Rod Macmillan is a committed photographer and traveller. He was brought up on a diet of National Geographic magazines and, at the age of 13, applied unsuccessfully for a job as a staff photographer with the US-based organization. Despite this predictable setback he continued to dream of meeting people in faraway places. At seventeen he ventured into Africa alone, and was enthralled by the sights and sounds of unfamiliar cultures. He resolved, quite consciously, to explore the planet.
Over the years he has photographed the world's famous sites, finest landscapes, most prolific and exotic wildlife, as well as extreme environments, traditional cultures and colourful tribal people. He has driven across Tibet and over the Himalayas, been to Camp 1 at 20,000 feet on Mount Everest, crossed the Andes by road, driven through deserts, travelled on many of the world's major rivers (including the Amazon, Yangtze, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Nile, Parana and Sepik), explored rainforests, flown in light aircraft, helicopters and hot-air balloons over Africa, Asia and South America, and been to Antarctica, Tierra del Fuego, the Galapagos Islands, Papua New Guinea, the South Pacific, Borneo and many other places off the beaten track.
He has also travelled extensively in the more accessible European, North American and Australasian regions. He has been involved in all sorts of situations - good and not so good! He came close to death in the Himalayas, met face-to-face with a wild Bengal tiger in the Terai region of Nepal, was charged by a rhino in Africa, has had encounters with snakes in Amazonia, and experienced the roughest seas in the world en route to Antarctica. He continues to extend his travel experience and in recent years has worked in Croatia, Switzerland, Tuscany, Provence, Indonesia, and Yellowstone National Park and various canyons in the USA.
He was an electronics engineer, technical writer, editor and webmaster for many years, and a Member of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (MISTC) until his retirement. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS), and became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (FRPS) in March 1999. His images appear in Photography and Imaging Yearbook 2001 (ISBN 0 86343 378 2, Fountain Press), and a ten-page portfolio of his work was published in the Photography and Imaging Yearbook 2002 (ISBN 0 86343 314 6, Fountain Press). He has also published articles and images in various travel and photographic magazines - including a front cover for Geographical. Other work has appeared in Practical Photography, Amateur Photographer, The Wold of Travel, Wanderlust, and the RPS Journal. His first book Photographing People (ISBN 1 86108 313 0, Photographer's Institute Press - GMC) was published in February 2005. He has now has been involved in photography for over fifty years, and has a number of exhibitions to his credit.