About

To my mind, the only part of a photographic website of any interest is the bit that contains the images.  After all, if you wanted to spend your morning looking at words, you would be better off reading a book, preferably written by someone who knows how to write.  But here’s the thing; I’ve got a area on my website called “About,” so here’s some stuff about me.

I’ve changed.  Well, my photographic business has anyway.  Millions of years ago, in 1974, I started my photographic career in a large purpose built studio in north London, as a studio assistant.  Well, it would be more accurate to say that I was a young chap who said enough of the ‘right’ things, during an interview, to be accepted into a company, to be taught how to be a studio assistant.  I knew nothing.  Well, alright, I knew a bit.  A tiny bit.  I could process a roll of film … badly.  And I could make a bad print.  Charmingly, I arrived at the interview with some photographs my father and I had made in the darkroom which he and his father had constructed in the roof of my parents’ house.  I even had my humble Zenith ‘B’ camera around my neck, thinking it might impress somebody.  But, notwithstanding all of that, they gave me the job.  It was unlikely that the ignorance of youth would have been a new thing to them, and so my apprenticeship was in the bag.

Jumping forward (before you completely lose the will to live), I rose through the ranks over the years and finally left the studio as a senior advertising photographer.  I had learned a lot.  I had been on many exotic location trips and I had had many interesting and stimulating experiences, but I had to leave.  You see, if a client specifically asked for me to do his work, he was being charged a daily rate  by the company which took me a month and a half to earn on the salary they were giving me.  I know it was their business, not mine, and their expenses must have been huge, but the dichotomy was just too much for me.

Jumping forward again, and leaving out the excessively boring bit after I left the studio, which didn’t involve photography (financial services … uuuugh!), my wife told me that if I didn’t get back into photography soon, I would probably shrivel up and die, so I did.  Get back into photography, that is, not die.

Self employed now … oooer … frightening.  Running a business.  Well, being self reliant anyway.  Long story short.  This involved, in the main, making corporate portraits of key personnel in large City organisations.  Granted, that wasn’t the whole story.  For example, photographing a tank driving off an Antonov AN-225 transport aeroplane at Frankfurt airport, and doing catalogues for trucking companies, and many other things that floated my way, did vary the subject matter over the years, but the City occupied most of my time.  However, there was a problem with the City too.

You see, I am a two sided coin.  I am very interested in how things work.  I like to make things and I like to fix things.  One side of the coin is the technical side.  It’s rather surprising how many professional photographers appear to only have a very thin veneer of technical knowledge.  Just enough to make their living.  Just enough to get by.  Technically, photography is a massive subject.  Hugely stimulating.  From the middle of the 19th century to today.  You couldn’t possibly get bored with all that lot!

And then there’s the other side of the coin.  The art side.  That’s why it is so interesting for me.  It is an ideal blend.  There are dilemmas and obstacles relentlessly coming from all directions, when turning a visualisation into a finished image.  Both technical and artistic.  And that’s a good thing.  But it means a lot of work.  That’s fine too, unless your client isn’t bothered, and most aren’t.  So long as he can recognise the face in the picture or can see that it’s a truck, he’s happy.  That is really demoralising.

You see, the majority of the corporate portraits you will see on companies’ websites are, shall we say, a little under par.  But they are not necessarily recognised as such by the companies in question.  My wife, over the years, has repeatedly told me that I am not pragmatic enough.  “Just do enough, they probably won’t notice.”  The thing is she was absolutely right, but I could’t do only just enough.  It just didn’t feel right.  Actually, I am hardly ever pragmatic, which is why I’m changing my business model.  I have always done far more work than I was ever paid for.  My conscience was clear though, but that is no longer enough.  So I’ve stopped chasing corporate commissions.  Don’t get me wrong, I won’t turn work away, but I won’t chase people who don’t want to be chased..

My efforts are now directed towards finding clients who understand what they’re looking at and appreciate it enough to want it on their walls.  They could be corporate clients but they’re much more likely to be private individuals.

So, now this is my work.  I am now making images which simply exist because of what they are.    They are there because I visualised them for their own sake.  They are not made for any purpose other than their own purity and are entirely without motive.  There is now a freshness to my work due to its lack of agenda.  There is now no reason for a client to buy an image other than the fact that having it hanging on their wall pushes a personal button in their psyche.  You don’t have to know why you like Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.  It is enough that Beethoven knew.