If I was a hero, I’d be called… Cameraman
Every hero has an origin story 🦸♂️
DESTINY
One of my favourite toys as a child was a great big silver Polaroid P600. Every few months, my parents would buy me a roll of film and I’d quickly go into photographer mode. I only took pictures of my family just going about their normal days. You know, mum doing dishes, dad working in the garden and big sister designing her MySpace. Basically, whenever they didn’t want to get photographed 👀 Those short spurts of shooting really would literally only last a couple of hours until the next time I’d come across a roll of film.
STIMULANT
Fast forward a few years, I was a total nerd at sixth form - I used to dabble in graphic design and app development. One unremarkable Thursday morning, I randomly made a friend on a bench. It turned out my new friend was studying for an A-level in photography… and she needed some models for her coursework. I signed up and had the best time! The whole experience and the photos at the end of it hyped me up so much that I just wanted to learn everything about taking amazing photos and give that feeling back to other people.
HARNESSING POWERS
And that’s when I began months of saving up, heavy hours of research absorbing everything I possibly could so that when I finally had that camera in my hands, I could already feel comfortable with it. That day came in the summer of 2015, when my Sony A6000 was delivered. I plugged the camera in, charged it up to 50% and called my friend Sandra into action.
Since then, the way my style evolved over the years; I liken it to natural selection. As I shoot more people in different environments, only components of photos that I like may survive, the rest is back to the drawing board. That means from behind the camera, every photo I take, at that moment, captures who I am, my personality, my taste, my vision, and the learnings I've overcome in the years since I picked up a camera. Each of my photos capture me. I may not be visible, but boy am I in the frame.