Me interviewing me..............Part one....
16th Feb 2008!
What did you do before you photographed 'stuff' for a living?
Well right now I wouldn't call it a living - ha the jokes, they are just gonna keep coming. Ok no, sorry. Well I graduated from uni & decided in fact, camera's may not be for me & fashion was my thing. It still is but after working in the marketing dept. of a photo studio and then helping out with the fashion design in a formal menswear studio for folks such as Ted Baker, French Connection and River Island I felt my creative buttons were just not being fully pressed. There was more out there & once I realized it was my choice to do photography I decided to take it.
Your choice? Was it a creative path you were forced down?
Not at all. But i think there is a lot of pressure for students to 'do something' with their degree immediately after leaving & its not always that easy. Plus you need to do it because you want to not because you feel you have to. It was after somebody said to me, you know it doesn't matter if you dont do photography for a living, no one is going to judge you either way - that I thought yea, its just me that I need to consider. I laid off myself for a while and thats when it seemed to happen!
So getting back to your student days, was there a lot of guidance in terms of career management?
When I was there we had some great opportunities and I wished I would have utilized them better. It is a time when at minimum cost and with maximum support you can get yourself out there & start getting involved. I didn't do as much as I could have.
What do you miss about University?
The complete and total freedom. I don't think there will ever be another point in my life where I can completely concentrate on the kind of fine art and fashion and personal photography that I did there. I used the projects and the freedom to explore emotions I was feeling at that time & things I had or was dealing with. I really used photography as a way of exploring my own emotions and creating some answers or at least closure for those questions that remained open at that time.
Do you still use photography like that & undertake personal projects?
I still try and dedicate a lot of time to doing personal work but it just has to get put on the back burner as financially its not so viable. I do try to do a purely personal shoot once every 3 months, the thing is I really tend to get involed and it often takes me 3 months to create the final brief in my head so it can take longer. It also depends what else I have on.
Well after interviewing myself I feel there is more to come and well possibly, there is a a little more humor to be injected beside the fact I am actually interviewing myself!
Part two to follow guys......oooo hold onto your baseball caps, sock hats and bowlers.....
