Until September 1

Wollongong City Gallery

A passionate photographer for more than 30 years, John Lascelles felt guilty when he started to devote more of his time to a newer hobby.

"Cycling is a real passion, something that gives me a lot of pleasure and it actually took over my life for quite a while to the point where I wasn't actually doing much photography and I started feeling quite guilty about it," he says.

"Then I had the brainwave of marrying the two passions, a photographic project that relates to my cycling, and I really got on a roll then."

Roads I Have Ridden is the end result of that brainwave, an exhibition that showcases some of the places Lascelles has seen and travelled to during his cycling trips over the past three years.

All the images were developed by Lascelles in his darkroom.

While he has a digital camera for casual snaps, he prefers the old technology for high-end, artistic work, particularly when creating "dramatic" black and white snaps.

The photographs are a combination of images from the short rides around his Southern Highlands home he does every second day, and from the week-long, often solo cycling trips he embarks on every two months or so, often around the Central West area.

He uses a large format camera and tripod to take his shots, so strapping them to the bike isn't practical. Instead, he finds inspiration on his journeys, mentally cataloguing places he thinks will make a good photograph and returns to the spot with an equipment-laden car a few days later.

Several things can catch his eye while cycling, whether it's the light on a particular road, or an unusual feature in the landscape, but sometimes he is driven to revisit a certain area because of the good memories he has of it.

"I might have had a good cycling trip, particularly enjoyed a section of country and been inspired by it, so that can motivate me to go back and photograph it also," he says.

But just because something looks good from his bike seat doesn't mean it will work out in a photograph.

"Quite often I go back to photograph and it looks different and what I thought might make a good photograph doesn't work.

The composition might be wrong, or the light, or the scale of something, so I'll end up photographing something else, but it gets me back to the original spot," he says.

And sometimes, recreating the vantage point from his bike with a camera just isn't practical.

"It's just too dangerous to stand on the road with the large camera. Something that looks good riding along on the bike can be impossible when I go to do it, and often it's just not safe.

"It's always surprising. It's never as you expect it to be.

"You have an idea in your head of what's going to work, but it's completely different when you come to do it."