Hamilton Photographer John Kiely was born in 1952 in Echuca where he also completed his education. He joined the Police Force in 1973. He has been stationed at various metropolitan and country stations and was appointed Officer in Charge of Hamilton Police Station in 1989. He is married (to wife Rosemary) and has two children.
His interest in photography has been with him since childhood and developed as a serious interest about 14 years ago. He has no formal training as a photographer and all skills are self-taught. He specialises in using large format cameras in order to obtain maximum detail in his photographs and he generally prefers to work in black and white instead of colour.
John exhibited Images of Western Victoria, a collection of thirty large format cibachromes at Hamilton Art Gallery in 1994. These were commissioned by Hamilton Art Gallery to document the beauty of Western Victoria. Several articles with photographs by John have been published in magazines, including GEO and WILD.
All photographs were made with the aid of a 10” x 8” view camera using Nikon lenses. Printing techniques used include dodging and burning, masking, selenium intensification and various print toning techniques. The final prints were done as large format prints (20” x 24”) on fibre-based paper, either Agfa Classic or Kodak Polymax Fine Art Paper.
Exposures were made using the ‘Zone System’ with the aid of a Pentax spot meter. Aperture settings were typically in the order of f22 to f45 with exposure times ranging from 1/15 second to 10 seconds.
