Having been behind the camera since 1987 with varying intensity, photography has been close to my heart ever since. It has been a journey with a lot of discovery and experimenting. From having my first exhibition in Zwolle in 1990 and a little photography business, to happy snapper and hardly touching a camera at all when we were living in Northampton. The last 8 years with a studio in Heino, close to my hometown in Zwolle, the photography was a head on commercial business, specialising in corporate and advertising photography, product and interiors. I also did some editorial work and to a certain extend, those images were more liberating. As a commercial photographer with a marketing background I have always had the communication goal of the client in the back of my mind when creating an image.
That commercial drive was good for my clients and subsequently for my business, but made it hard or even impossible to switch off and do my own thing. Not that you can't be creative in commercial assignments, but that is more related to creating the right look and feel of an image in order to make an impact. Of course some commercial images clearly have my signature, whatever that means, but it is not free work.
A number of times I have come up with ideas of starting various projects and discussed these with friends. I have envisaged some images in my head and still like some of them if I think about it, but I have never actually done it. Running a little photography business 7 days a week leaves little time to reflect and switch of to think about the next step to grow the business. The commercial impact of some of the images I have drawn up in my head were influencing the execution of it and some of the project ideas I had were in hindsight just there to make the business grow. So I was exploring a dead end road.
Now having moved back to the UK with main professional emphasis on marketing and with photography only being a part of it, opportunities for free projects are more within reach. And when I learned of the Portrait of Britain public art competition back in June 2016, I have followed the project with great interest.