Interview With Tony Dudley

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Tony’s varied output on Ephotozine has been noteworthy, and as well as working in a genre that I love, with studio nudes and portraits, he has a great affection for a striking lens, a 200mm f/2 Nikkor. When I found that he doesn’t live very far away from me, I realised that I had to interview him…

 

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And, interestingly, he’s been interviewed before, at least briefly, in 2012. A lot has happened in his world since then, so an update seems due in any case.

 

Tony, your bio says that you dropped out of photography a couple of years after your last interview; it’s always sad when someone hangs up their camera, and I wondered if that was because of a loss of interest, or simply too much else going on in your life?

I worked in the photographic industry as a UK Sales Manager and as a Brand Manager in my specialist subject Studio Lighting, this took me all over the world teaching professionals and Amateurs alike in the “Black Art”. And when I retired, I took some time out to relax. I didn’t shoot at all for about two or three years – my health was not good from the constant flights and traveling. I still have some related issues now so walking or things like that can be difficult. About 12 months before Covid, somebody contacted me out of the blue, recommended by someone else and asked, “Could you teach me Photoshop?” and I thought why not?

 

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So I put together a course which lasted about six months, and they’ve ended up being with me for near enough 5 years – and it’s sort of snowballed! I’m teaching people about Photoshop and how to get the best out of their images.  I like the pictures to look as if they could have been taken in camera, so I don’t generally spend more than 10-15 minutes on an image. But I do like composites, where the skill is getting the lighting between images to be correct; if it is, then it is easy to fool the viewer, this is where most people fall down with composite work.

Like a cook, the ingredients have to be right! It’s not about the oven is it, just like the camera, you never hear people saying you must have a good oven do you?

 

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For instance, it’s not all about the lighting, if the depth of field looks wrong in a composite, or a person is floating, it’s because they don’t understand the process of Photoshop properly. Mentoring is very important to me to help students grow and develop their own style. I’ve been doing photography for about 40 years, so there’s a lot of experience to pass on. I have also been Brand Ambassador for several companies in the past. I’m not now, but the knowledge you gain from doing so is inspiring when working with other ambassadors too.

 

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Teaching and mentoring gave me the spark to get out again and start taking my own pictures. Most of the people I teach are good friends now, and I go out doing pictures with them regularly when I can. I used to be a member of the Smethwick Photographic Society, and I was President there back in 1994. I was a judge and lecturer on the UK Circuit for over 35 years but retired from it in 2015. Anyone can judge a good image it’s the ones that are not so good that judges find hard to explain to help newer photographers, and that often shows with newer judges to how they cannot cope with these more difficult images quite often.  The problem comes when you have a poor picture, and you have to look carefully and suggest a different viewpoint, or don’t include this in your picture… 

 

You describe yourself in your EPZ profile as a beginner: is that tongue-in-cheek, disingenuous, or because you’re still learning? 

No – I’m still learning. The beauty of mirrorless cameras is that there’s a new challenge. When I got my Z9, I had to learn so many new ideas and techniques again, everything is different to my aging DSLs like the  D4 and my 810, I’ve still got all the lenses, including the 200mm f/2, which I still love. With mirrorless, it’s a totally different camera to use; new technologies such as Auto-Capture are incredible, I don’t even need to be there LOL….

 

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I’m very lens-orientated: I’m not sure whether you are – other than the 200mm…

The 200mm f/2 is obviously a favourite lens, but it’s getting to the point now that it’s too heavy for me. That’s one of the big bonuses of mirrorless: the lenses are a quarter of the weight, so now I have a 400 f/4.5 VRS lens, which is basically how I used my 200mm anyway, with a 2x converter; both are extremely sharp. The 200 f/2 is a phenomenal lens, it must be the best lens I’ve ever had. If you have not used one, you will not understand its pure quality. The 400 is brilliant, and it’s so light: easy to carry around. The new Z lens is very, very good. But now the 200’s a bit heavy!

