I was there to photograph the cover of the Newcastle phone book. Instead, I found one of my all time favourite pictures.
In the olden days, when telephone directories were still a thing, I was commissioned to photograph the cover of the Newcastle White Pages.
We were at Newcastle Ocean Baths, early in the morning. The sun had just risen, the light was beautiful and the client and I had finally arranged the models exactly where we wanted them. Everything was in place for the cover photograph.
I'd just started shooting when I heard laughter and splashing behind me. Then came a rather cheeky invitation.
“Hey, you should be taking our picture!”
I turned around to find four wonderful women in colourful swimming caps, clearly enjoying themselves and not the least bit concerned about the important commercial photography happening nearby.
They were irresistible. And irrepressible.
I managed one frame on my Hasselblad before turning back to the models and a semi-amused client.
That single frame became The Dawn Patrol.
I can't remember much about the White Pages cover now, but I've never forgotten those four women.
And perhaps that's why I've chosen this photograph to introduce my part of our 21st Anniversary Exhibition.
A lifetime of finding pictures
I've been making photographs for more than fifty years. For much of that time, photography was my profession.
Commercial photography could be wonderfully rewarding, but it came with certain obligations. Someone else usually decided what needed photographing, why it needed photographing and, occasionally, exactly how the finished photograph should look.
My job was to make it happen.
But everyone needs something outside their working life. Something they do simply because they enjoy it.
Rather amusingly, my escape from photography was more photography.
The difference was that I could go looking for pictures without anyone telling me what to look for.
No brief. No client. No deadline. And often no particular destination.
Just the pleasure of seeing what was there.
I've always called this process finding pictures.
Sometimes I found them in familiar places around Newcastle, particularly along the coast and at the ocean baths. Other times they appeared while travelling, in the landscape, in the sky, or in the shapes and shadows of the human form.
Sometimes the picture was something I'd been waiting for. Sometimes it was something I hadn't imagined until I saw it.
And sometimes, as with The Dawn Patrol, the picture interrupted something else entirely.
Then and now
For this exhibition I've been going back through photographs made at different times in my life, alongside work I've made much more recently.
It's been an interesting exercise.
Some pictures bring back very particular memories of the places, people and circumstances in which they were made. Others surprise me because I can see a connection to something I photographed decades later.
My photographs of Newcastle's ocean pools, the strange beauty of the sea at night, the shifting patterns of clouds and waves, the quietness of a landscape, or the shapes and gestures of people might seem to have little in common.
But looking back, I can see that I've often been attracted to the same things.
Light, shape, atmosphere, the unexpected, and occasionally a little mystery.
I've never been particularly interested in making every photograph look like the next one. What interests me is the possibility of finding something worth looking at.
Twenty-one years of exhibiting together
This exhibition is also a celebration of friendship.
Chris, Keith and I have known each other since our school days. For twenty-one years we've been getting together every few years to exhibit our work — their paintings and my photographs.
We've shared a lot of conversations, plenty of opinions and on going encouragement.
For this anniversary exhibition, rather than working to a common theme, we've each chosen to follow our own ideas.
Mine is a retrospective of sorts. Not a chronological account of my career, and certainly not an attempt to show everything I've done.
It's a collection of photographs that have stayed with me, pictures I particularly enjoy, and others that have become important for reasons that aren't always obvious.
Some are old friends. Others are relatively new discoveries.
I'm still finding pictures, and I hope I always will be.
And I can't think of a better photograph to welcome visitors than those four irrepressible women who interrupted my carefully organised commercial assignment all those years ago.
They remind me that while planning, patience and technique all have their place in photography, it's equally important to keep your eyes (and ears!) open.
You never quite know what's going to happen when you turn around.
Then and Now… A journey of finding pictures
21st Anniversary Exhibition — 20–22 November 2026
Paul Foley, Chris Buller and Keith Nesbitt
