Born in Bombay, India, 1958. but grew up mostly in the UK,  Peebles, Scotland becoming the family home in 1971.
     It seems that I have been taking photographs since about the age of 10 when I was the proud owner of a Polaroid Land Camera. It became a serious hobby when I left school at 16. I bought my first SLR (a Canon Ftp) from a photographer friend and still have some of the lenses. 
   Working in Bars and a record shop in Edinburgh, Scotland. I started taking some photos for local bands and bands on tour.  The first photos I sold were of Van Morrison after sneaking my camera past the bouncers at one of his concerts, processing the photos through the night and selling them the next day. 
   I continued working part time in bars and the record shop whilst studying Zoology at Edinburgh University. I did my honours research project at The Roslin Institute where "Dolly" the first cloned sheep was produced. 
   After graduating I continued working at the Institute and then got a Post Graduate research Scholarship to The University of New England , NSW, Australia (thanks more to the Institutes reputation than mine). It was here that computers really came into my life as I decided to spend hours writing programs to collect my data rather than spend hours collecting it myself. The Department (Physiology) happened to have a brilliant technician, Jim Reid who opened my eyes to the power of computers, albeit 64k machines. This prompted me to buy my first computer a Commodore SX64 executive in 1983.
    After completing my 3 years research project, I returned  to Scotland to help in the family hotel for one year. This one year lasted 13 enjoyable years until 1998 when the hotel was sold. It was time for a change and Australian, Australia beckoned once more, this time Melbourne.
    My father sent me one of his famous newspaper cuttings about a new 360 degree photography technique using digital cameras in 1999. I splashed out several thousand dollars on a state of the art early digital camera and with next to no competition, soon found myself in demand producing 360 virtual tours for companies, venues, restaurants etc. Clients soon started asking for normal digital photography. Early clients included commercial real estate agents and I soon found real estate photography was taking over my life, fortunately I enjoyed it immensely and it remains the core of my photography work to date. I estimate that I must photograph 1000 - 1500 properties each year which explains why I rarely update any of my websites.

Self

An early polaroid 

Billy Connoly

My first paid photo

Eric Clapton

Rowan Atkinson

Bob Seger

David Bowie

Jasper Carrot

Copyright 2000 - Simon Maguire, Australian Real Estate Virtuals