Lifestyle magazines such as Vogue Entertaining and Gourmet Traveller began to feature big colour spreads on food and cooking, design and renovation. They employed the best photographers in the country to create the images they sought – rich, luscious pictures, often as much art as they were commercial. They were a far cry from black-and-white lithographic reproductions of sliced pineapple tins and three-colour prints of ice-cream.

John Hay was present at the birth of the rise of food photography in Australia. Indeed, he helped midwife it, working as an editorial photographer of choice for both of the magazines above. But his true love was the landscapes he inhabited on his travels, and his enduring pleasure is the 20 years he spent imparting his knowledge to students.

The son of a orphaned mother who escaped being sent to a home by a brave and caring uncle and a schoolteacher father posted around Gippsland, John Hay was born in the tiny NSW border town of Delegate in 1949.

Kicked out of Moorabbin Technical College at 15 in the early 1960s – ‘for having long hair’ – he found a love of art at Caulfield Tech before working in the print industry and discovering the joy of photo developing. He enrolled at RMIT for two years in 1968, and went back in 1974 to build a folio of work.

Hay worked in the studio of leading photographer John Street, whom he credits with transforming advertising photography in Australia. He later became his assistant. 

“It was a golden opportunity to work at the highest level,” says Hay. “But it was 80-hour weeks. I worked on Christmas Day.”

Hay moved from advertising to freelancing with magazines like Home Beautiful, and found himself in demand. He met the editor of Vogue magazine, and having learnt much about food photography from Street, began work on Vogue Entertaining from 1978.

“I did this job in Daylesford, and I shot three days’ work in one day, and Vogue really loved what happened,” says Hay. “So that got me into the Vogue stable and then into Vogue Living.” 

Shooting with medium-format Bronicas and Hasselblad cameras, Hay spent 20 years crafting images for magazines, including for Gourmet Traveller, working with the legendary editor Carolyn Lockhart, who brought him to the magazine after she left Vogue.

“In those days photographers travelled with journalists,” says Hay. “You would fly business class or first class because the airline would sponsor your flight. You were treated like a king; people respected you for the work you did.  You think, ‘is this really happening to me?’ It was like being a rock star.” 

Among the places Hay worked were the Caribbean, Japan, Thailand, the US, India, Italy, Fiji, China, and extensively in Australia.

“I did a cookbook in New Orleans; I travelled to Turtle Island in Fiji. You were opened up to all these things, which for a kid for Delegate – well, you had to pinch yourself. I ate in a restaurant in Tokyo where the steak was $95 US each.”

But Hay was always a realist.

“I gave it away. I knew from my experiences with John Street that the older you got, the less likely you were to get work. It’s a youth-oriented business. By the time you’re 50 you’ve got to have an alternative,” he says.

John Hay returned to his alma mater, RMIT. He gained degrees in teaching and turned to the next and most rewarding phase of his life, educating upcoming photographers.

“But it’s a tough game now. Digital has changed the industry. When I was at RMIT there were only 24 photography students, and 12 of those were doing science photography. And only two graduated. Now you have 100 graduates.”

He says the nature of photography comes back to two essentials: hard work and ability.

“People who are good photographers have a natural ability to see and understand the light and how to capture it,” he says.