Last Friday, in Perth and its suburbs, we had one of the nastiest and wildest storms for quite some time. Me, I love ‘em – happiness is pelting rain, thunder, lighting and cold. I’m not fond of wind having lived through three major cyclones that killed, but also accept that they are all part of the whole.

I especially like photographing and taking video of serious storms at the beach; seeing what anger the ocean can get into and still chasing that elusive lighting shot; you can get some awesome one-off images. And seeing as I live on the beach, it really was just a case of putting on the Driz-a-Bone and hat kept for such purposes, grabbing my baby camcorder and wandering across the road. In reality, with 120hph winds, the walk was more of a stagger than a saunter, but the shots I managed to get were very satisfying.

What suddenly struck me as incredible though is that 30 mins later I was able to share these shots with people from Manchester to Echuca, Brisbane to Vancouver with literally the click of a mouse or two. It took me back to the so called “good old days” of covering motor sport at virtually any circuit, going back to the darkroom after the meeting, processing the negs, creating proof sheets, selecting the ones to use in the story, printing them off, putting them in an envelope, driving to TAA freight at the airport and sending the shots off, usually around midnight.

How times have changed and it is sobering to think there is now a whole generation that has absolutely no concept of what a “neg” or “proof sheet” is.

Has this greater freedom allowed or given us more creativity? Certainly, more people are taking more photos and video than ever. Today, it doesn’t cost as it did with film or tape due to the advent of solid state memory and the use of hard drives. But I tend to feel, except for the dedicated photo/video shooter, because it is so easy to take another shot, and another, and another, that the time taken to actually “wait and create” may have been lost.

And THAT is a shame. I don’t like mediocrity.