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My name is David Gold and I’ve been a professional photographer based in Aberdeen in the North of Scotland for over 30 years. I started getting serious about photography at my school camera club in Glasgow when I was about 12 years old and had my first picture published in a magazine at 14. I won my first photography competition at 15, by which time I worked part time in a local camera shop. Around about that time I bought an enlarger for £ 5 and set up my first darkroom in the back of our garage. I had a lot of fun and probably started testing back then - I bought and tried every black and white developer that passed through the little shop I worked in. When I left school I started work as an assistant to an advertising photographer and by the time I was 22 years old I was Chief Photographer at one of Aberdeen’s biggest photography companies. The North Sea oil boom was just getting going in Aberdeen then, and the company had one of the biggest contracts for photography, so I spent much of the next few years on offshore oil platforms, construction barges, oil rigs, tugs and supply boats, and also spent a lot of time hanging out of light aircraft and helicopters - which, as I love flying, was no hardship. The company also provided general services like wedding photography, which, although a great training ground, and, at times, great fun, didn’t satisfy my creative urges, so at 25 I left to set up David Gold Photography which has now been in business for 27 years specialising in offshore and aerial photography. Work has taken me all over Europe and as far afield as South Korea, Azerbaijan and Egypt - but my back yard is still the North Sea.
The early days of the North Sea oil industry were front page news, but over the years media interest has faded and the focus of my professional work has gradually become more technical than pictorial. I still have a need to make creative photographs though - I’ve lived photography for 40 years now, so it’s way too late to stop. That first Russian camera my dad bought me really started something - a process of discovery that started in that garage and has now reached the internet. Web sites are a new experience for me so this site started as a bit of fun - could I do it? I make the tests anyway - I need the information for my own business. Plus it was a way to learn new skills. The digital age means that photographers like me who’ve been around for a while have to keep adapting to stay in business. All the professional photographers I know who decided they weren’t going to “go digital” are now out of business, and all the professional labs I used for years no longer exist - so new skills are essential just now if you want to stay in the game. Having started lens-tests.com I discovered that web sites are fun. It has also been a pleasant surprise how many people were interested in the results - This site has had visitors from an amazing 117 countries so far - and I’m only just getting started. Just wait ‘til I really get it sorted out! I reckon it will take about a year to publish all the tests I’ve already made, so new pages are being added all the time. Looks like I have a new hobby. Just as well I have a very understanding wife. As I had enjoyed setting up lens-tests.com so much, I started photoprinter-tests.com and then rawdarkroom.com, before realising that this might make more sense as one site rather than three, so I’ve now combined them all as
www.phototestcenter.com
Who knows where it will all end?
David Gold
davidgold@ezeedsl.co.uk
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