Why did I start taking photos? What got me hooked? What is my inspiration?
For as long as I can remember I have been taking photographs. I guess it was my passion for art that got me interested. As an artist I discovered it was good to take photographs to inspire my creation, and through that photography became an art form of mine. I developed my skills firstly however by the hundreds I take on nights out with my friends - this got me used to the buttons, flash and how important wristbands are.
In my A-levels I became heavily inspired by the Impressionists like Monet and this encouraged me to go out an look at the Cumbrian landscape and take pictures to capture it in different ways. However it wasn't until at University, whilst studying my Fine Art degree at Lancaster, that photography became the main focus of my work. Encouraged by my tutors to make it my main medium, I photographed a number of different subjects - entropy, litter, birds, bugs - and covered a range of aspects ultimately relating to mankind and their relationship with the environment.
Generally, in my art, photography is based on the idea of revealing the beauty of things that aren't often considered beautiful. My final project in my undergraduate degree focused on the wonderful world of bugs, in particular flies. I chose this topic because of my aversion to them - bugs are my weakness, the only animals that I am scared of. I wanted to be able to show that bugs can be beautiful, despite their connection to death and rubbish. I spent hours taking pictures of bugs of all kinds outside, and collected half eaten bugs from spiderwebs and dusty windowsills (I would never kill animals for a project). I'd love to say I completely overcome my fear, but unfortunately that didn't happen.
I have since traveled to America and various other places, and built a collection of travel related photography. I will be continuing to build on this, and will soon have prints available to purchase on Etsy.