 

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But I’ve also got a Nikon 500mm pf lens that I use with an FTZ adaptor on the Z9, and it works perfectly well. I tend to shoot wide open most of the time: whatever the widest aperture is, that’s my style. I shoot what I want to shoot; I’ve no interest in making money from photography at all – never have – so I shoot my own style for me, if someone likes it, that’s the bonus.

 

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I often get complimented for the images because they’re shot wide open. With a portrait, you focus on the eyes, and then everything else is out of focus with a lovely soft background. I might occasionally go one stop down, and when I’m doing panning pictures I’m at the opposite end of the aperture range. When everything is at a distance, like the landscapes I did in Yorkshire last October, with hills, a tree in the distance, well over half a mile away – why do you need f/8 for that? The question is, what do you want sharp in the picture? You make the picture with the two most important tools, your eyes.

 

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What first got you started in photography?

I used to be a rally driver. But when I was about 20, I rolled my Rally car in North Wales, about six times, end over end, and I couldn’t afford to replace the car. And someone said ‘you love the sport, why don’t you take pictures of it?’ And I wasn’t that interested, but this guy actually lent me a camera and every car that came past I got every car in the frame. And he said ‘you’ll be good at this’, so he lent me a camera for about a month, and then I went out and bought a Ricoh KR-10, which was camera of the year some time in the mid-Eighties. I probably used it for two years before the Minolta 9000 came out.  Which was the first real professional body that I bought, and it kick-started my hobby of using professional cameras all the while.

 

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The 9000 had highlight-weighted spot metering, which a lot of companies didn’t do. Remember we are talking about the days of Film here not Digital, with the 9000.

 

I mostly shoot in aperture priority, wide open with auto ISO, and have done since the Nikon D3. I use the highlight weighted metering of the Z9 an awful lot. You’ve got to understand metering and exposure to use spot metering well, though. People who’ve been using matrix metering since the D3 are blown away by how good it is. Spot metering that follows the highlights.

 

What genres are you currently shooting?

It’s all wildlife at the moment.

 

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I remember commenting on a picture that you’d taken with quite complex lighting, and a number of speedflash units – I’ve never understood the charm of these, because I like the certainty that a built in modelling lamp gives me.  How do you cope with envisaging and achieving subtle and complex effects with small flash guns?

You just need a little bit of education, that’s all! Wherever you point the speedlight, that’s where the light will go. Just like you can with big lights – you can use adaptors, you can put beauty dishes on them, you can gel them, you can do all sorts of things. I invented quite a few things like that when I was in the industry, for modifying speedlights. The way I work with them is that I make sure I block out any daylight so I have a black exposure, now I have control of the lighting.

Then you can place each light and see where it’s going. So if I’ve got a model holding their hands up, I can put a light on each side [snooted down] so that you can just see the red gloves. Then I had to put one light behind pointing back. The flash was very close to the background so that we could light an area just wide enough to give that halo around the head. And there was one more light with a snoot to get a little bit of light under the hat.

 

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Please tell us how your screen name came about.

Hard to believe, but when I joined Ephotozine, my camera of choice was a Nikon D3. There you go – simple! If it was today, I’d be TonyZ9, or possibly TonyDZ9.

 

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One piece of advice for aspiring photographers?

Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. Your first 100,000 pictures will be the worst you’ll ever take, and after that you’ll get slightly better.

 

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There’s always one question that I fail to ask. What is it today – and what’s the answer?

Did I enjoy my time in the photographic industry? The simple answer is yes, I did, because I met an awful lot of creative people – and that helped my own photography. I’ve been very lucky, if you enjoy what you do it’s not hard work: I’ve travelled the world, at someone else expense lol. I’ve been all over America, all round Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Dubai, just for work. My life has been all about photography since my early 20’s and photography has been very good to me, but now I just enjoy giving back and teaching the next generation and also some older than myself too.

Photography. It’s my life, my passion.

 

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