The Strange Process of Aging
Ageing is such a strange process — oddly insidious, it creeps up on you. When I hear on the news that something happened forty years ago, for a second, I think of the Blitz. But of course, that was much further back. Forty years ago was the eighties, not the forties.
The Past Feels Like Yesterday
Even so, it feels like yesterday. Back then, you’d have been more likely to find me reading Blitz magazine than in one. But that was when I had a future rather than just a past.
Disconnected from the Present
Today, I peer into the tea leaves, hoping in vain to divine my destiny, yet I feel so disconnected from the present — like a man who has been untied from the stake while the firing squad steps away for a sly cigarette.
The Choice I Can’t Make
I can leave the courtyard if I wish — it’s simple — I just have to walk through the door, out into the world and embrace the light. All I need to do is accept what awaits me on the other side. I know what lies in both directions. And yet, I can’t decide: or is it that subconsciously, I have already decided?
The Photography Revolution
Back when I was but a young pup working on The Guardian’s Picture Desk, the world of photography was undergoing a series of seismic shocks that would shake the pillars of my profession to the ground. The fault lines grew, the tectonic plates shifted, and an earthquake happened — all in the blink of a shutter. It was over, all bar the aftershocks, before many heard the rumblings.
The Film to Digital Shift
Yet some in my profession who did hear those warnings decided to ignore them anyway. It’s taken me almost a quarter of a century to understand why. Back then, the line in the sand that was just too much to stomach for some was this: the shift from film to digital, the transition from a technology that evolved around the reaction of light on silver halide crystals to one where that same light is converted into electrical signals.
The Agony of Change
On paper, it seems like nothing. Nothing to get worked up about. Nothing worth giving up your profession for. Indeed not a hill worth dying for. How wrong I was. Now, it’s my turn to agonise over what it’s like to have an analogue heart in a digital world.
Adapting to the Digital Era
At the turn of the last century, the choice seemed simple: if you wanted to be an editorial photographer for a national newspaper, you had to go digital. Yes, you might have mountains of excellent film camera kit. Yes, the quality of those early digital cameras might be bloody awful. Yes, the cameras might be about the price of a second-hand car. Yet you either took the plunge or withered on the vine. Even so, many still did not put a toe in the waters.
The Pure Moment of Refusal
What I took for sheer bloody-mindedness and a refusal to wake up and smell the coffee was, in fact, a moment of purity — a bellwether, when they decided to leave the flock. Maybe, deep down, they knew this was the high point in the apogee. From now on, the only way was down in a never-ending spiral of decline and an ever-accelerating race to the bottom.
The Price of Progress
Yet so many of us followed like sheep, convincing ourselves it wasn’t so bad. Stress would go up, and rates would go down. And keep going down. For god’s sake, I was earning more per day twenty-five years ago — but I was not all about the money — of course, it helps, but I was happier too. There was a logic and a love about what I did. Yes, the old days were better — yet whether they were or not — they were better to me.
A Love for Photography Amidst the Change
Back then, I loved photography, and I still do; it’s just that I keep finding things to hate. It’s now my time to adapt or die. Yet all I want is a time machine. I want to return to the old days when we did it properly. Whether we did or not. Yes, I’m just a stupid old man barking at the moon.
Understanding the Digital World
I understand how the digital world works — I do — during the lockdown, I studied for my AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification — yet I still don’t get it. I want to be a photographer and a writer. I do not want to be an influencer, make TikTok shorts or YouTube videos, or post on Instagram, X, or any other bloody social media platform. Perhaps it is some kind of twisted Groucho Marx syndrome: “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.”
The Love of an Ideal
I’ve reached an age and an aptitude where it’s about the love of an ideal, a concept, and the ethics — and that you will follow that star wherever it leads — even off a cliff if need be. So now it’s my turn to wither and die — perhaps it’s just natural selection in action — whatever.
Caught Between Two Worlds
And so I stand, an analogue heart in a digital world, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. I have come to realise that there is a world of difference between execution and career suicide — and perhaps, when you love something so much, the kindest thing is euthanasia. So carry on, sergeant, you’ve got a customer waiting.
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