Darryn Lyons - Mr Paparazzi

THE NEWS OF THE WORLD and the cut and thrust of Londons media were in every aspect a long way removed from my upbringing in provincial Victoria. But that upbringing made me the way I am and sharpened my natural instincts to make bold moves and to achieve.

I had an idyllic childhood in Geelong, a middle-class , country town an hour out of Melbourne. Everyone knows everyone elses business and if they dont, they make it up. Its still a funny mix of being a very friendly, safe place to bring up a family and the Wild West. The P-plate burnouts still happen down Moorabool Street on a Saturday night. The radio station is still playing the same music it did twenty years ago April Sun in Cuba by Dragon. But thats what Geelong people like and thats what I love about Geelong. As they say, if it aint broke dont fix it. Everyone in town seems to go off to work at Ford, Alcoa or Shell or becomes a plumber or electrician. I broke the mould. Not only did I break the mould at school but also at home. My family were quite strict Baptists its odd because theres nothing strict about me.

School was the start of my entrepreneurial activities. At around the age of nine, I wrote to the great Australian cricketer Dennis Lillee and asked him for five autographs, telling him to write in one of them: Good luck in your cricket, Darryn. I intended to sell the others for 20 cents a time. Lillee was my idol. I was successful in my request, and was delighted when he even spelt my name right. I copied his signature and to this day mine is very similar to his.

Competition and ambition were a big part of my character. In my bedroom was a picture of a Lamborghini Countach. I dreamed of that car, just because it was different the doors opened upwards. My friends remember me telling them that I would have that car one day, and in fact the Lamborghini that I ended up buying from Rod Stewart was the same colour as the one on my bedroom wall. My main mates from school were Mario Gregorio (Mars), Shayne Van Dreumel (Vanny or Drumes), and David Lewis (Lewy). During our high school years we stuck together like glue.

Undoubtedly the biggest influence on me outside the family unit was Mal Donnelly, my art and photography teacher at East Tech Secondary. I come from a family of architects, builders and painters, but when I discovered photography I was gripped by a massive passion for it. The school had been given the most incredible facilities by the state government when I got my first job at the Geelong Advertiser the paper didnt have the facilities that the school did!

I owe Mal my career because he encouraged my love of photography. He was a huge influence compassionate, caring and with an intuitive understanding of how a kids brain operates. He saw I had the right attitude, and the fortitude to be a good photographer, and he saw the amount of work I was willing to do. Mal also taught adults in the evening on a paying course, which ensured that he had good equipment for the kids to use. He was also able to duplicate his adult lesson plans for the brightest kids in the day class.

I wouldnt call my discovery of photography luck; I really think it was fate. I was never going to do anything else didnt even have to think about doing anything else. I loved the creative side and always felt that photography was art. My interest started with a pinhole camera. We built them at school, took them home and took one picture, and then came back to school and developed it. It was fascinating. I found I had a knack for composition, and I went to extraordinary lengths to do something different. I would go to my grandmas place and put hessian or Vaseline over the lens to get different effects while taking hundreds of shots of her dog, Midge. When I discovered Cokin lens filters, I was in my element. My poor sister Vikki spent several hours posing for me in the style of the Mona Lisa.