Why I’m passionate about portraits

My first ever real awareness of a camera was at school in the Arts class, the best part of my week in school. The teacher asked us to bring in a tin can. My family love drinking chocolate, and milo, so we were never short of an empty can. So it was announced  by the teacher that the task that is that we would be making a camera. Into the darkroom we went to put the negative into the can, and a pin hole in the front of the tin with a piece of tape covering the hole, we split into pairs, and starting creating images, and developing them in the darkroom. Its was truly a magical experience.

At the age of 15 my mother had another child, my brother who was the tiniest thing ever. I enjoyed looking after him, but he seemed to change so quickly, so i wanted to freeze time, and this is where my journey began. I convinced my auntie to buy me a camera for my birthday, but the cost of having a camera was expensive for a 15 year old back then with no money. The first camera i had you had to buy the flash unit that would flash 4 times with each unit, and could only be used once, and the most common amount of film people would purchase was 24, once take the image your 24 was finished, there was no idea if the images were taken properly, could they be too dark, too light, or maybe blur, who knew, until you took them to be processed which could take a few days to a week depending how busy the store/camera shop were. sometimes the wait was unbearable, and there were times when the full 24 images was only good enough for the bin
Here is one of my shots from school, 1981, i gather my friends and think about the best place to put them, which in this case are the steps, they knew the only way to move on was to allow me to take the picture. The difference then. There was no instant view of the image, and by the time you could afford to get them developed they were forgotten about, it was rare for someone to have a camera in school, so never anyone fussed about their good or bad side. The quality of the images i took never seemed amazing, but enough that i could see who was on them, and always felt amazing.

The technical side wasn’t interesting, i could just spend hours looking back at images. Time moved on digital was introduced, and although i didn’t take up the profession of photography straight from school. (Hearing the echo of my mothers voice, saying find a proper job). I always had a camera to hand.

I decided to take a course in photography at Bournville college Birmingham, but i needed answers, so part of the course dealt with the psychology of photography. What makes a good image? Why are certain images award winning images?  One of my favourite late great photographer is Diane Arbus an American photographer who was born in New York in 1923.