And so to begin... by looking back.

I've been purposefully engaged with photography for just over a year now, but have only just started 'blogging'. And so before I discuss current work it seems appropriate that I should have a quick look at where I've come from.

One of the first divisions that I make when considering and classifying photography, is that there are photos with people in them, and there are those without. I am interested in the former. That's not to say there aren't some cracking images out there of landscapes, still lifes and such. It's just that I've always found myself more intrigued by photographs that feature people. It's a wholly different way to experience another person - constricted into a flat rectangle and frozen there eternally. What can you understand about someone in such a form of presentation? What can you know of them? Feel towards them?



I wanted to photograph people close to me, those I held a connection with. People I felt comfortable with, and people who were relaxed around me. I was interested in conveying the intimacy of our relationship. This developed into an understanding of the communication between photographer and subject, and its importance to the photograph. In my work, this 'discourse through a camera' made itself known by my quiet observation, and my subject's then calm awareness. It wasn't just about the relationship, it was about the relevance of photography on depicting that relationship.

It began with black and white, 35 and 120 film, which I had used a lot before and hence was quite confident with. But I had never used digital seriously. Hence my work in colour yielded fewer results but that has since developed.