Roger McAlpine

Roger McAlpine was more or less born with a camera in hand. As a young man he was given a Brownie box camera which ignited in him the desire to go out and photograph the world around him. Throughout his teenage years he was often seen with a camera around his neck and he loved to photograph scenes that were not the average holiday snapshot. At that time, photography was with film and that meant waiting for the finished result to be processed so he always took several shots of the same picture, experimenting with the exposure and F-stop settings to see how it affected the image. Many many slides were taken when he was a teenager and money was carefully saved up for the best camera he could afford. He never thought of himself as a particularly good photographer, always finding something in his work that he felt could be improved, but this just meant that he gave his all to his art and throughout his adult life, continued to photograph many aspects of subject matter, always working toward the best image he could produce. When, rarely for him, he got an image that he personally felt was a winning photo his line of “Perfect is good enough” could be heard as he looked at the finished piece. His sudden and very unexpected death in 2023 at the age of 77 has left a large hole in our local art world, but the works he has produced during his life will be treasured.

A long-time SoBARTS member; his photography won awards in our juried shows. He had his first solo show in the SoBarts’ Tiny Gallery.