\u201cIt makes me feel wonderful, going back and having a look at photos of me in particular, when I was a little boy,\u201d he says, breaking into song while cataloguing folders of loose ends such as \u201cChristmas, Dubbo, 1999,\u201d the trailblazing University of New England chancellor Pat O\u2019Shane at a graduation ceremony, birthday parties and son Tim\u2019s athletics trophies.<\/p>\n
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He flicks through a copy of his biography, by friend and retired journalist Tim Dobbyn, and pauses on a photo of his cousins wagging school in 1966, calling it his favourite.<\/p>\n
He has not stopped taking photographs since falling in love with the smell of the chemicals and magic of watching an image take shape in a dark room, although the Nikon on the desk in front of him is digital.<\/p>\n
Bishop has a knack for being in the right place and an easy rapport with people, but says it\u2019s important to \u201ckeep your thoughts to yourself\u201d and mimes swerving left and right.<\/p>\n
Bishop won an award for a front-page Herald photograph capturing a boy\u2019s dash to hospital. He had his own recently, when the Royal Flying Doctor Service took him to Dubbo, where he was \u201cwobbly\u201d, then to Sydney where he developed blood poisoning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings weren\u2019t going real good. I didn\u2019t know where I was. If it wasn\u2019t for my daughter Rosemary … she got up someone and chased them up. I was on a drip and I got poisoned. Septicemia. Not many come back after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibition at the State Library of NSW opens to the public on Saturday. Tim Dobbyn\u2019s biography of Bishop, Black, White + Colour (Ginninderra Press), is out now.<\/p>\n