oratorio

Roger Thompson takes the privacy of all his clients and potential clients seriously.
The following policy details what I will and will not do with information connected to you, your session/event and/or photographs.

Roger Thompson will:
Store all client details in a safe and secure manner
Only contact a potential client if they have previously enquired about my services or attended a wedding fair where details were registered.

Roger Thompson may:
Contact all persons placing an enquiry about my services
Contact all clients before and after the photographing of their event
Use the details of any wedding or other event I have photographed (including details of names, locations and service provided) in my promotional material including both internet and traditional marketing formats, unless you, the client, specifically request otherwise at the time of booking.
Use photography of any wedding or other event I am employed to document, to promote myself, unless you, the client, specifically request otherwise at the time of booking.

Roger Thompson will not:
Distribute any information about my clients to third parties without their express permission.
Sell any client information to any third party.

privacy@rogerthompson.com

From a very early age, I always had a deep fascination for cameras.
I can remember using my mother's Box Brownie when i was about seven, migrating up to a camera, the make of which I can't remember, but the lens folded out of the camera on a bellows. I was given a film to go to the Shoreham Air show with my father on the strict understanding that one roll of film (12 pictures) was my limit... Oh the fustration of waiting for the chemist to develop those first pictures. The bug had bitten and from that point forward there was no stopping me. My father had an intriguing and little used plate camera hidden away in his office which he used for aerial photography, but try as I did when he was out, I never managed to find it for closer examination...
The next few years I used a camera given to me by my grandmother and became very good at photographing horses going over jumps at local Gymkhanas and horse shows. Then, when I was fifteen, a real photographer by the name of Terry Piper opened a studio in our village. It wasn't long before I plucked up the courage to ask for some advice, which ultimately led me into three years of saturdays taking wedding photographs. We would do two or three weddings every saturday using Rolleiflex and YashicaMat twin reflex cameras. When we had more than three weddings, a fourth photographer was hired for the day and as the yongest member of the team, I had to use the big lumpy, unfashionable, heavy, awkward, MPP Micropress half plate camera complete with tripod and a suitcase full of two sided plates...How I used to look forward to those saturdays and what a pleasure it was to use that beautful camera and see the fantastic results it would produce, Yes, I loved using that camera even if everyone was upside down when I was trying to focus them on the back screen.
They were great days of Black and White photography. We would take 24 or 36 exposures depending on how much the clients had paid.. once the pictures had been taken we would rush back to the studio, develop the pictures and then rush back to the reception with wet proofs mounted on a board and take orders from the guests, alot of whom were under the infuence by then! Even in 1968 I can remember coming back from receptions with over a hundred pounds in orders and quite a few beers inside of me. My career in photography was brought to a sudden halt when the government changed the tax laws and everybody rushed to get married before April the first. Great days, but we hardly did a wedding afterwards. Out went black and white and in came colour - it was then I found I was Red/Green colour blind.....

I joined the army and for a while photography became just a hobby.
I bought my first 35mm camera and enjoyed photographing cats and anything which moved. People who could use cameras in those days were few and far between and all of the sudden my services were in demand photographing mess functions and visiting Generals. The occasional wedding kept my skills finely tuned - There is only one opportunity to get it right - no pressure! I was still taking the same standard twentyfour or thirtysix photographs, but now using a Mamiya C220 twin lens reflex camera - 35 mm just wasn't up to the standard of 6x6cm film. By tis time colour processing laboratories were becoming popular and it didn't really matter that I was colour blind as I didn't have to worry about matching the colours.

Perspective: A swift move forward to the present day and into the digital age.
At the last wedding I did I took over 600 photographs, the same twenty-four as in the early sixties and then almost 600 of the Bride, Groom guests as a candid journalistic record of the day. I managed to edit the photos down to 400 and there were almost 40 in the album whereas in the nineteen-sixties it was always twelve or eighteen into the album at the most.
The last air show I did was the Royal International Air Tattoo in Fairford last year - I took over 1500 photographs which were ultimately pruned down to 250 of which three really pleased me and made the three days at the show really worth while.
The last social event I did had four studio lights and a seven foot lightbox - everyone looked like hollywood stars and, they had the their photographs presented to them in a folder within a few minutes of the photo being taken....
Product photos are now taken using a light tent and we will take hundreds of perfectly lit photographs in a day using our light tent.
Probably one of the best advances I have made is the production of 360 degree images or Swiftspins - we set a product up on a revolving bench and photograph it as it rotates it through 360 degrees - a quick manipulation in flash and a movie is produced in which a customer can go to the product on the web and rotate it through 360 degrees frame by frame to make sure that it really is the product he/she wants. Click here to see an example

So what sort of photography gives me pleasure nowadays?
The honest answer is all photography still gives me immense pleasure. But let me loose in Scotland for a couple of weeks or, despite my struggles with my failing sight, give me some macro objects and I am as happy as Larry - I enjoy a challenge and I hope I always will!