Simon Arron

The scent of darkroom chemicals has been with me since childhood, largely because my photographer father did much of his processing in our basement. He was – and remains – a particularly useful dad, because his hand-me-down Pentax Spotmatics were a perfect complement to my infatuation with motor racing… In 1976 I began taking motorsport pictures and two years later entered a Pentax competition that was linked to its sponsorship of a BMW in the British Saloon Car Championship. First prize was a BMW 316, but I was one of six runners-up and walked away with a K1000 and several lenses. More than 20 years later my parents let a painful secret slip: I had originally been chosen as the winner, but Pentax didn’t want the main prize to go to somebody without a driving licence. I was 17 at the time and failed my test about two weeks before the presentation, having crossed my hands on the steering wheel at a tricky right turn in Sale town centre. My mum duly informed Pentax of as much, so the car went elsewhere and I was none the wiser. And besides, I was much safer with a K1000 than I was with 90bhp. That camera became a constant companion. In 1982 I began working professionally as a motorsport journalist and continued to take pictures wherever I went, but trying to do both things felt increasingly like a compromise and eventually I took a conscious decision to put my camera down. For the next 25 years I travelled all over the world and recorded almost nothing… I began to realise the scale of this missed opportunity when I started to digitise some bygone snaps – and that triggered a visit to a local camera shop. When I asked about the best combination of quality and value in a modern DSLR, the response was immediate: Pentax. Five minutes later I walked out with some reassuringly familiar new toys. Words are my trade, photographs my passion.