About

The basics:

Welcome to the bit where I talk about myself 🫤I mean, who doesn't like talking about themselves? Well, I hate being the centre of attention, and I hate talking about myself; however, it's a required part of building a website and a portfolio as a photographer. So, who am I? 

I am George (If the website didn't give it away). I am primarily a film Photographer (Yes, I sometimes shoot digital), currently living in West Yorkshire, originally from the Wirral. I am in my mid-20s and have been shooting film now for between 10 and 15 years. My first film camera was an Olympus OM-1n, which I regrettably sold, followed by a second-hand Sony A200 and then, around my 15th birthday, I got my first new digital camera, which was a Nikon D5500, which I used until 2023 when it regrettably reached the end of its life. I studied photography at GCSE level in high school, which I didn't enjoy at all, and later was going to study it at University before eventually deciding against it. By trade, I am a computer network engineer; however, at present, I am focusing my time and energy on developing my skills as a photographer. 

A bit more detail:

I first had the taste of film photography in 2010, being in a dark room, watching images seemingly just appearing on paper by what seemed like magic. I was instantly hooked, however, at the time I didn't own a camera, and wasn't able to fund my own film photography as I was only just turning 11 years old. After that, the next time I touched a film camera was on a school trip to London in 2012. It was a Fuji point and shoot camera that my mum got for me from either Boots or Max Spielman. I was so excited to get hands-on and to start taking photographs (not having a clue what I was doing), but that didn't stop me. The roll turned out mostly underexposed, as at the time, I didn't fully understand the exposure triangle, or even much about the science behind photography. At this stage, being around 12 years old, I still thought it was magic, and that the images would just magically appear, like how I saw two years prior. However, out of the 24 exposure rolls, I only had 2 or 3 images that were able to be printed by the lab; the others were far too underexposed.

You can see them here.

So why am I telling you this? Well, I am very scientifically minded. I like to know everything about how something works. The more intricate something is, the more I enjoy it. This is what captivated me into photography, more specifically, film photography. What I thought was initially magic later turned out to be a carefully constructed balance of light and chemistry, but why film? Whenever someone asks me this, I always say the same thing. Digital photography to me feels unauthentic; it is a digital interpretation of the light hitting the sensor, film is a physical reaction between light and elements. Whereas in a digital sensor, it is a series of circuits and capacitors that render the interpretation of the light, film is physical light interacting with physical silver halide crystals suspended in a gelatin binder protected by a celluloid base. It's physical science reacting to the environment, creating an image which is as true to reality as we can get. That real science I experience every time I take a film photograph is what drives my curiosity and enjoyment in shooting film, added with the process of developing and printing your images yourself, you have full creative control from start to finish. However, with digital, you rely on third-party software and their configured settings to develop your image, and a digital image can look different from camera to camera, to screen to screen, while when on film, the negative stays the same, and the print stays the same. I know you're thinking about scanning, which is a massive part of my workflow, and yes, it does seem counterintuitive to shoot film, go through the entire creative process, and then scan it using a digital sensor. I agree it is counter intuitive, but in a modern world, going fully analogue and still being able to share your work is very difficult to do, but with scanning film, you capture the unique characteristics of each film stock, the grain, the tones, the way the light has interacted with the chemicals, it gives you something more intimate than just a normal digital image with little to no characteristics.

Why did I not pursue photography at University?

As I mentioned before, I first studied photography at GCSE level during high school, which I hated. The course stripped away your thoughts, ideas and preferences and stuffed everyone down the same channel, the same topics and the same criteria. If every photographer took the same image in the same way every single time, the world would be a very boring place; however, that is what it did, it stripped away any creative freedom which any artist, anywhere in the world, is supposed to have full total control over. Disliking photography at GCSE, while enjoying the topic overall, put me in a situation where, for a year, I dreaded picking up a camera. After completing and passing this at GCSE, I was apprehensive of having the same limitations imposed on me at University. I was ready to take on the full learning curve myself, at my own pace, and develop my own unique perspectives and interests in a way I enjoyed. Any hobby or interest should always be fun and enjoyable, but while learning about something I already thoroughly enjoyed in school, it stripped away the enjoyment. So I did what any sane person would do, and spent the next 7-8 years teaching myself everything I wanted and needed to know about photography, more specifically film photography. Only recently have I decided to go to University to pursue General Science rather than photography. However, as I have said a few times before, film photography is that balance between art and science, and that's what I love most about it.