When Peter Walton was 12 years old his father bought him a Kodak Box Brownie. It was to prove a milestone in his life. He became passionate about the magic of photography.
By his mid teens he had bought himself an advanced 35mm camera and began spending his school holidays hitchhiking thousands of kilometres taking pictures along the way. By his mid twenties he had become an accomplished amateur landscape photographer.
Eventually Peter turned his hobby into a profession and by 1982 owned a successful commercial studio in South Melbourne. Together with three associates he was kept busy with fashion, product, car and food photography assignments for major advertising clients.
All the while his personal passion remained landscape photography, which he pursued during his limited spare time between paid jobs. The technical skills gained from his demanding studio work served him well out in the “real world” and he was able to cultivate several major tourism clients. This eventually led to numerous overseas assignments, including a corporate calendar project for Malaysia Airlines. This won an ASEAN tourism award and led to additional work the airline in several countries.
The studio was sold so he could focus on his passion. When the digital revolution arrived in the early 90's Peter was the first Australian photographer to offer stock images on CD, and one of the first to have a stock photography website.
Over the years he has photographed several coffee table books. These include “Tasmania”,“ Red Centre”, “Landscape Australia”, now in its second printing, and the recently reprinted Reader's Digest book “Australia's Most Scenic Drives”. To photograph it Peter and his wife Margaret drove almost 100,000 kilometres around Australia.
His love affair with photography remains as strong as ever. As well marketing his stock image library www.australianscenics.com he continues to photograph around Australia and has plans for more overseas assignments.
Peter also enjoys teaching and sharing his knowledge with other photography enthusiasts and has plans to lead extended field trips and photo workshops. The first of these will be to Tasmania's beautiful Tarkine area in April 2008.
When friends ask if he ever plans to retire, his answer is “Never”.