 Welcome to a rational grilling. Oh no, you're thinking, not another cooking show. I'm actually going to be interviewed. And I'm going to be interviewed by Ginny. Ginny, welcome to the table. Thank you, Nigel. I can't wait. You know, my life has been boring, and so I had to come here and I wanted to interview you because your life is so fascinating. You have gone around the world and ended up in Longmont and we want to know why and how. We will probably get to cover that. But you know what? I'm feeling a little iffy at the moment because I'm sitting in the interviewer chair and that's the interviewee chair over there. I think we should do a swap. Let's do it. Let's do a swap. Okay, here we go. I don't know about this. I'm beginning to feel a little bit nervous sitting in this, oh my goodness. That is the hot seat. Oh my goodness. And these are my notes. There's your water. Can I have my water, please? I'd be happy to give that to you. Thank you very, very much. Since you asked so nicely. I try to be a gentleman. Well, that's how we'll start the show off and we'll see where it goes from there. How about that? I did say try. Yes. The emphasis is on the word try. And that's what I noticed that you said. Okay, good. So I understand you have an English background because of your voice. So I think you started there. Am I correct? You are 100% correct. And where'd life take you after that? Where did life take me? Well, first of all, I grew up in a small town called Ringwood, which is in the New Forest in the south of England. It's about 100 miles southwest of London. Have a great bunch of friends over there. I'm still friends with more than, five people that I basically grew up with. And we've all remained very close friends through thick or thin about where in the world I've been. They've all stayed local. I'm the one that was the gypsy. So I was working in the UK. I learned how to do printed circuit board design at a company called Plessy that were down in Poole. Once I'd learned how to do that, I decided it was time to earn money. So I took up contracting. I ended up in a little place called Basildon in Essex. I worked there for a number of years on my first ever computer aided design machine. And I then heard of a contract that was going in Norway of all places. So I said, yeah, why not? Let's go to Norway. So I applied for that, moved over to Norway. I was in Norway for three years. Wait a second. Give us a timeline, because computers basically got started maybe in the 70s. No? No, no, no. Or are you thinking of the big ones? You're thinking of the big ones. Okay. Okay. Well, you're thinking of the more powerful ones. Like IBM. The IBMs. Yeah. Yeah. No, this was a Nova computer made by Digital who was a Massachusetts based company. Okay. It was a, you know, little 16 bit computer that used to chunter along. But it was fast enough for what we wanted to do. This is a bit technical, but all the software was written in Assembler. And Assembler is the fastest programming language that there is, because you're basically working in machine code. Interesting. The computer's not having to think about what it has to do. It knows instantly what happens next. It's a bit different. And that's getting into the technical. That's getting into the, so we don't worry about that. We won't worry. Norway was fun. I was there for three years. It was a killer of a shift. I used to do days and nights, 12 hour days. So I used to do Monday to Friday, 60 hours, daytime, and then nighttime, 60 hours, six to six. Yeah, you were young. You could handle it. Yeah, no, it almost drove me over the edge, yes. Earned an awful lot of money, which was kind of nice. We won't talk about how I didn't pay tax on it. Well, we won't go there. We won't go there. But I earned so much money, I then went down to Holland, and I lived there for a year. Dear, absolutely nothing. Except smoking a load of weed and drank a lot of beer. As one does in Holland. That's what I've heard. Absolutely. Let's see, from Holland, I went back to England for a couple of years, then I went over to Brussels, worked in Brussels there, and I was doing worldwide support. And so they used to fly me all over the world, all the time. 1980, I saw my apartment in Brussels for exactly two weekends. Why I bothered to pay rent on this place for a whole year when I saw it for four days, I don't really know. I should have just packed everything up. I hope it was small. It was a big apartment. And I was the one with the big back garden. I had a massive back garden as well. Wow. Which was kind of fun. So yeah, let's see, Belgium, I also worked in Germany for some time in Frankfurt. Okay. I didn't really live there, I stayed with a friend, but I was there for such a long period of time that it sort of felt like living there. You know how that is. Right, and get to see the culture and feel it. Then let's see, in 1980, I came over to the States on a business trip, did all my business. I was meant to fly home on the Saturday. My very, very good friend, Jerry Heyhurst, was preparing for a presentation that