I first met photography in February 2020, my last year of secondary school. Since that moment, our relationship has bloomed into something rather beautiful.

Throughout my secondary school years, I struggled with my mental health, leading me to not care about my schoolwork, personal interests, or my future whatsoever. Growing up in a family filled with creative people I had always been in touch with my creative side, however as I began to lose myself, I also temporarily lost the creative part of me.

During my GCSEs I was very disengaged and struggled to keep up with the workload. One day however, thanks to my lovely art teacher, I happened to pick up a camera. I was clueless at the time, but this was a pivotal point in my life. Miss Bowie had suggested I take some “quick snapshots” using a 2000s digital camera that probably cost the school £5 on eBay. Little did I know that taking these “quick snapshots” would lead me to spending hours upon hours thinking about every tiny detail.

I then went on to study photography at college where my love grew even stronger, and I achieved 100% at the end of the course.

Photography has not only helped me to overcome challenges, but contingently inspires me to grow. Photography pushes me to deeply explore my beliefs and interests, such as, philosophy, psychology, and spirituality. I use my work to get to know myself of a deeper level, to talk about these subjects, and to send positive messages to the outside world. I love working with self-portraits as I find they allow me to do all three of these things with my images.

Seeing myself in my work creates a personal bond between myself and my work. I create my work with the intention of reaching both outwards and inwards – the meaning behind my images is important to me and simultaneously benefits others. This is hugely inspired by photographer Cindy Sherman who uses self-portraits to send messages that are not only important to her, but also important to the wider world.

To create my images, my working process often involves pre- production manipulation, for example cling film wrapped around my face, experimentation with angles and lighting using my DSLR camera, and finally post-production manipulation using adobe photoshop. I am a skilled photoshop user which is a huge part of my work – I use this manipulation tool to conjoin images with my imagination.

I am currently doing an art foundation course that explores lots of different areas of art and design. I have been experimenting with processes such as printing, 3D design, textiles, and graphics. In each area I am building in my photography and style, broadening my horizons by experimenting with ways that photography can merge with other art forms.

My creativity has been enriched by the connections I have made on this course. I am surrounded by people from different backgrounds and cultures which has inspired my work in new ways.

I have given myself tasters of the photography industry through work experience, charity work and helping out at school. I spent a week working with Jaqueline Ferguson at Penn Road Studios to get a deeper insight into what a day as a photographer is like. From this I learnt that there are many different purposes of photography – capturing moments and memories, communicating emotions to others, broadcasting messages to the world, and many more.

As much as I do not want to work in the exact same field (family/ group/ individual portraits) it was a very positive experience for me as I learnt skills that I will need in many areas of photography, such as how to make the model feel comfortable, what message I want my image to portray, the deeper meaning and story line behind my work, the target audience I am trying to reach.

I feel very strongly about my future career creating a positive impact on others, for example mental health advocating, art therapy, photo journalism. I believe this is because it has always been in my nature to want to create a positive impact on others and the world around me as it makes me feel such a sense of fulfilment.

I do not have a set plan for my future, but I know that whatever I am doing, I will be making a positive impact on others with a camera in my hand.