As a photographer I’m an unusual animal in that I came to it via radio and a career at the BBC. I was fascinated by photography and saved my pocket money for months to buy my first camera when I was 14 years old. With the earnings from a newspaper round I could afford one 36 exposure roll of slide film per month. It didn’t occur to me to become a photographer, I’m not sure I knew it was possible t
o do it for a living. I certainly hadn’t heard of ‘art schools’ and instead studied engineering at university. I scraped through my degree and after a few months as a quality control engineer in a kettle factory got a job as a sound recordist in the BBC. I worked for many years as a radio reporter and producer; there’s a surprising similarity in how you tell a story with a microphone and with a camera. One highlight was winning a Gold Sony Radio Award for a programme about euthanasia. Winning something for a comedy show would have been better, but hey! Eventually I was writing and directing promo films, a move I was able to make because I was a photographer. I went on to study photography at the London College of Communications and then launch into this adventure of building my own business. Recently I was nominated for a Sony World Photography Award and was a selected exhibitor in the Art of Photography Show in San Diego.
