Well, new beginnings, new website, new work, new clients and first ever blog. It’s hard to decide where to start, so I will begin with a question.
There are some questions that people always ask when they find out what you do, Black Cabbies always get the ‘Just starting or finishing?’, ‘Had anyone famous in your cab’ etc. As a photographer there are several that get asked ‘who is the most famous person you’ve photographed’, ‘Who was the worst/nicest?’. But the one I’m thinking about today is ‘Who would you really like to photograph?’
The answer is my Dad.
Sadly that is the one photograph that will never happen. But I thank him for the support and encouragement he gave me at the beginning of my first steps into photography. My Mum was the artistic influence but my Dad was the technical one.
In his early days of flying, at the end of the Second World War, and his involvement in the start of commercial flight he always took a camera with him. As a child I loved looking at all the fantastic Agfa Colour 120 slides that he had shot around North Africa, the Mediterranean and Europe, long before there were tourists and concrete hotels. The colours were a little faded but that just added to the magic of them: the places, the clothes, the people.
Photography is a strange mixture of creativity and technical skills, you can’t make the images without the technology, be it digital or the alchemy of the darkroom. I have inherited that mix too from both my parents.