he was meant to be giving to a user group meeting on the Monday, and he was taken seriously ill. And they had no one to do the presentation. So they said, hey Nigel, fancy saying a few more days. Okay, but I have to let immigration, I have that, you know, it's not quite that simple guys, but anyway, they got all that sorted out, spent the weekend learning the software, drove down to Connecticut, gave the presentation, everyone thought I was the world expert. And the powers that be were very happy. And they said, do you fancy coming to work in America for a couple of years? Here I am, 1981, I moved over here. I looked at your website, you're way into photography. Yes. So I have a feeling that is the underlying passion that you have. Did that happen after doing all that work? No. Tell us. Actually, when I was 14, my grandmother gave me a second hand Pentax and a couple of different lenses. And this of course was film. This was a 35 millimeter film. So I learned how to use that. And I then learned how to use a darkroom because I wanted to do my own- That's complex. Yes. I then wanted to do my own processing so I could process my own film, do my own prints, et cetera. And that was kind of interesting in working with all those wonderfully toxic chemicals, which you have noted in my bio, which also accounts for my insanity aspect. So I learned how to do that in the darkroom. And that was always a lot of fun. The hardest part, I'd really like to see people do this today, but to develop the film, when it comes in little canisters that are metal, they're that big, you have to fit it into this tank. And the way you do it is, it's got a very clever system using ball bearings that if you get the film lined into it, you just have to do this and it automatically feeds the film in. It's very clever, developing time. Wow. Trouble is, you have to do it in the pitch black. Choke, no light at all. Because that will expose the film, right? Because that will expose the film and ruin the film. So you have to learn to take the film out of the canister, which isn't easy, I will hasten to add. And you're doing it all by feel. You do the whole thing by feel, you've got to find the film, you've got to find where you've hidden the canister, you then got to try and get the film into, oh, it is so difficult, it's not even funny. It's hard to do it in light. And you're doing it in a small room, most likely. Actually, normally under the bed covers. Oh, no kidding. No kidding, because that's where it absolutely is, pitch black. Aren't there some chemicals that are involved? Not yet. Okay. Once it's in the canister, you see, it's now light proof. Okay. So then you go into the dark room and then you put in the developer, the fixer, the cleaner, all the rest of it. You then hang the film up to dry. Once the film has dried, you then get out the enlarger, stick the film in the enlarger and start looking through and seeing what you've got. And of course, you're looking at everything in a negative format. Right, yeah. And you get really used to, your brain sort of manages to do the swap over. Sort of like a dentist. Yeah, where they have to think in reverse. Correct, absolutely correct. Yeah. Learn how to do all that. Then of course I got into digital photography and all the tricks that I used back then, I still use today. Because when I do a photo shoot, I'll think, hmm, I've got a photograph here. Let's see, you know what? This would look really good if we did it in 1920s style. And then I will do a series of photographs, sort of 1920s style and then process them as 1920s taken. Wow. There is software out there that allows you to do this, including adding film grain into the final result. Wow. So yeah, there's some remarkable software out there to do all of this. So you've played around with that quite a bit. Yes. And one thing that I love that you put on your website was that you really want to experience life completely. There's something about when you go to the grave, you better be well used up. Absolutely, absolutely. Even if you're smoking a joint or if you're having a martini, be well used up. And I love that because I feel exactly the same way. I want to experience everything. Absolutely. So from there, how did that get you into doing photographs of females, males? Because, you know, and you lean a little bit into sex. So that's kind of a big thing in today's world, sort of no-no. You don't talk about that sort of stuff. So tell us how you got into that. I suppose in a way, I sort of fell into it. I did not use to do a lot of, say, a nude photography up until going fully digital. The nice thing about digital photography is you can take thousands of pictures and it's cost you nothing. Yeah, yeah. So it means you can really go out and you can explore the use of the camera and explore the use of how you want to use the camera. Whereas in the old days, of course, you put in 32 frames, take a load of photographs. Oops. