to observe a solar eclipse?
  
  I remember various contraptions being built to watch solar eclipses in the early-1990s. In 2015 I built my own camera obscura to watch the partial solar eclipse in Germany.
  
  
• What is the oldest photograph you have in your family album?
  
  Early photographs of my grandparents, pre-World War Two! For this class project I have chosen to share this post-war photo of my grandfather teaching in a school, I’m guessing it must be late-1940s or very early 1950s. The blackboard is depicting the ‘ideal village’! Many of the old photos we only have prints, which need scanning and restoring.
  
  
• Do you still use 35 mm film?
  
  Yes — still use and love chemical photography! I still photograph using a process my own black and white 35 mm and 120 medium format film.
  
  
• Do you prefer colour or black and white photographs?
  
  Black and white … there has always been something special about black and white. It’s about the light, texture, contrast and film grain!
  
  
• What do you use filters on social media platforms like Instagram?
  
  This is something I’ve really struggled with … although I have a presence on social media platforms like IG … I have not really got into using filters!

—Dom