Tell us about you and your photography.
I first started photography in senior school art classes, learning how to focus and expose an image, and processing black and white 35mm film before printing it in the darkroom. That experience gave me a good grounding in the basics of the medium, which I’ve found have been relevant ever since even though the art has moved to digital cameras and processing on computers. Due to spending time on family and career, my photography went on pause for a long time until the Covid pandemic when I started getting back into it. Since then I’ve get more serious about my photography and find it’s a great antidote to the stresses of life.
What did you get out of exhibiting last year?
In a world where we’re all bombarded by electronic images, it’s great to have a justification to take the time to create physical prints – it’s a completely different way of engaging with an image compared to just seeing it scrolling through Instagram. Seeing my work on the walls of the gallery was an amazing experience.
What are you looking forward to this year?
Meeting other like-minded artists has been an incredible experience and I hope that will continue this year. It’s really inspiring to see the amazing breadth of creativity and techniques when walking through the exhibition.
What’s the best thing about exhibiting at the London Photo Show?
I find it gives my art a degree of focus that it might not otherwise have due to all of the other things going on in life. Knowing that by October I’ve got to have prints ready to fill a wall gives me an impetus to design the portfolio I’d like to create.
What advice would you give to someone thinking about exhibiting?
Just go for it! It’s an amazing experience, albeit quite daunting initially. I would advise anyone to think carefully about the timing though – make sure you’ve left enough time to print you work, including reprinting if the original prints aren’t as you want. Personally, I aim to have all of my images ready by early September so that I’ve then got at least a month to focus on the printing and presentation.
