A bit about me

Hello there. I'm Tony Shearer an analogue/film photography guy and darkroom printer based in Warragul. Warragul is a small city in West Gippsland about an hour's drive from Melbourne, Australia.

I started this website really as a way to escape the tedium of Covid lockdown - the lockdowns here in Victoria have been pretty brutal for the last year and a half. As I haven't been able to get out and shoot very often I've tried a few different home based projects, such as setting up a studio in my garage and digitising some of my negatives. As my collection of digitised negs started to mount up I decided that I should start putting them online and so... here we are.

I had actually been toying with the idea of starting a blog for quite a while, mainly as a place for me to organise my haphazard and random thoughts. I plan to post, not so much about gear, more about a few of the locations I've visited, some grumpy old guy opinions, general photography stuff, and a few tutorials. The tutorials mostly aimed at people new to photography.

I'm not a professional photographer, I haven't won any prestigious awards, and I don't have prints hanging in famous galleries. I'm just a photography enthusiast that started making photos over fifty years ago. I mainly photograph landscapes and portraits and I have a particular love of black and white images.

I can't think of many better ways to spend a day (or more) than packing my gear into a backpack and heading off to some beautiful location to expose some negatives. I mainly use either a large format 4x5 camera or a 6x7 medium format. Both of those kits are heavy and bulky but I don't mind that - they feel substantial. My preferred film stocks are Ilford FP4+ and HP5, Acros 100, and occasionally, Ektar 100 or Portra 160.

Although not a professional I often do paid work. So send me a message if you need product or profile photos for your business website or brochures, or if you would like portrait photos made - studio or environmental. I'm always open to collaborating on photo shoots on a TFP basis so get in touch if you would like to talk about some ideas. I also do photography workshops occasionally and I'm available for private tuition, in person or virtual.

Yep, that's me alright