FAMILIAR scenes seem slightly unfamiliar in a fascinating new exhibition by award-winning Dorset photographer Dave Hacker.

Through the Viewfinder, which opens October 18 at Harris Interiors, Lower Parkstone until November 17, is the result of Dave's rediscovery of old, mechanical cameras after working with digital equipment as a commercial photographer.

"My Through the Viewfinder photography has evolved through boredom of the modern digital camera viewfinder," he says.

"I can find them uninspiring, while the old film cameras have some magic when you look through them that the modern have lost. Here, where I combine digital and film cameras, I try to put back in what I feel has been lost."

The exhibition features a host of well-known Dorset landscapes including Durdle Door, Old Harry Rocks and Kimmeridge Bay.

"I have kept to photographing the popular places 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 exhibition echoes the look of the very earliest experiments in photography such as the daguerrotypes of the 1830s in which a negative image is exposed onto a silver polished reflective surface to make it appear positive. It was the first process that was fast enough to allow for commercial portrait photography.

"I love the mechanics of cameras, the noise and feel of the shutter capturing the moment and the permanence of the images they produce," says dave.

"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."

Bournemouth-based Dave won the Hammond-Whitely Journalist Photographer of the Year Award from the National Union of Journalists in 2004 and his work has been regularly published in photography magazines. His Metropolis Reversed series, a series of London landmarks some of which are featured in Through the Viewfinder, was recently showcased in London's Eyestorm Gallery next to Tate Modern.

"The day I loaded my camera with slide film was the turning point in my life-long love affair with photography," he explains.

"My dream was to reach the level of quality I'd seen in the vibrant, colour-rich images adorning the lages of magazines like National Geographic. Almost two decades on I've used a multitude of cameras, lenses, film stock and digital equipment to find my voice."