Exclusive Interview with Nigel Crowley

Tell us about your first introduction to photography. What drew you into this world?

Many years ago my Dad used a 35mm camera for family snapshots that used to fascinate me as a young child. What was this beautiful metal thing with dials and buttons and switches? I was three years old when Dad told me it was a machine that could make pictures and from that moment on I was completely fascinated, and completely hooked.

I was too young to use Dad’s camera of course, but he bought me a cheap toy camera – a Diana (later to become fashionable with the Lomography movement) from Woolworths, for sixpence. I shot a few rolls with it, but the camera that really drew me into the world of photography was a Fed 4 that I was given at Christmas in 1978. This was my first real camera and although it essentially used 1930s technology, and was a little out of date even then, I learned the art of photography with this camera.

I had only one lens – an Industar 61 – but over the next few years, I shot hundreds of rolls of film with that camera and produced thousands of shots, at first conventional family shots, progressing in time to some dreamy portraits, and a lot of street photography! I really haven’t looked back since.

Do you remember your first shot? What was it?

I do! It was a shot of my younger brother on Christmas morning in 1978. In the winter it doesn’t get light until about 9 am so I had to wait for what seemed like an eternity to shoot it. I put together all the theoretical knowledge I’d managed to glean from books and wanted to make a shot with a shallow depth of field so I opened up the aperture to its fullest extent (f2.8), focussed at the minimum focus distance of 1 meter and cajoled and persuaded my nine-year-old brother into being my subject – which he did very patiently! It wasn’t a bad shot either, and even now is quite a nice portrait. I think it must have been beginner’s luck as I’ve had my fair share of duds since then!

What kind of photography type do you focus more attention on? Which one(s)?

I love street photography, and there are few things I enjoy more than spending a couple of hours on the street with a friendly camera and lens. More than anything else, I enjoy making street portraits. Very few images speak to us the way an image of a human being does. I love to catch the expression in a face, a moment in life, an image of someone I’ll never see again but who communicates something in the instant we happen to meet. A poignancy, meaningfulness, that’s forever frozen in time. A beautiful, but brief encounter!

I’m interested in the art one might find on the street too, from the lines, angles, and forms of street furniture like signage and buildings, to the colors and shapes of shop displays and I’m very interested in graffiti too.

Who or what influenced you?

I admire the work of many photographers – people like Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Dorothea Lange, William Wegman, and Walker Evans – and I’ve studied many of the great photographers. I love photographers whose work examines the ordinary moments of ordinary people’s lives, and so, by placing them in the photographic frame, makes ordinary things and moments extraordinary. I love work that allows the viewer to look afresh, re-examine the familiar, and perceive it in a different light.

What details do you believe make the best photographs?

Before you’ve taken your first hundred thousand shots, learn and obey the rules of composition, especially the rule of thirds. This single rule is probably the most important of the compositional rules,  so learn it well! It’s also particularly important not to clutter your shot, and to understand which are the important visual elements and which are not, which elements add to the aesthetic of your shot and which detract from it. You should also learn how to fill the frame so that every part of your image maintains some visual interest to the viewer rather than being wasted, empty space. A successful composition is at the root of every successful shot.

After your first hundred thousand shots, when the rules are as familiar to you as breathing, only then should you break them – but you must learn them first!

How do you educate yourself to take better photos?

By practice, practice, and more practice! When it comes to improving one’s art there simply is no substitute for getting out and shooting, and practical experience is, I feel, the best teacher. By going out into the field and working you’ll encounter problems, and you’ll find out how to solve them.

You’ll find your own ways of working in any given situation, and in the end, practice really does make perfect. Having said that, however, nobody creates in a vacuum and it’s important to refer to the work of other photographers – perhaps well known, perhaps those at your local camera club – and then use that inspiration in your own work.

Don’t be afraid to try techniques that others have used too – if you have a favourite photographer, why not try to reproduce their techniques and aesthetic? This can often be a very effective way to learn!

What was the best piece of advice you were given starting out?

A favourite photography teacher once told me ‘Don’t be afraid, there aren’t any rules. And while this contradicted what he’d said the previous week about the importance of learning the rules, I knew what he meant. Beginners in any art form often lack confidence, and this lack can amount to a fear of the form.

When taking your first steps you will certainly make mistakes – but you mustn’t be afraid to do that. Give yourself the freedom to experiment and the freedom to make mistakes – only then will you have a chance of doing your best work, because by giving yourself the freedom to make mistakes, you also give yourself the freedom to get it right!

You are known for photographing wedding photography? What draws your initial interest in a place? 

I don’t shoot weddings but if I did, I’d love to use an inner city, urban environment. I’m fascinated by such locations, they seem to me the most real of places and bring out elements of personality that other, more conventional locations don’t. I like a gritty and harsh atmosphere, and such a location would give a fantastic contrast with a young and beautiful bride. I think I’d need to find a creative, unconventional couple to fulfill this plan though!

• Read More about Nigel Crowley’s Camera Lens
  7 Artisans 60mm f2.8 Macro II Review
• Best 5 Vintage Wide-Angle Lenses Under $300 In 2023
• Viltrox 13mm f1.4 for Fujifilm X-T3 Review
• best-vintage-50mm-lens

What equipment do you use?

I have three digital mirrorless cameras  – a Micro Four Thirds Panasonic GH2 that’s quite old now but still shoots nice video, a full frame Sony A7 Mark 1, and a Fujifilm X-T3. I have very few modern lenses and hardly ever use them, preferring instead to use my collection of vintage lenses, of which my favorites are my Carl Zeiss Jena Pancolar 50mm f1.8, my Helios 44 58mm f2, and my Olympus Zuiko 100mm f2.8. Vintage lenses bring more character and variation to images than modern lenses do, and together with the ease of modern digital cameras, they give the best of the old and the new!

Do you spend a lot of time editing your work? Why?

I don’t spend too much time editing shots, and I’m a great believer in shooting the shot as you want it to appear, rather than trying to produce it in post. I probably got this from the film – I learned photography in the film days, and at that time it wasn’t easily possible to manipulate the final image, so it was important to shoot it right. Of course, I make the occasional mistake with exposure or framing so I’ll edit shots that need a correction, and I sometimes add a film look to a shot if it seems appropriate, but that’s all!