Before any of this, I spent a good many years in laboratories. Research work first, then teaching for a spell, and for a stretch that still makes people laugh when I mention it, quality assurance at a Guinness brewery. It’s not the sort of career you’d expect to lead anywhere near art, and for a long time it didn’t.
But I think it taught me something that turned out to matter a great deal: patience, and a willingness to get a process right before worrying about the result. In a laboratory, you don’t rush a reaction because you’re keen to see what happens. You measure, you wait, and you check your working. The darkroom asked exactly the same of me, years later, and so does the computer now, in its own way.
I don’t sit down expecting a picture to arrive fully formed. It takes tries, and failed tries, and a fair bit of patient fiddling before something feels right. I suppose that’s the thread running underneath all of it, laboratory bench, darkroom, and screen alike. Nobody tells you when you’re young that a career spent measuring things carefully might one day help you make a picture you’re proud of. I certainly didn’t see it coming.