Rod McNicol

Okay yeah, like two years ago two years ago, three years ago, now I won the National Photographic Portrait Prize with you, with my portrait of Jack Charles. Jack I've known for quite a long time. We knew other initially as a fellow actors at the Prime Factory and I photographed him at different times over the last 20 odd years.

Jack is an actor, but I'm not going to get Jack to stand in front of me and perform. I really want to have this quiet look at the human being I have in front of me. Aisle eight in Safeway supermarket, that's where I got the phone call and whoever it was - let's say it was Jo - said "are you coming up for the opening?" and I thought 'no I'm not really thinking of coming up for the opening', and Jo said "well you should" and I thought 'I'm gonna let you off the hook'. "Why should I come up?" and she said I'd won the prize. So that made for a very different trip to the supermarket.

Look winning a prize like that is pretty monumental. It came at a really fortuitous time for me. I could then take a bit of space in my life and move towards having what was to be a major survey show of my work that was to come at Monash Gallery of Art, part of which was picked up by the National Portrait Gallery.

I think it's really important that we do have things like the National Photographic Portrait Prize because if we don't have examples like that we're going to get swamped a little bit by sea of images that leave us mildly interested for a few seconds and then they get swamped by the next lot coming through and nothing is going to have much resonance. So I think it's important that we still have some pursuit of excellence in image making and the National Photographic Portrait Prize provides a venue for people who are who are seeking to be passionate about their use of particular media.