SO WHAT’S WITH THE PICTURE
OF THE EGGS?
… I hear you say.
It seemed to be a good ‘symbol’ (rather than ‘logo’) to encapsulate my life as a photographer. This picture was a polaroid I shot on my first day of training in the studio at GGS Photography (my previous company) in 1984 when a box of eggs was placed in front of me and I was instructed to demonstrate my use of light and get a shot of it using a Sinar monorail camera, shooting on 5″x 4″ monochromatic film. (How quaint…). Not the most exciting of images, admittedly, but it was a start.
It is also rather fitting as I am now ‘ex’ GGS and working (very happily!) on my own – e(x)GGS… geddit? ?
The purple is the colour that we used at GGS for all Photography related marketing and imagery.
And as being on my own is a new venture, the egg is certainly symbolic of a new life!
Possibly not the best idea for my branding; but I’m sure it will get people wondering. Which will, I would like to think, at least make it memorable!
A BIT MORE ABOUT ME…
My interest in photography started at the age of 10 when I was given a Kodak Instamatic camera for my birthday (or it might have been Christmas… 😁) by my photographer grandfather George Swain who was one of only a few photographers in Norwich at that time. Shortly after that I won First Prize in a school photography competition.
I was hooked.
Around the age of 13 I saw Michelangelo Antonioni’s mystery thriller film, Blow-Up, starring David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave, about a photographer who thinks he has accidentally captured a murder in the background of one of his photographs, and decided I quite fancied the idea of having a career in photography.
My dad helped me set up a black & white darkroom in the garden shed and soon I was processing and printing all my own films.
Exciting times!
The joy of watching an image slowly develop in front of my eyes was incomparable.
At the age of 18 I managed to secure a job working for a local wedding photographer processing and printing all his films (colour, no less) and even took my first professional pictures. Cake cutting at a wedding at The King’s Head in Bawburgh.
From there I moved on to GGS Photography, a newish commercial operation which, after nearly a year in business, was about to move out of its first premises on Pottergate in Norwich to a new location in the Tibbenhams Advertising building on Thorpe Road.
I started in the darkroom and moved on to the studio a few years later.
Ambition achieved. I was officially a professional photographer.