Bio

A Short Story on my journey so far…

I started my journey in photography after picking up a simple Kodak retina S1 from a car boot sale, it had no light meter, no rangefinder, no changeable lenses, despite all of those things I still loved that camera and I still have it today sitting on my bedside table as a reminder of where I had come from. I feel as though that camera advanced my knowledge on photography far greater say than if I had picked up a simple point and shoot, I had to learn exposure, composition, lighting and many more things straight away which in I think pushed my progression much faster compared to if I was using a fully automatic camera which most would begin with.

After that, I entered the gear hoarder phase where I would simply buy as many things photography related as my paycheck would allow, during that time I acquired well over twenty different camera’s. I thought that at the time buying more and more cameras somehow made me a better photographer, obviously, that was not the case as I noticed no change in the quality of my photographs. It was after I started watching a film a photography related YouTube channel called Negative Feedback that I realised I had been doing it all wrong, I needed to use less equipment and take fewer photographs which in turn would change my entire style of doing things. The photographer which I feel like I received the most inspiration from would be George Muncey, his minimalist contemporary style really spoke to me and in turn inspired me to take photographs using the same compositional methods as him which dramatically changed my view of photography forever, I actually started to like the photographs I took and started to receive positive feedback from the people around me.

After that I it just feels like a blur, I started to get better at my craft and in turn started to think more about what I was doing contextually as well as technically, I read artists books on their methods of working and taking notes of them as well as watching as many videos as I could to provide me with inspiration for my projects. My first projects I remember just being about the photographs, no real context behind the images at all just an emotion or a mood, I feel as though this way of thinking did hold me back for a little while but at the same time it allowed me to just focus on being creative visually and not get distracted with the finer details that come with art. I had my first commissioned job when I was studying music at the time where an artist wanted some promotional photographs for their new album coming out, I could hardly believe it but from it I learned how to deal with clients and how to create what they are asking for and not just do my own thing.

From then on I became a photographic student at the City Of Westminster college where I learned all of the thing that I could not teach myself like, darkroom printing, ways of designing how you would show your work to other people, using digital editing more than I had ever done before and finally teaching me in the area that I had the most weakness with which is thinking about context and meaning when taking photographs.

And here I am today, still progressing, still learning still shooting almost every day.