Cliq Photiq Member

Robin Naysmith

It started as a hobby - family snaps and the like - just a bit of harmless relaxation. But before long I was shooting random household objects, sleeping cats, mountains and anything else that didn’t move. Soon every weekend outing and family holiday became an excuse to indulge my new obsession. I don’t know how many towns, cities and countries I visited worldwide but saw only through a viewfinder. The sole evidence of my visits, shoeboxes full of discarded 35mm prints, negatives and slides. The arrival of digital just fed my craving. No longer was I limited to 36 fixes. Now I could shoot all day without consequence.

I love travel. There’s something about the colour and novelty of the ‘exotic’ that gets my photographic juices flowing. For many years my photography featured colour-popping, polarised pictures of sandy beaches, quaint harbours, garishly painted houses, famous buildings, and the inevitable ‘vistas’. Whenever possible I would purposefully exclude people. I didn’t want random individuals cluttering up my otherwise clinically sterile pictures. And then came Covid-19…

Between lockdowns and with little or no opportunity for travel, my outlook towards photography changed and I began to appreciate the charm (and often humour) in ordinary human activities, which I might previously have taken for granted. Suddenly this activity seemed worth capturing, with potential photos around every street corner. There was also an element of risk in pointing a camera at total strangers which I found weirdly exhilarating. So for the past 2 or 3 years I’ve been shooting street photography, featuring perfectly innocent bystanders, going about their daily lives, often blissfully unaware of me or my camera. What next I wonder?