My photography history

My introduction to photography was as a child. I had a small Instamatic 110 with the chocolate block flashes. It was great fun. The pop of the bulb as it exploded in its little sealed cube signalled the start of a process that would end weeks later when I got back the developed film. The photos didn’t matter. The act of making a photo was what captured my attention.

Life through photography continued like this until I got a job in a pawnbroker’s where I bought my first SLR. A Praktica BC3 35mm camera. I still had no technical knowledge, just an eye for an image and enthusiasm. 

For a few years this suited me perfectly. Then digital photography started to emerge. I got myself a second hand Konica digital compact camera and started to try to learn to be a photographer. This is when I became hooked on photography. I outgrew this camera within a year and upgraded to a Canon 350D and started a personal project. 356 self portraits. One a day for a year. I learned so much from this experience. It helped me develop my creative thinking alongside my technical abilities.

When I moved to Edinburgh I became involved with the Beltane Fire Society and this catapulted my skills and experience as a photographer. Learning how to document a cultural event, really understand the purpose and ethos of the community and tell its story and then deliver images for that community as well as news channels was the final piece of the puzzle and from that my career as a photographer began. 

My career up to now

It would be fair to describe my career path up to now like a meandering river. With purpose but without haste.

I started my first business when I was 15. I designed and printed material for other small businesses. It was a success in as much as I had one client and the business plan was as basic as they come, I had the only printer in the area. I did this for a few months but it was clear that I needed a better idea. It would be many years before I returned to self-employment.

After finishing school I started my first job as a pawn-broker. This was a very interesting job and I got to meet lots of people from all walks of life. It kept my curiosity satisfied as it was just such a random job. Each day had the potential to be incredible. Either incredibly exciting or incredibly boring, but always incredible. After a couple of years, I left the UK to live in the Republic of Ireland. I started a job in IT and for the next 10 years worked as a kind of IT odd job guy, writing code, administering servers, planning and executing large international projects and providing front line support for a tech company. After 10 years I got the feeling that things needed to change. I was bored. I wasn’t feeling fulfilled as a creative person. I quit, sold all my possessions and moved to Paris. There was no plan, just the prospect of an adventure.

I got a job as an English teacher and for a year I lived a bohemian lifestyle in Paris, teaching by day and roaming the streets at night with a camera, documenting everything I experienced. Photography was beginning to be the biggest part of my life.

After leaving Paris I moved to Edinburgh and started work in a University. I’d regressed back to an IT role. It was fun but not fulfilling. In the university, I grew my skills and expanded into graphic design, marketing and communications. I started to learn about branding, voice, style guides and social media marketing. It was like IT but with an interesting creative twist. Eventually, I’d come to run a team of creatives supporting an audience of 15,000+ people from wide and varied backgrounds. Marketing to this audience was complicated and challenging but I learned a lot about how to reach an audience on an emotional level and get them to pay attention to the messages my team and I were creating. After 5 years I was given the opportunity to be made redundant. I saw this as my chance to start my own business as a photographer.

10 years later I find myself still working as a photographer, still as passionate about photography as when I started and feeling fulfilled every single day.