Introducing the New CameraTalk Team… Mark Chamberlain LPSNZ (Editor)
Lindsay Stockbridge LPSNZ (Subeditor)
I am a relatively new member of PSNZ, joining three years ago after being washed up on the shores of Aotearoa, following a long career as a Petroleum Exploration Geologist in Southeast Asia. I came to your country with my beautiful Thai wife, Kanchana (Took), and we both love the outdoor life and landscape photography opportunities afforded by New Zealand. We consider ourselves very lucky to be in such a pristine, beautiful country.
Photography began for me with a Kodak box camera, initially snapping the family cat or my sister in her pushchair, but it soon gravitated to photographing trains. Now, all these years later, I find myself subediting The New Zealand Railway Observer as well as CameraTalk. I have no formal qualifications in the editorial field, but I’ve picked up a few skills that help me in this work.
My photographic interests are in travel photography, inspired by my thirty-year plus, nomadic life, living and working in Asia and Australia – including long stints in Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia and Thailand. My photography objective is to tell stories of transient cultures, religions and lifestyles in Southeast Asia. My wife and I are building a small travel photography business. Once COVID-19 issues have passed, we hope to run small workshops for photographers in northern Thailand and other extraordinary regions of SE Asia familiar to us. Meanwhile, here in New Zealand, I spend much of my spare time improving my landscape photography skills. For me, photography is a journey of self-improvement, and I am happy to be contributing something to PSNZ.
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Serious camera club involvement began in the late ‘eighties when I came to Whanganui, and PSNZ membership soon followed. I’ve attended many regional and national conventions, working on the organising committees for about half a dozen. I’ve also enjoyed working as club treasurer in Whanganui for several years. Soon after joining PSNZ, I became a member of Print Circle 7, beginning a long association with the Society’s print circles. These days I maintain a degree of oversight over our eight active print circles, two of them just new after a recruitment drive at the convention. We still have a few vacancies! As a railway buff, I just had to join the convention field trip to Ferrymead Historic Park. Exploring and photographing railwayana ‘around the back’ was going fine until a belligerent (almost), barrelchested, blue-overalled man with baritone intonations suggested that departure from the premises would be well advised. I acceded to his request, but only after I’d taken a last, lingering shot of a railway wheel...
