Christmas Project...

      
    " We will laugh and we will play, the eskimo way, walking in a winter wonderland!"

Why Photography?

I have always had an obsession with light, as long as I remember I have been trying to find  the perfect way of showing others what it is that captivates me. Words can never quite do it justice? It has taken me until this point to find my medium for the simple reason that I always believed the camera to be truth itself, only recording what is actually there. It wasn’t until I had my own camera (an old leaky petri) that I realised that the photographs I took spoke my language, I was able to put across a message be it a feeling, an emotion or maybe just a very simple thought. 

The very first time I can remember going into a darkroom is extremely vague as it was when my mum was studying at PCA herself and I was very young and so she used to take me with her sometimes when she had to! I can remember that I was absolutely mesmerised the moment I was taken into this strange dark red room, this was only something  I remembered when I was given my darkroom induction at the start of my National Diploma. I walked in and felt an incredible sense of place, I felt like I knew the rooms and from that moment on the darkroom has been my primary habitat, even to the point that my bedroom is now a bedroom/darkroom with full processing and printing facilities. I am a passionate film photographer, I believe it to be far superior in all formats compared to anything digital on the market. I have tried and tried and failed at producing any work that I have consistantly enjoyed shooting digitally, processing digitally and printing digitally yet when I pick up an old film camera with a roll of film in it, I know that I am going to be at my happiest with it in my hand, I know that when I finish that film I am going to be intoxicated with excitement to get home and develop it as soon as I possibly can and I know that once I have seen those negatives I will be filled with an incredible urge to get straight into the darkroom and print all the images whirring around in my mind. This is something that quite simply cannot be replicated on a computer, if I am having the time of my life making the images then it is clearly going to show in the final pieces. 

The camera does not simply record for me, it captures my experiences and the photographs I take tell my story. Every photograph i take is manipulated and transmogrified far from reality before it is even taken. I have a great passion for photography, and especially film, that I believe will never leave me, just as I will never stop drawing or painting or breathing, my photography completely envelops me. I look at the world through my two favourite and most reliable lenses with infinate possibilities screaming at me to be captured as I go about my normal business, be they reality or in my minds eye. Whether they would exist or not if I wasn’t there to experience them is another question altogether. In the multi-sensory universe that we occupy, I believe an image can stimulate and provoke equally to words, and can evoke directly a raw personal response rivaling that of any other senses. 

So why compromise, making photographs is my language and my passion so for all the reasons above........                                               

... I am made to be an artist and a photographer.