In the About section on my website I write,
“So here I am, at what most would consider the final chapter of my professional photographic life and career, but oh what a chapter it’s going to be”.
Throughout my life as a photographer I’ve had a number of opportunities to reinvent myself and begin again. It’s something I find positively invigorating and essential, preferring to move onward and accept the challenges that may come rather than stagnate and wither away. In this final chapter that I so happily refer to is yet another chance for me to roll the dice, put on my bravest pants and begin again, again etc etc. I’ve metaphorically launched all my dreams and ideas up in the air and have waited to see what lands in that wonderfully positive space I refer to as “tell me what you really want to do Giles”.
As a result I’ve found what I truly want to do and given myself the permission and opportunity to be the photographer I most want to be. The direction and method of how I think and work is now wholly determined and imagined by me and marks the final stage in regaining what I had once thought lost. As a very ordinary chap with an ever growing waistline, receding hair-line and greying beard it’s something of a blessing to once again know where I’m going and what I truly want to do and be able to draw on what I had once referred to as my photographic superpower of Compassionate Arrogance*.
Given my business acumen could quite comfortable be described as somewhat less worthy than a bit of lemon peel floating down the Thames, I’ve made the sensible decision of definitely not starting a new business; instead plumbing for what I consider to be something far more sensible and for want of a better phrase, easier on the ear. My new role as simply a Documentary Photographer is defiantly the way ahead and as that super TV advert for garden paint so eloquently describes “it does exactly what it says on the tin” (many thanks to Ronseal Paint).
My home town of Newbury in Berkshire and its surrounding green and pleasant land forms an infinitely variable and rewarding muse and photographic palate. It’s here I’ll make black and white only documentary photo stories inspired by the people, culture and landscape of his beautiful corner of England and indulge my passion for analog only photography, silver gelatin prints and hand made books (websites and blogs not withstanding the need for digitisation of course).
As well as being a photographer I so enjoy talking about the subject and passing on my experience and knowledge. To this end the plans for the new darkroom and studio teaching space have been drawn up and I’ve just started to put together a series of workshops and adventures centred around giving guests to my studio a taste of the pure magic that is to be had from photographing with film and making silver gelatin prints in the darkroom.
In the New Year I’ll also be launching a series of three lectures centred around documentary photography and establishing three further workshops to help photographers of all persuasions and levels of skill to get the most from their own visual voice.
The great thing about this latest and last begin again, begin again of mine is the focus and understanding I now bring to it with all the knowledge, aspirations, dreams and reality of those previous iterations combined with a calm and determined resolve to just get on with it and have a wonderful adventure with my documentary photography.
Wishing you fair light and full frames
Giles
*Compassionate Arrogance, definition - It’s all about being the very best photographer I can possibly be and in doing so be true and honest to myself and those I photograph. Having a laser like focus and determination to get the work done, say something with true passion, honesty and integrity tempered with a calm and gentle desire to treat any and all that I photograph with decency, kindness and compassion. The two go hand in hand and act as a wonderful driver for helping me produce documentary photo stories that make my heart and soul sing.
