Oliver Stephen Photography

13/07/2024

I went for a rainy walk around town the other day to go see the new flower bed with the club logo on it. Grabbed shots of ’s Paul Mullin mural and one of the local barbers shops who are clearly fans of Welcome to Wrexham ☺️
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28/06/2024

The light was nice after work the other day and I did my default thing of pointing my camera at the floodlights. However, that defaulting to photographing them is giving me a period of doubt about my work.

It happens to all artists, and honestly if you don’t do it regularly you’re not engaging with your practice fully. My doubts at the moment are about how much I want to continue photographing things about the club. I’ve enjoyed the anonymity I had in the past, and now I feel like being known (in the minor way I am) could take away the joy for me somewhat.

I don’t like being watched when I shoot, I like to blend in, but since the broadcast of the documentary I’ve felt far more self-conscious than I’d like, and it’s putting me off taking my camera out in town… especially around the stadium. It’s just changed the way I feel in the environment and that’s something I need to learn to deal with. There’s a weight of expectation I’m starting to feel, and it’s an expectation I’m going to have to learn to remove from my thought process.

There’s a sense of performance anxiety now, like I HAVE to take a good shot, I HAVE to keep going. So, in the lead up to next season I have to figure out where I take this project next. I feel like doing what I’ve been doing so far is just repetition at this point. The work, the way I approach it all, the things I point my camera at… it all needs to evolve somehow and start taking a different shape.

I don’t know what shape that is, I never really know what it is I’m doing, I just trust the work is smarter than me and will reveal itself in the making. I have an inductive methodology when it comes to this stuff, so I just have to *do*, and find the way as I go. I’ve no plans to stop the project, I just think I’ve hit a point where I’m going to start repeating myself and I have to change.

It’s all good, change brings growth 😊

28/06/2024

Volume 2. has just been sent off to the printers 😬

08/06/2024

Hark at me, being all showy and being on a podcast on that Spotify

Listen to me chat breeze about photography, art, and mental health.

Listen to this episode from Be The Connection on Spotify. Featured on FX's "Welcome to Wrexham," Oliver is a talented photographer who shares how his art, community and even Wrexham's football team helped save his life during one of its most challenging times. He lays out the story of how he connect...

27/05/2024

13/05/2024

I couldn't think of an image for this post, so I picked this one as it's me with my first camera many, many, many years ago and symbolises firsts or something clever like that.

Anyway, it's been brought to my attention that I have this page and that I do nothing with it. The reason for that is most people who were interested in my photos were already my friends on here, so there was no point double-posting and spamming people's feeds with my nonsense.

But, given that people outside of my close friends and family are interested in my work now (still crazy that that's a thing), I should probably start using this account to post some stuff.

I barely understand Facebook as I live my life offline for the most part, so bear with me as I try and figure out what to post here, and how, and why, and where, and when, and stuff, and things, and nonsense, and words, and this sentence doesn't want to stop, see, it's still going, can you tell I have a day off and am procrastinating?

16/09/2021

Between April and August this year I had the pleasure of photographing Wrexham artist Georgia Nielson during her residency in the Makers Space at Tŷ Pawb . She's always fun to work with, and is honestly a credit to the Wrexham arts scene!

29/05/2020

For the past 9 years I've been creating abstract photographs that I rarely, if ever, show people. This is a selection of ones that come from screens.

30/03/2020

Since December 2018 I have been visiting the Wrexham Glyndwr University campus at night and photographing it.

19/03/2020