Folio: ‘Digital guru’ interview in ProPhoto magazine

I’m happy to say that I’ve just been featured in the latest edition of ProPhoto magazine (Australia), in their recurring section profiling ‘digital gurus’. Quite an honour!

From a phone interview a couple of months ago, Barrie Smith has compiled a two-part story outlining my approach to purposefully being a ‘jack of all trades’ – intertwined with the history of how I got into photography as a teenager – and ending with my thoughts on the state of digital photography and technology in general.

The next part will be out next month, and focusses on one of my technology startups: My Perfect Camera. More info when that issue hits the shelves sometime in May.

The following are a couple of  short excepts from the part 1 of the article – for the full text, subscribe to ProPhoto magazine online at avhub.com.au

The Digital Guru

Operating a business from a town outside the perimeter of a capital city would seem a serious challenge — and even more so in the challenging world of photography and digital imaging. Barrie Smithh talks to another digital guru.

There are those individuals who manage very well and run their enterprises from centres outside of the mega populations of Sydney, Melbourne etc. The trick may be to accept all challenges, offer diverse services equal to any in the capital cities.

Andrew Ballard runs his business from Geelong in Western Victoria, barely 100kms from Melbourne. It’s hard to pin him down precisely on the specifics of what he does but one thing that is certain is that he qualifies as a digital guru, wearing many hats but with a heavy concentration on digital image capture, coaching and tuition.

Problem Solving

Admitting to not having any formal photographic training AB explains he is an engineer by trade.

“But that sort of fits my background in that it’s a multi-skill role, blending technical and problem-solving. So, in that regard, it’s a great base for the sorts of things I do now.”

Digital Training / Digital Coaching

Another element of Andrew’s business is provding tuition in photography or, more specifically these days, digital imaging.

“Certainly it’s more common to discuss with people how to manage their digital workflow than to actually teach them how to work their camera. That’s certainly been by view of the last ten years’ worth of talking to folks in this part of the world. They are proficient in their own photography skills, but the task of how to manage a digital workflow is really a brand new skill for most of these people.”

Lens Concerns

A question often asked of our ‘Digital Guru’ subjects concerns where most people go wrong when they start in the imaging business.

“One of the first ‘crimes’ that I continually see is people keep their ‘free’ lens they get when they buy a D-SLR. There’s been the lovely boom in the low and mid range D-SLR market, but people think that the kit lens bundled with the camera body is the best they could possibly find.”

Andrew contends that all too often these ‘kit’ lenses are inferior as far as resolution, optical performance and a decent working maximum aperture goes. He advises that intending buyers should, at first instance, investigate the purchase of a “niece piece of glass, and see what a medium range lens does for them and how wonderful their camera can be when coupled with lenses of this quality.”