Walker Evans, Robert Frank and William Eggleston became the Holy Trinity, my Holy Trinity, the most important sources of photographic inspiration throughout my career. That's not to say that Agtet, Crewdson, Shore, Devlin, Leiter, Mapplethrope, Arbus, Maier and a host of artists, painters have not in some way, added to my practice. Not only but also, film and cinema, in fact my eternal love of photography is that it is connected to almost everything in the universe.

 The first 20 years of my life could be considered to follow a traditional route at that time, as many of 'us' passed from childhood to becoming working adults in similar fashion. Walsall in ‘The Black Country’, a geographical area so named since the beginning of 19th century due to reliance on heavy industry and large scale manufacturing, is thought to refer to the colour of the coal seam and/or the air pollution from the many thousands of foundries and factories around at that time.

I lived on a council estate, attended Aldridge Grammar School until I left to start a mechanical engineering apprenticeship and yet, throughout all of this time not one artistic bone was found to exist in my body, neither had I shown much interest in art Per Se.

However, during my youth (?) I’d studied technical drawing at school and a year into my apprenticeship I was draughted into the design/drawing office to learn the art and visual skills of combining myriad shapes of differing sizes, elevation and scale into the overall rectangular and square borders of the draughting paper, plans and quintessentially, the ‘frame.’

Next came probably the biggest upheaval of my life to date, and no it wasn’t the ‘Big E’ from my girlfriend, love of my life but now I’d been made redundant 3 times and the heavy industries that sustained a way of life for many years was abundantly in decline. A summer of fun then I enrolled on a full-time Diploma in Photography at Wednesbury College that literally changed my life and everything in it! A full 2 years ensued, all work limited to 5x4 and medium format, no 35mm or ‘miniature cameras’. My photography leaning now considerably more to fine art than a commercial career.

A year out and next stop Derby College of HE (now University). Without doubt this was the beginning of a new life, Derby being my first and only choice. I wanted to be on this course more than anything and here, decidedly more than anywhere else. It had just about everything a student of photography could want; from film studies to an amazing critical studies program, wonderful staff with an excellent visiting artist and ‘Masterclass’ program inclusive of many well known artists and photographers guiding us to greater possibilities. I continued to learn, artistically, academically, to grow and fall in love with photography; I literally ate, drank, slept and dreamt photography.

Too much to write that can't be condensed!

2009 and this time my destination was Nottingham Trent University to pursue a Master of Arts in Photography. During my career, I've felt blessed, lucky to have experienced such great opportunities having traveled extensively around the globe with my work. Often times I’d taught part-time to keep up to date with all that was happening in photography and share all I knew with anyone that wanted to lear. At Nottingham I was allowed the opportunity to work as a part-time lecturer in both Critical and Visual practice modules which I loved.

To be continued...