The food photography business has been good to me over the years. 

I started taking pictures of food commercially over 20 years ago in the booming eighties.  The whole business was very different then compared to now!

Over these years I have seen many changes; not only with the style and trend of food photography but also in the work ethic, the people in the industry, the respect for the industry as a whole, and the quality of imagery being produced.

In the eighties the industry was in a boom period.  At the time I was starting out and rented some studio space in the Isle of Dogs, which at the time was  dusty enterpriser zone, with no business rates fr businesses moving into the area for the first couple of years.  This was a great incentive for me, and naively, took out a lease on a fifth floor unit  in a  "not quite completed" refurbishment of an old chemical factory in Westferry Road.

Before hand I had been working for a camera distributor, LAPtech Studio Workshop, owned by Laurie Atkinson.  In my time at LAPtech I had visited dozens of professional, commercial, fashion, food, social, still life and any other sort of studios.  My boss, and a Director of LAPtech,  Kevin Turner, (who I still have the utmost respect for) was the finest sales person you could imagine.  A gift that he never managed to pass on to me (however many hours he tried!).  What I did learn whilst working there was that on the whole, photographers relied on their talent to bring them work. Very little marketing, advertising, networking or any other sort of  promotion was well planned or expedited.  Every studio that I visited seemed to be filled with a magnitude of relaxed creativity, and great laid-back atmosphere.  I decided that I wanted to be like them.

So there I was in my 1200 square foot "not quite finished" studio on the fifth floor of a "not quite finished" old chemical factory.
My ingredients for success (excuse the pun): 

• No clients,
• No portfolio,
• buckets of optimism
• pipe dream to sprinkle on the top.

                                                      More to follow soon.....
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