Finding My Love Again

The image above was taken on a college trip to Dublin, I’m not entirely sure what year it was but I’d of been around 17 years old and I’m on a ferry going across the Irish Sea with my classmates from Doncaster College for a 3 night photography trip.

Through my late teens I spent my weekdays studying photography and I spent my weekends practicing it, mainly shooting photos of my friends and anything related to skateboarding.

My year group at college were the last year group that learnt the art of photography on film, processing our own film and printing our own prints in the darkroom.

I loved it.

There was something about the process of taking a photograph on film that was magic. The process was a mixture of science, art and instinct.

The process gave me a connection to the images I took. I was invested in each and every one.

Pre-planning my shot, calculating my settings, composing my frame, developing the film and printing the image.

From the time you pressed the shutter button to when you saw the final printed image could be days.

There were many steps along the way where your image could be ruined.

Over exposed, under exposed, highlights blowout, shadows too dark, subject blinking, timing wrong, poorly composed, were just some of the issues that could be encountered.

Over the course of the two years I studied photography I shot thousands of images. At the time I had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of what my thought process behind and the settings I used for each image was.

I finished college with high grades and secured a place at Nottingham Trent University to continue my studies.

This is where it all started to go wrong for me and photography.

The course at Trent was purely digital and I just didn’t connect with the digital process.

Within 6 months of starting at NTU my love for photography had dwindled and I was jaded by how disposable making a photograph felt.

The ability to see the output of your efforts immediately for me seemed to take away some of the value of photography.

Since I dropped out of uni after that initial 6 month period, I have dipped in and out of photography but always found it frustrating, my efforts lacked direction and purpose.

This year, in 2025, my goal is to go on at least one photography specific trip per month.

It might be a morning, an overnight or even a full week away but each month I need to set time aside to practice my photography.

I’ll be using this website as a place to share my progress and the photographs I take.