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Dave Hacker, a Bournemouth-based photographer, has been working on his ‘Through the Viewfinder’ project in conjunction with the Harris Interiors Gallery, since early 2006. After many years as a successful commercial photographer using modern digital equipment, he picked up an old film camera and began taking shots of familiar Dorset landmarks – Durdle Door, Kimmeridge Bay, Old Harry Rocks.

'I have kept to photographing the popular places,' says Hacker, 'to try and rediscover their magic again as if it's the first time you have seen them. You are also seeing the photographer's view of them, for they are in reverse, as when you look down through the viewfinder. They also have my unique fingerprint stamp on them - of the dust and marks that have formed on the ground glass screen.'

The resulting sepia-toned, grainy quality of the Dorset series has been compared to the romanticism of nineteenth century Daguerreotypes. ‘I love the mechanics of cameras and although I was there at the start of the digital change, I still have strong connections with old cameras; the noise and feel of the shutter capturing the moment and the permanence of the image they produce...I feel the landscape is there to be admired for as long as possible and I try to transfer that three-dimensional depth into the image, there is nothing better than staring into a print until you feel you are there’.

A second series concentrating on familiar London landmarks, titled ‘Metropolis Reversed’, features images of Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, the Millennium Bridge and uses the same technique. This series has recently been accepted by London’s prestigious Eyestorm gallery and Dave is also newly represented by The Photographers Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.