04/08/2026
I first fell in love with photography when we opened an airmail envelope from Australia.
I was 6 or 7.
The envelope contained a handful of photos from my Nan, who lived in Australia with the rest of my family (£10 Poms).
The photos were of dramatic Australian sunsets, my Nan on the farm with fruit trees, kookaburras and kangaroos, huge spider webs on washing lines, and my cousins barefoot and in their pants on a rope swing over a creek.
In the early 1980s, when Australia seemed a million miles away, phone connection was poor, letters took months to arrive, those photos were treasures.
I marvelled at how the photos told the story of these people and their lives, my family I’d never met, and how they made me feel like I knew them all and gave me such a feeling of belonging.
I loved how they captured beauty and nature and difference in a way that made me feel so there.
Not long after those photos arrived, we heard that one of the smiling boys in the photos had drowned in the creek. He was my eldest cousin, just a couple of years older than me.
So early on, I also experienced how powerfully photos hold memory and legacy in the briefest of captured moments.
📸 ❤️
This photo accompanying this post was taken by my client. Me, with a camera, up a verge. Classic ;)
I needed a slightly elevated viewpoint to photograph him with his motorbike, and an epic view of the Wiltshire countryside stretching out behind him.
