I have been thinking about starting a blog about my photography, the shoots I have done in the past and any new projects in the pipeline so I am going to start with a look back over my work so far and my journey to becoming a photographer.
I always had an interest in photography even as a very young child and used to torture my parents until they gave in and let me take a few snaps with our little Kodak camera. I loved winding it on and hearing that lovely click and the anticipation of having to wait until the film was finished and processed so I could see my masterpiece! I suspect we were like most families whereby the camera was only produced at Christmas, holidays and birthdays hence our abundance of this type of photograph. I did manage to sneak the camera for a few strange self-portraits and photos of my brother posing with his rucksack in a very odd way!
During a recent school reunion I was asked how I came to have so many photos from our school days and the answer was that I seemed to be the only one who always had a camera to hand whether it be during school trips, during school plays, non-uniform days and just random days at school somehow I always had the urge to just capture the moment. Memories sometimes fade but photographs keep them alive and perhaps subconsciously I knew this and knew that one day we would all treasure tiny glimpses from our past where paths crossed momentarily and then moved on.
My little photo cartridge was taken to the chemist at the top of Orangefield Lane where the very glamorous lady who worked there used to take it, fill in the name on the envelope and give me the tear off ticket. It used to take 3 or 4 days to get the prints back and it felt like a lifetime! I never could wait to get home before having to open the envelope and have a peek at all the little treasures inside. My Father used to roar about having to pay for photos that were a load of rubbish, in other words the stuff I took! My Mum was prone to cutting off peoples heads so she avoided using the camera as much as possible. Even at the risk of Dad yelling I now wish I had taken more!
Dad spent a lot of time in bed, or so it seemed to me. He worked shifts and often was up at 5am to start work with the result he used to go to bed at 8 or 9pm. He was rarely sick but when he was he spent his time in bed and Mum would carry soup up to him on a tray. A little plastic rimmed tray, a tea towel covering it, the gold trimmed floral soup bowl, the pointy salt and pepper pots and a glass of milk. When he was finished he would bang the floor for someone to come and lift the tray, he also banged the floor when we had the TV on too loud in the room below. He had a deaf ear and a good ear so as long as he slept on his good ear we could play the telly as loud as we liked but it seemed as soon as he rolled over he could hear a pin drop in the back room below. BANG BANG BANG!
I recently bought a negative scanner, if the truth be told I bought it for my eldest daughter because she had it on her Amazon wish list, she has yet to use it. I have a box of various sized negatives and started going through them to see what I could unearth. The more I scanned the more I became obsessed with seeing more and more. I was rediscovering more little glimpses from my past that I had forgotten about. Photos from primary school, photos from my childhood, photos I hadn't remembered being taken!
Thanks to my brother this vision was captured, I suspect I had been playing at something or other and fell asleep dressed in my funky disguise! My childhood was happy and carefree, I was allowed to be a child and had two very loving parents. I got on well with my brother or well I thought I did but he does now give me digs about how I played our parents because I was younger and cuter and how I broke his toys! Both of which I am not proud off but I guess being younger and cuter did have its advantages however I am not aware of this power I seemed to have over him. He had his own way of getting me back and often used to drive me totally crazy with the little mind games he played with me.
My parents were supportive but not pushy, sometimes I wish they had pushed me a little more to be more confident and assertive. They were happy to let me make my own decisions and one of the biggest ones I first made was leaving school half way through my lower sixth year to take a job in a solicitors office as a legal secretary. During a careers meeting I was asked what I wanted to do upon leaving school, I expressed my desire to become a photographer. My careers adviser suggested that this would be a difficult area for a girl to break into and perhaps I should focus more on secretarial work! Unfortunately I was pliable enough to listen and be influenced by them and didn't follow my dream, a decision I bitterly regret!
Lets face it when I could take portraits like that as a kid and not cut their heads off why couldn't I become a photographer!
