Starting my own business ASP Event Photography -How I got here...

For my first ever blog post I thought I would write about how I came to the decision to finally leave my stable yet unsatisfying job and begin building my photography business. Sorry in advance for this post being quite long! I guess this will be the back story that led me to where I am today.

Dovestones, Saddleworth.

I have been photographing for quite a long time, almost fifteen years. I grew up in Carrbrook, Stalybridge, a quiet village that is close to Saddleworth and Uppermill, where I spent a lot of my time. There were plenty of woodlands, fields and moorlands that provided me with plenty of places to wander and explore, often with my camera. Landscape photography was my first, and has always been my biggest passion – this is where my love of photography came from. Many times I walked the hills and moorlands around Dovestones reservoir with my camera in my backpack, stopping often to take a photograph of the views. As the years went by I gradually became better at photography eventually even shooting a few weddings as the second photographer for a friend. Those early experiences gave me the confidence to branch out into doing some wedding photography on my own. The images I took from some of those earliest shoots are still in my portfolios today.

The Great Wall of China.

Although I had been photographing for some time I never really considered a career in it. It was when I took some time out of work to go travelling in China that I decided to take it further. I was fortunate enough to meet a good group of people when I was on my travels in China. Always seen with my camera in my hand they often asked why I had not gone to college to study photography and they encouraged me to do so, as it was pretty clear that it was what I wanted to do.

Product photography, Tameside College

Eden Project, Cornwall

When I returned home I gave my future a lot of thought and decided to find a college course that would get me a qualification that could allow me to gain access to a university. I decided on a course at Tameside College, based in Ashton-Under-Lyne. I enjoyed college immensely. It gave me the opportunity to try out and learn about so many types of photography that I otherwise would never have known about. I experimented with film photography, pinhole cameras and darkroom processes. Taking my experiments from my local landscapes to the Eden Project in Cornwall, Chicago and the Smokey Mountains in the United States. I also got the opportunity to spend some serious time in the studio – this was incredibly valuable time, learning about studio lighting for product photography or portrait shoots was a skill that I would need if I was to forge a career as a photographer. After two years I left Tameside College with a Btec National Diploma with a distinction.

It was a hard decision to make – which university and which course to do after I left Tameside College. I had a job, at the time, as a collection driver in Droylsden, a town just down the road from Manchester. So I had to find a university that was close enough to Droylsden that I could make it to work on time. Fortunately Liverpool John Moores University offered a course at Stockport College, Stockport being close enough to Droylsden for me to make it to work on time in the afternoon. University, I found, was a lot more difficult than college for a variety of reasons – the amount of research that was expected to go into my projects, the academic writing that was required, my job and also at this time I was buying a house with my girlfriend and her young son. All these things made this particular time very hectic and as a photographer the thing I was doing least was taking photographs. Nevertheless I left Stockport College with my B.A Honours Degree and was lucky enough to get to travel to Poland and New York during my studies there.

Me and my baby boy!

After I finished my Degree at Stockport College my dream of becoming a photographer was put on hold for a little while. A new addition to our family had arrived in the shape of my little baby boy! This changed some of plans and decisions that I had to make at the time. Rather than leaving my job in Droylsden as I had planned, I decided to work work my way up the ladder and pursue a job in management. I worked for around a year ‘learning the ropes’ so to speak, before I got to manage my own office. Ironically this was the same office in Droylsden that I had worked from for the past ten years. Over the course of the two years that I was managing here I came to realise that it was not what I wanted to be doing. Although the money was great, happiness is best achieved by pursuing ones dreams. So the decision was made to hand in my notice and take my first steps into self-employment as a photographer- creating ASP Event Photography.

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