I went to a talk by Don McCullin last night. He's over 90 now, but still looking good, but a bit deaf and calling himself 'frail,' despite standing for an hour to deliver his talk. Of course, he showed his images as he talked about his life as a photographer.
Among the tidbits:
- he loves the darkroom work as much as he loved the shooting and he's very particular about his results in the darkroom; he said his house is filled with about 10,000 prints; also said that there are some of images he hasn't printed in 30 years and never wants to print again, because there are too many traumatic thoughts related to working with the image;
- he doubts young photographers in his field can make a career of it now;
- when asked about his gear and technique, he flatly refused to answer and said he was always bad about the gear and the technique and nowadays needs someone else to download the images on his computer (now, part of that avoidance may have been because he was in the Leica Gallery for the event and I doubt he ever used a Leica in his life: he started with a Rolleicord as he mentioned in his talk and on his Wikipedia page it says a Nikon saved his life by blocking the bullet meant for him...);
- he also said his kind of weather is the overcast British type; he called it 'Wagnerian clouds.' He adds to that by using a filter, most likely a red filter for his B&W landscapes.
Always interesting to see your heroes in real life.