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Yeah, yeah, that one didn't work. That one didn't work. That one did work. But what the hell did I do with that one? Because I had to make notes. Whereas now everything is stored in the photograph. You know exactly how you took that photograph. That's right. You know exactly what the f-stop is. You know exactly what the speed is. Were you using a flash? Were you using it? It's all stored. And the date is there. Everything. Yeah, yeah. Everything. I then discovered a site called Model Mayhem, which I'm still a member of. Model Mayhem sort of speaks for itself. If you're a model and you're not a Model Mayhem, why? You really should be. And that is a great meeting place for photographers and models. And I really got into photographing models. So is that in the Longmont area, or all of Colorado? Colorado. That you do it? I wouldn't sort of, you know, Grand Junction, too far away. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Pueblo. So you have a lot of people calling you up and setting up appointments to do that because what I notice is, I notice more of that than I did of nature and group pictures. Correct. Even though I know you do that. But I was very taken by the portraits of the women. So a lot goes through my mind is, wow, how do you get somebody to relax when you're taking a picture of them? It's a bit like sitting here at the table doing an interview. We're doing it as a fireside chat. So most guests, once they understand that, they just sit here and they, all nerves have gone within 30 seconds. Do you get to know them a little bit? So it is always, well, yeah, because there's always setup no matter what. There's always some setup. This gives you always time to talk to them. Okay. Now remember with models that have done it more than say five or six times, they're not nervous at all. Yeah. They're used to the lights. They're used to the camera. They're used to getting instructions. Right. Is the brand spanking new models that aren't used to any of that? Yeah. And I treat them with absolute kick gloves. You know, you sort of gently bring people into it. So you have to find out a little bit about their personality because you've got to bring in the background that they want, correct? You know, I would think that it's the whole setting and everything to get them to come out to bring out their personality. It's interesting you should say that because settings can be very, very different. There's an area up in Fort Collins. It's called the Environmental Center. I don't know how many acres it is, but they do not touch it. Everything is allowed to be absolutely wild. If a tree falls over, a tree fell over. So what? Let's leave it. And that's what they do there. So as trees fallen over, there's dead bushes. It looks horrible. But guess what? You stand a really pretty looking model in those sort of situations and it highlights what you're doing because the background is horrible. Well, I say horrible, but it's not. And you're more focused on them anyway. I'm more focused on them anyway. So it just gives an interesting contrast between a beautiful looking person and a really badly looking background. So you bring in the combination of nature and the model. I try to. So that's your specialty. That's my specialty. I mean, one of the things I love doing is photographing here in town at Golden Ponds. Oh yeah, uh-huh. It's such a beautiful area. You've got the three ponds to play with. You've got the Rockies as a backdrop and an unobstructed view all the way to the Rockies, which is just gorgeous. True. So you can play around with that and there are also little areas there where you can get down to the stream. So you've got everything you need all in one place, which is really fun. And I much prefer photographing outdoors than indoors, but indoors also works. Yeah. So you've got a couple of places for that as well. Yes. Yeah, that's cool. So you didn't really say we jumped around. Yes. We did go from. Well, that's your fault, not mine. I know, I know because I was eager to get into hearing about your portraits and that sort of stuff, the heck with how you got there. But we'll let you give our viewers a little bit of taste on how you did end up in Longmont and end up getting into the passion of photography. Well, as I said, the passion for photography started a lot, lot earlier when I was 14. Yeah. Because that really got me hooked. Yeah. Into the photographic aspects. And you see so much more when you're a photographer. Yes. I don't know how the mind works, but you know, somehow if I see something, I go, oh, that's really good, click. But you've only got to move just a few inches and it doesn't look as good. And it's something that goes on within a photographer's brain. I love using angles. I love going high, love going low. That's also important in portrait photography. You shouldn't all be. Some people have that and some people don't. That's correct. You can see the same photograph by two different people and get a totally different feel. Totally different feel for me. Absolutely, absolutely. So yeah, it's kind of interesting. But how did I get to Longmont? Yeah, why don't we tell the viewers how you got