Scott Morrison: Allow yourself to stop, breathe, appreciate the world around you

"Olympus Trip 35. My love for this camera now knows no bounds."

Tell us about yourself.

I am 43.
I live in Belfast.
I work as Team Manager in an IT company.

When and how did the film journey begin for you?

My (initially digital) photography journey began in 2011 when I won a DSLR in a charity draw at work. Rejecting several offers from colleagues to sell the camera, I soon began to play around, getting to grips with the basics.
Before too long I began to see my work featured in some forums and friends actually started hanging my shots on their walls. This made me proud to have created something that brought pleasure to people.
Two years later, my other love affair, for car-boot sales, saw me buying an Olympus OM10 for £7.00, picking up several rolls of 35mm film around the same time (sometimes for as little as 50p for 2 rolls).

Not only did this allow me to start learning the craft of analogue photography, but it also started my modest film camera collection (I now own more than ten cameras, in both 35mm & 120 formats).
But all of this was mere preparation to the point at which I bought my Olympus Trip 35. This was my watershed moment, and my love for this camera now knows no bounds.
It is adaptable, reliable, ergonomic, compliant, complicit.
It is everything I need to truly enjoy photography.
Owning this camera has embedded a deep seated passion in me for analogue photography.
One result of this is that I have recently been asked to hang 19 shots in a local Belfast restaurant, 17 of them taken on my Trip.

What Could we always find in your gear bag?

I rarely use a bag.
My ‘wee’ Trip is compact enough to keep in one pocket of my jacket, with some spare film in my other.
I have recently been given a Minolta Dynax 7000i with some great lenses by a generous benefactor. So from time to time, I will take a bag to carry this and perhaps a lens or two.
But I’ll always have my trusty Trip in my pocket!

What camera makes you click?

My trip makes me click.

Who are your models? How do you interact with them before shooting?

As a father of 4 (18yr old twins, an 8yr old and a 5yr old) I don’t have to look far to find subjects. My youngest two boys are at that special pre-pre-teen age, well before awkwardness and self-awareness results in acute camera-anxiety (unless, of course, it’s a selfie). So I tend to shoot them the most.
I prefer natural, spontaneous shots of the boys, so I tend to sit and let them do what they do.

What inspires you most?

Appreciating life’s minutiae.
The ethereal, fleeting ‘Decisive moments' that we too easily overlook. I try to look for scenes, settings, situations, episodes that are all around us, but that we tend to not see. It’s not that we ignore these things, we just don’t stop to look around us to absorb our surroundings.
When I set my mind to seek out these vignettes, it forces/ allows me to look, stop, breathe and begin to appreciate the world around me. And this allows me the time and space that a hectic work life and family commitments rarely affords.
And if ever anyone who has ever looked at one of my shots which some time later causes them to consider a familiar setting with a fresh perspective - then I would be truly delighted.

Do you think you will still be shooting film in 20 years?

Yes - but better.
Always getting better.
After all, if, as Cartier Bresson declared, “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst” I may well have another 20 years to go before hitting 10,001!

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