When I was starting out as a commercial photographer, I became burdened with the autodidact’s typical self-consciousness about a lack of formal technical training, but I did my best to not let it adversely affect my self-confidence, and just through trial and error I made progress. At that time it was thrilling to assemble and work together with a team, and this was a crucial part in my learning process as a photographer.
Having worked for numerous fashion clients, a couple of years ago I made the decision to leave the commercial world and be a fine art photographer. It’s exciting to create a premeditated image - sometimes I work with a team to achieve them, but often I am able to create them alone.
I’ve always been interested in portraits, landscapes and architecture. I suppose my more abstracted works have evolved from realistic representations, but the subjects haven’t changed so much as the approach and style.
It feels very fortunate that I started out before the rise of digital imaging. Polaroids would make us all very exited and sharing a darkroom to develop film was a highly rewarding experience and there were lots of fun times.
It remains a huge pleasure to watch an image develop, agonizing over whether it belongs in my body of work.
I have used digital cameras for some product and architectural photography, but I always kept on shooting with analogue for clients who appreciated it, as well as for my private work.