There is an idea prevalent amongst some people who don’t work in a creative industry, that those who do are somehow gifted or born with an innate talent for whatever they do. With the exceptions of the prodigies and geniuses, who are few and far between, any degree of success is much more likely to be the consequence of incremental improvement and considerable amounts of practice. By way of an example, the photo above is the first photograph I ever took, on my eighth birthday with my first camera. It is almost entirely without merit, being poorly composed, and soft due to camera shake and the limitations of a very cheap fixed focus plastic lens. The rest of the roll is little better, but the next one a few months later has fewer duds and subsequent rolls fewer still. Four years later I inherited a 35mm camera that had been my grandfather’s and the photographs got more interesting and by the time I got back from travelling around the USA in 1982, I had a few decent photos to show people. When I started to work as a photographer, three years later, my early editorial work was a blatant attempt to copy the style of Malcolm Fielding and Phil Sayer whose work for Management Today had been a big influence on me and gradually through my repeated failure to imitate theirs, my own style began to emerge. That style has continued to evolve over the years shaped by changes in both fashion and technology and it’s beginning to look as if work in a post pandemic world might well entail yet another shift in approach. If that should happen to involve a lo-fi monochrome 1970’s amateur vibe, and I can find a Kodak 126 Instamatic on eBay, the future looks bright….