to Longmont? Oh my goodness. Well, it's a long complicated story, which I will now shorten. Okay. So we got up to 1981 when I moved over here to America. I was working for a company called Computer Vision. Again, within obviously the computer aided design aspects of things on the electronic side, which was my specialty. I was feeling a bit iffy about where the company was going because at the time that's when, you know, personal workstations were first coming out and they were still trapped using a central processor and remote terminals. Okay. And I thought they were headed in the wrong direction. So I left them, I joined Intergraph down in Huntsville, Alabama. I went down to Huntsville, lived there for three years. Different culture. Only slightly. No, Huntsville actually is quite a nice place to live, to be honest. It's a very democratic area. It's the only real democratic area in the whole of Alabama and probably Tennessee as well because when you look at how it's surrounded, but it's a great place to live. Of course, that's where NASA has their space museum, one of the biggest space museum. Everyone thinks it's just down at Kennedy. Nope, nope, the biggest one is actually in Huntsville. Oh, interesting. Have you heard of Space Camp? No. Oh, that's something that NASA, I don't know whether they still do it or not, but NASA does Space Camp and you'd see all these kids wearing their NASA, you know, uniforms and all the rest of it. Feeling like an astronaut, right? Yeah, it's just, and they used to work with the kids and give them an idea of what it was like. Oh, wow. Absolutely brilliant. I bet that would be fun and then probably they would get to go into a capsule to live there. Actually, I've been in a capsule. Have you? Oh yeah, because they allow you to climb in and out of these capsules and the Mercury capsules, which were the very, very first ones they used back in the 60s. Okay. I had trouble getting in just on my own. Without a space suit and you look at it and there's two seats in there and you go, how the heck did they, they must have used so much Vaseline, it wasn't funny. You better not have claustrophobia, right? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And the funny thing is when you, they also had a, when we were there, they had an exhibit exhibits from Russia. That's when we were both talking to each other. Yeah. They had a load of exhibits from Russia and it's interesting because you got into the Mercury capsule and it's just surrounded by instrumentation and knobs and switches and everything. You get into the Russian equivalent and it's sort of like on-off switch and that's it. Totally different, totally different philosophy. The Russian capsules totally controlled from Earth. The Cosmonaut. So let's go from there and did you have other steps to get to Longman? I know from Huntsville, fortunately the company I work with, they bought a company out here, they bought a company in Boca Raton and I was working very closely with the company that we bought and they said, well, they want to move to Colorado for some reason, they don't want to live here in Alabama. Wonder why. And they said, do you want to move to Colorado? And in 1980, moved to Colorado. Wow. That's what brought me here. And there we have it. What a fascinating journey. That you've had Nigel. Yeah, and fortunately it's not quite finished yet. No. I do check the abits every morning to make sure I haven't died overnight. But other than that, you know, things are going well. Why would your friends over in England check that too? Oh, I'm sure they do. Though there's probably a couple of over there going, oh God, he's still alive. Life is to be lived to the fullest. It really is. It is. Have no regrets, right? I have regrets, but not too many. That's good. And I've only got a couple of if-on-is as well. So, you know, I've got no problem. I've lived a life that, you know, not many people have had the fortune to live, that I have lived, been around the whole world a couple of times. That's amazing. And I did it before frequent flyer miles. Bastards! Dang! Bastards! What did you ever lose out? Did I ever? Well, Nigel, thank you so much for sharing your story. And I hope that people can listen to this and realize, go ahead and take risks. What do you have to lose? Thank you, Nigel, really appreciate it. You're very, very welcome. Thank you so much for doing this. What fun. And it was a lot of fun working with you on this. And I hope that I've given you the taste for doing interviews, because I think your idea of interviewing different establishments downtown is a very, very good idea. And you're obviously well attuned to do it. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. So don't put that on the back burner. Bring it to the front burner again. So long as you will be sitting in the interview seat. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the rational alchemy interview with Nigel today. I'd love it if you would hit the subscribe button right here below me, right here. Come back and visit us again. Thank you for visiting.