Colour or black and white?
I love the way monochrome can strip a photograph back to light, texture, shape and atmosphere. It can remove distractions and give an image a quality that colour sometimes cannot.
But I don't believe every photograph should be black and white simply because that's the style I prefer.
Sometimes colour is the story.
The colourful hat against the shop window is a perfect example. Take away those colours and something important disappears with them. The photograph may still work in monochrome, but it would no longer say quite the same thing.
For me, the image has to make that decision.
If colour adds to the story, I keep it.
If colour distracts from what caught my attention, black and white will probably win.
Through My Eyes: The things we walk past
Sometimes we look. Sometimes we see. There is a difference.
Photography has taught me to notice things.
Not necessarily the grand landscape or the obvious view, but the little things we pass every day, a fleeting moment in the street, an unusual detail on a building, a reflection, a splash of colour or something weathered and forgotten.
Through My Eyes is about those moments.
There is no strict subject and no particular destination. It is simply about being curious, looking beyond the obvious and occasionally stopping when everyone else keeps walking.
Why did I stop?
That's a question I often ask myself when looking back through my photographs.
Sometimes the answer is obvious. A man passes a shop window wearing a wonderfully colourful hat, while another burst of almost matching colour appears behind him. For a few seconds everything comes together.
At other times it's something much smaller. Broken pieces of pottery embedded in an old surface, each fragment once belonging to something else. Look closely and there are patterns, words and tiny clues to another story.
Neither was something I went out intending to photograph.
I simply noticed them.
Hidden in plain sight
Some things don't reveal themselves immediately.
An extraordinary wall covered in shells, stones and patterns becomes more interesting the longer you study it. Initially you see the whole; then your eye begins wandering through the individual details.
That's one of the things I enjoy about photography.
The camera gives me an excuse to stop.
To look closer.
To wonder why something is there.
And sometimes to photograph something that another person might simply walk past.
Through My Eyes
This isn't really a project about finding spectacular subjects.
It's about finding something interesting in the ordinary.
I hope these photographs encourage you to explore more of my work, but I'd also like them to do something much simpler.
Next time you're walking somewhere familiar, slow down occasionally and look around.
Look into the reflections. Look at the old walls. Look above the shop fronts. Watch the people passing by. Notice the things that don't quite belong.
You don't even need a camera.
You might be surprised by what you've been walking past.