B
ritish nature lovers will
be familiar with Chris
Packham’s television work,
but the fact that he is also
an award-winning
photographer is less
well-known. Nonetheless, he has
a passion for working behind the
camera, and a clear style of his
own, as he explains.What was your first-ever camera?
I inherited a Box Brownie from my
parents, which I customised with
a sticker from the kids’ television
series Joe 90.So were you interested in
photography as a kid?
No, I didn’t really get into it until I was
in my early 20s. I played in a band
but it never went anywhere, so
I ended up selling my gear and
buying a Canon A1 SLR.That’s intriguing! What kind of
band were you in?
A punk rock band, but I wasn’t very
good. I don’t have much of an ear
for acoustics.Did you always want to go on to
study biology?
I’d always been into art and there
had always been a big divide about
whether I went for art or biology. I’d
always painted, too, and my mother
used to take me to ar t galleries. So
after I graduated in zoology from
Southampton University I did some
sculpture, and then got more into
photography. I photographed wildlife
as I knew a bit about it. From the
outset, I wanted to take pictures
that were different from other
photographers’ – I wanted to
do more ‘ar t y’ images.Which other photographers
influenced you?
I used to look at the work of Ernst
Haas a lot from the 1960 and 1970s.
He was a National Geographic
photographer and would do slow
exposures on Kodachrome. His book
The Creation really impressed me, as
nobody else was doing anything like
it. I didn’t try to mimic Haas’s style,
however; I just liked the way he looked
at the natural world in a completely
different way. So I thought, ‘How can Ilook at in a dif ferent way, too?’ Initially
my work was very, very surreal and
manufactured. I thought it was
striking, but I underestimated how
conservative the wildlife photography
world was. When I showed people my
early work they didn’t get it. They
thought I should be photographing
birds pin-sharp, with three flashguns.How did you get your first break?
The first few years were quite hard.
Eventually I got some portfolio work
printed in a magazine called Creative
Photography, and then I won a couple
of competitions. I won joint first in
the Graphis magazine photography
competition with a picture of a dead
fish that I’d spray-painted gold, so it
looked like a fossil. I then started to
get more work printed.Which of your early projects were
you most satisfied with?
I’m never happy or satisfied with my
images, to be honest, but I’ve always
tried to imagine photos, draw them,
and strive to make that a realit y. In
one early project, I got some red
mushrooms and placed them as“Part of a crowd of
more than 100,000
king penguins. The
silver-rimmed fluffy
youngsters looked
great, so I ‘crushed’
them together with
my 500mm f/4 lens
and under-exposed
by three stops.”“These three
unlucky penguins
were stuck on top
of a beautiful blue
’berg which had
calved and rolled,
leaving them
stranded.”116 March 2016 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com
PRO ZONE INTERVIEW