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Tim Parkin
Amateur Photographer who plays with big cameras and film when in between digital photographs.
Padley Gorge
Tim: Can you tell us about your involvement from the exhibition as you’ve been involved from the start?
Mark: It’s four years now. I was one of the people that Pete invited originally to do the exhibition and when we first started we didn’t even know how we were going to do it so Dav designed the display boards and stuff like that and spent a long time painting them.
T: Are they the same boards or have they had to be rebuilt?
M: They are the same boards but they’ve been repainted a couple of times I think. I know they’ve been reused for other things. Dav and I were here for the very first time where we worked out how and where to put them up.
T: It’s nice how they are arranged as well in zig-zags – hopefully people can see that in the images with this article.
M: I think the idea was that they would be easier to keep upright that way without extra support. The layout works well though I think.
T: And has your photography changed since the first exhibition?
M: Yes that’s true although interestingly there are two pictures here that I photographed before the first exhibition – the US pictures – and there are a couple that I photographed before the second exhibition. So the pictures here do cover the whole time that I’ve been involved with the exhibition
T: Everybody has had to work out how to arrange their images across four boards. You’ve arranged things so that you have travel images on the outside and local images in the middle and interestingly a whole set of iPhone images in strips down the centre, which you’ve been saying have received more attention than your other images
M: Yes. I guess they are different as there are only a few images in the exhibition that are small and none as small as the iPhone images I’m showing.
T: Do you think the interest is because they are mobile phone pictures? Do people know that they’re phone pictures before they look at them?
M: I don’t know – you tell me – would you know they were mobile phone pictures.
T: I think I would have guessed because of the Hipstamtic treatment but otherwise I don’t think I would have guessed because of quality for most of them. I might have guessed they were film images had I not known? If you pit them in a 1980s exhibition people would happily say they were small format film.
M: Yeah. I’ve been using the iPhone and the Hipstamatic app from the start when they launched it. Mainly because I’ve been banned from taking my proper camera on holiday with me. Most of these pictures are from when I’ve been on holiday.
T: Do you find that using the Hipstamatic/iPhone combination changes your photography or makes you think about it differently? Photographers like David Ward use compact cameras and phones as sketching devices
M: I don’t use the camera in that way but in a sense all of these photographs of sketches. I suppose I’ll be walking around and something will catch my eye and I can just take very quick pictures with the iPhone. Obviously the Hipstamatic app has it’s own treatment. I don’t really know what I’m going to get when I take the picture but once I see the image maybe I can change lenses or something like that. So I might spend 15 or 20 minutes working the subject and then move on.
T: So you are treating the phone like a real camera?
M: Yes although my approach is completely different to taking a picture in England where there is a lot of planning is involved about where the sun is going to be, what are the tides like, all that kind of stuff. With the iPhone there is none of that. I suppose the content reflects that – it’s either abstract or very close up.
On the Path to Falcon's Crag
T: Looking at your other pictures could you pick out a couple of your favourites or ones you are particularly happy with?
M: I quite like the picture of Burbage Brook in Padley Gorge because it’s something I don’t normally do, trees. It’s a fantastic location and I normally go for bigger views as you can see. Big views can be kind of challenging in the Peak District because it is well populated and intensively farmed area even though it’s a national park.
T: You have a nice picture of Porth Nanven too
M: Yes, although this is the beach a little further down.
T: The one that is quite difficult to get too?
M: Yes but this is spring low tide so I could walk round to it.
T: Do you print these images yourself?
M: Yes these are Epson 3800 prints, as big as I could get on the A2 paper.
T: You travel to Scotland regularly as well?
M: Yes I went to university in Edinburgh so I’m quite familiar with the area. I did the degree there especially for access to the Scottish Landscape Media Limited
T: What did you do your degree in?
M: I did a masters in artificial intelligence. Nothing really photography related. I’ve been to Scotland a lot with my wife aswell – we really love it there. We almost moved up to Scotland but ended up in the Midlands.
T: So who would you like to see as the next Master of Vision
M: Wow – a difficult question. I don’t know – there are so many good photographers. I don’t know what other people think but I really like Lee Frost’s work. I think he’s very versatile and I’ve seen some great Hipstamatic work by Lee from Cuba too so I think he’s a great photographer.
T: Thank you..