Becoming a photographer
2005, an 18 year old enrols in, then, Glasgow College of Building and Printing, to study Product Design.
I had no clue what I wanted to do after leaving school and was fairly average academically, I suppose not from lack of ability, just lack of inspiration. School had built up, in me at least, a kind of intense pressure into believing I had to pick one thing and stick to it when you eventually had to leave. A horrible dread to have when you are young, feeling like it was all over before it started. I have always been a more practical, hands on person and struggled to find much of a practical use for what I was being taught but to be fair to my younger self I took a fairly broad range of subjects to hedge my bets. So when I left after holding out for as long as I could, I decided to just do what I felt like I wanted to do rather than what my grades suggested, the first adult decision I think I made.
Applying to college required a personal statement, I was told later by my lecturer that I had got into college solely based on my enthusiasm for visualisation and the descriptive way I explained I look at the world, think Haynes Manual exploded diagrams, you'll get the idea! For me, it read, "daydreaming class, apply within!", "think of stuff and make them into tangible objects", a bit like 3D printing for your mind, it was enticing stuff! Realising, I had this fairly vibrant visualisation skill the whole time, it was just the ridged structure of school curriculum that wasn't nurturing it. College provided the base that allowed me to explore and encourage visual creativity in a constructive way and from it, there wasn't a day I left the house without a camera since.
Taking pictures with these fascinating gadgets (products) every day led to shooting my first wedding in 2010 and the rest they say is history!
Christmas 1994, I got my first camera, a Kodak 'Crayola' 110 film camera. I took this with it while visiting family in Plano, Texas.
Hot air balloons over Plano, Texas, December 1994. Shot through the windscreen of my aunts car.