When it comes to gaming photography, or as he likes to call it, "videogame tourism", British gaming journalist Duncan Harris has no peer. As part of a long career contributing to websites such as Rock, Paper, Shotgun and working as the gaming editor for Edge Magazine, Harris is also the force behind the Dead End Thrills website, a treasure trove of some of the prettiest tributes to gaming you'll find anywhere on the internet.

His work has been referenced endlessly by fans and major gaming blogs and his efforts have inspired an entire Tumblr community to follow in his footsteps to try and show games in a different light. Intrigued by the quality of his work and the level of effort put in, I wondered what inspired Harris in the first place.

"Taking screenshots was a big part of the job when I first started writing about games," he said in an interview over email. "There was a lot more integrity when it came to showing readers the game that was actually being reviewed, rather than some publisher bullshots."

"I was frustrated by all the clutter of games and how obtrusive they were, but wasn't really aware of this until a review copy of Rebellion's Rogue Trooper just happened to include all the developer functions: the free camera, timescale control, HUD removal... that was an eye-opener."

Like many of the British journalists, Harris has been around for a while; when I asked him about his treasured memories, he instantly harked back to the Amiga era. "I don't think this is entirely nostalgia... being a computer gamer back then meant constantly trying to figure out what the **** a game was about, and what you were supposed to do in it."

"Developers were brought up on things that weren't games: grander and smarter things, or sometimes more intimate and human things," he noted. It's that perspective that, Harris notes, is lacking a little among critics and writers. Take the film industry, for instance. It's been around far longer, but these days pales in comparison to the scope and size of video games. But that size hasn't translated into a similar growth among the journalists and contributors covering the medium.

"The reason movie criticism is often superior to games writing - not necessarily less corrupt or naive, but just more edifying to read - is because it's easier for movie critics to watch a lot of movies, past and present, and understand their role in the universe," Harris said. He added that many connections - a lack of perspective, really - go unnoticed or unappreciated by the current gaming media polity, and a penchant for frivolous click-bait doesn't help.

His honest perspective is refreshing; it's something that comes through in the sheer majority of his work for Dead End Thrills. I asked Harris if he had any formal training in photography, considering the length of time required perfecting every single detail - without extensive work in Photoshop, it must be added. But photography, I found, isn't a term that Harris is comfortable adopting.

"Photography is a term I try to avoid as much as possible. Many traditional photographers are fiercely territorial and, to be honest, I can often understand why," he explained. "The problem is that gaming is a very insular culture... gamers want games to be a surrogate for all the things they don't find time to experience, and what you get is this quite logical resentment from people who really appreciate those mediums."

The how's and why's of the actual capturing are included in each screenshot, with the specific resolutions, tools and tweaks included, although Harris doesn't post guides or do walkthroughs for fellow users. Nevertheless, he does derive a substantial amount of enjoyment from the process, which often shines a new light on games often ignored or derided by the masses.

But was it possible, I asked, to enjoy a game that would be traditionally considered "bad" as a result? "Hell yeah," Harris said. "It's why I have a little smirk on my face whenever I read some comment about screen-shotting as a hobby being a pointless pursuit. I'm doing - trying to do - Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron at the moment. I haven't even reached the Decepticon campaign yet but my Steam profile says something like 16 hours played, and in that time I've scrutinised every surface of that game."

"I've seen every environment from every angle. Every animation, particle effect, and a lot of the little tricks the developer used to pull off certain scenes. And at the end of it, rather than some genuinely pointless achievements or multiplayer scores, I'll have this visual document of the game that helps people appreciate the work that went into it."

After all this time, Harris hasn't lost any of his enthusiasm for the monotony of it all. Constantly tweaking the shot, ensuring the lighting is correct, preventing any glitches, adjusting the in-game weather, camera angles, field of view, depth of field, motion blur, antialiasing and every other setting imaginable: this is just some of the work required behind the beauty he brings to our screens.

It's a pleasure to chat with someone who truly appreciates the work that developers do. It's quite easy to gloss over the amount of effort a team or company puts into a game, mocking the mechanics, panning the story and lambasting the linearity of it all. Harris doesn't - he enjoys games for what they truly are and shows them in their best light to the world.

It's an attitude the industry could use more of.

Alex Walker is the regular gaming columnist for ABC Tech + Games. You can follow him on Twitter at @thedippaeffect.