Vic Attfield
Introduction
Vic’s first passion was designing, building and flying free flight model aircraft which occupied most of his spare time. As this did not suit his changing life style, he was subsequently “encouraged “ to take up photography instead. As it turned out, this became even more of a passion and has remained so ever since.
His whole working career has been in engineering, on piping design and plant layout for the petroleum and petrochemical industries, such as oil refineries and offshore platforms.
Vic's philosophy
Originally working in monochrome and occasionally in colour he has confined his photography solely to monochrome over the past decade or more. He feels that the introduction of colour gets in the way of what he is trying to communicate. Also the graphic quality of black and white suits his type of subject matter.
Often his images are of landscapes (both rural and urban), an interest which combines well with a love of walking. But mainly these days he concentrates on what can be loosely described as ”street photography”. He feels that with the increasing pace of life and quickly changing environment and lifestyles, the recording of these moments in time are becoming much more important than in the past.
Very few of Vic’s images are planned. He rarely works on a project, preferring to wander around an area looking for interesting aspects of everyday life which he can interpret in a sympathetic or humorous manner. Because of this his pictures are mainly stand alone images.
In using 35mm film format he realizes the importance of filling the frame at the taking stage, so is very careful to include only those elements which give a balance within the frame and in conveying the feelings or mood of the subject. Vic has also developed the instinct of visualising the finished print (tonal depth, contrast etc) at the taking stage.
A great believer in thoroughly knowing the functions of your equipment, Vic has been using the same manual SLR cameras and lenses for over 30 years. Because of this, picture taking has become so automatic that full concentration can be made on taking the subject.
His main aim in the future is to get to grips with film scanning techniques and digital printing then perhaps going fully digital with an SLR camera.