These are some of the photos that started it all.

While friends who grew up with me will recall me wielding a camera at every outing and party throughout our teens, in adulthood I got wrapped up stomping the career path and almost forgot to photograph for a decade. But following company buy-out after buy-out, rebranded every which way, and disillusioned and exhausted with the endless cycle of the rat-race, I quit my corporate career in October 2003 and bought a round-the-world ticket, routing it to visit old friends in some of my favourite (and a few new) places. I bought a compact Minolta dimage Xi digital camera and posted low res images to ofoto which i shared with contacts as a photo-journal.... and graciously (or jokingly) a lot of people left comments saying i should give up the old career and pursue photography instead.

So i did.

From then until now has all been quite organic. I've probably bucked or ignored most conventional logic about what you 'must' do to start your own small business and become self-employed...budgets and business plans and the like, choosing to just listen to my gut about where to locate, what to do or not do, who to trust. After years of structure and having to be at a certain place by a certain time, frequently working all through the night and then present (perform) to an audience of often hostile corporate execs, I felt compelled to pursue something that i have always loved, do it on my terms as best i could and let it flow naturally for a while, to try and stave off that perfectionist streak which religiously weeds its way into me whenever i show any vague promise at anything.

I'm now into my tenth full year in this career and I look back at that world trip and I wish i'd invested in better equipment to capitalise on the places i spent time in; a few of these images make me squirm...mainly due to the actual digital quality of them which now don't make my mark, and otherwise one or two look ridiculously generic to me now, whilst some are merely photos of beautiful places - not necessarily beautiful photos (something many many people seem to confuse). But, it was primarily a trip about rejuvenation and not feeling i must or should be doing something, so the limited photos i did take were captured when i felt like it and without a worry in the world, and that's something that is irreplaceable and hard to find now that taking photos has become a career and getting a really good image takes on a heightened importance.

Though i guess the basics are unchanged; i don't necessarily take significantly more time composing a photo (unless it is a set-up and using lights/models) - though i obviously take more overall - and I'm just more selective about when, and what to shoot each scene with. The practicalities of it all come much faster; they become innate, so i miss far fewer opportunities now. The greatest learning and the most time consuming part has become at the back end, sat at the computer and pondering which to select and how to crop and adjust tone and contrast....learning software, upgrading computers, buying storage, trying to decipher fact from fiction about digital images. Quite frankly i find it draining and frequently frustrating. I have endless respect for designers and publishers who can select, crop and envisage an inspiring layout from the images i provide; that is as much an art in itself.

Most of the thinking and worrying about whether it's all getting better is done when i'm not shooting, and then once the camera is in my hand it feels the most natural thing in the world....i just trust my instincts and the angle usually appears. When the shot just doesn't feel right i don't sweat it...sometimes it isn't meant to be for you, or I will walk to a completely counter-intuitive point and then it unfolds or appears often as an ironic or contrasting shot at 180 degrees to where most people would take the photo from. This in some ways has become my style; i really don't particularly enjoy capturing the obvious or no brainer shot....what i call the 'flash your knickers' shot. There's little fulfilment in it for me, though with man's inherent tendency to be lazy those are the shots which attract attention and are what a lot of people seek. Pbase is littered with galleries that are full of the most obvious shots in the world. When i take photos for myself i prefer subtle contrasts, hints at character, and pictures which convey contradiction and irony, or mood and tone, and which reward the viewer with longer or repeated viewing. This is hardest to capture with people of course....particularly if they are strangers. Invariably, given the split second nature of the interaction, you have to take what they give and if you miss it you can see the trust and confidence drain from their eyes. Although to me that in itself is sometimes the better picture as it is their real character, without the mask for the camera......sometimes i wait purposely for them to tire and drop the silly grin and then shoot.

The hardest thing to learn is that while you can admire other people's skill in taking photos and aspire to their composition and standards you cannot necessarily emulate them, but that your style and perspective are equally valid....they also see something in yours that they may not be able to replicate. So, ultimately, the most rewarding thing about photography is that the moment you click the shutter is your completely unique moment; no-one will ever be in that exact time, space, and circumstance with your personal experience and perspective. Not that that even matters....what matters is what people choose to take out of a photo, and ultimately it is provoking some sort of outtake - good or bad - which is most important and eternally fascinating.