Gary Campbell with his book, "Kindersley"

In the early 1980s, Gary Campbell earned a living as a pilot. He was flying bush planes in Peru for medical, humanitarian, and religious missions. He flew planes carrying everything from med-evac patients to bags of cement for construction.

Peru was dramatically different from Canada; a friend loaned him a camera so he could record some of the exotic sights he encountered. Gary found he enjoyed making images. Further, he was discovering he had photographic vision.

Back then, the native people in the bush hadn't seen many white people, so sometimes the crowds that drew around him were gawking at him rather than his airplane! The natural curiosity of children made them easy photo subjects - but with a caveat. Not every stranger photographing these occasionally-wild natives would live to make prints! Gary developed trust with the South American natives to the point where he was allowed to photograph in safety.

His photographs in South America spurred his decision to embark on a new career in 1987, when he chose to become a commercial photographer. He has enjoyed success and adventure ever since.

Gary presented a slide show of some of the images he took in South America while he was still a pilot. The images were from 1981, taken in Peru, in the foothills of the Andes.

Seeing his slides was a real privilege, as he was displaying images made while he was still an amateur - the very slides which convinced him to embark on a new career, that of a commercial photographer! How many pros would show you the images they made BEFORE they went pro?

His images showed he had a knack for photographing people. He did a great job of isolating single people within an image, which isn't always easy to do. His pre-professional images showed great attention to reducing the distractions of the background, something most amateurs have a tough time learning.

He showed some shots of people marching in a parade; they were done with the lens wide-open for least depth-of-field, giving good isolation of subjects.

It seems he loved photographing children in particular at that time; he had great shots showing painted faces in good detail.

Gary also showed a sampling of slides shot in his subsequent commercial work. Several of his oil and gas clients send him overseas to produce images of seismic and other types of exploration, and images used for a variety of corporate purposes including advertising.

He has spent much time spent overseas, shooting in Kazakhstan for Conoco, shooting in Patagonia and Indonesia. He spent a month doing a documentary in Argentina, and Agrium has sent him all over the world. He has also done coverage of seismic exploration in Louisiana, travelling in airboats.

His images seem to type-cast him as a guy who's happier wearing gumboots than a tie!

Then, leaping forward through 2 decades of commercial work, Gary displayed a coffee-table book entitled "Kindersley," shot and produced entirely in the last year.

He accepted a commission from an oil and gas company to shoot the book; all images were taken within a 100km radius of Kindersley, Saskatchewan.

All images were shot using a Hasselblad X-Pan panoramic camera. The images were shot on colour negative or transparency film depending on the look he wanted. They were then scanned, corrected and tuned (an average of 30 hours apiece using Photoshop!) and converted to monochromes for printing.

Gary admitted that an enormous amount of effort was spent on the book, and yet, he'd do it again in a heartbeat!

From his extensive portfolio of commercial work, Gary's list of clients has grown to be extensive and international, including ATB Financial, CN, Shell, Caterpillar, Canadian Pacific, Gulf, GE Harris, Stream Flo, and Nike, among many others.

About his choice of gear:

• Gary prefers medium-format cameras whenever practical, in part due to the availability of square format, defaulting to 35mm when necessary.
• He's a strong proponent of film cameras. He has tried digital cameras - recently - and found them too fragile for his work!
• He prefers a superwide 17-50mm zoom for his 35mm cameras, and rarely uses telephoto lenses on any format.
• Gary's current choice of film is Fujichrome Provia 100 for "everything!"

A quotation from Gary regarding film versus digital photography: "One sees, one records."

Thanks for sharing your insights, your history, your trials and triumphs - and your excellent images with us, Gary!