Artists statement

To be completely honest with you I don’t think my photo taking was very technical, it was very emotionally driven. The photos I have chosen are there because they hopefully portray a certain emotional connection between people. I wanted my photos to portray the people I love, my family and friends, in gatherings and good times that we share everyday. Most are un-posed and the subjects are usually not overly aware of the camera being there.

This brings me to one technical aspect of the photographs. I have taken most with an aperture of f/2.8 with my camera set to aperture priority, so that the remainder of the settings are automatically adjusted. This means that some of the photographs are blurred or out of focus, my justification for this comes back to a quote I read by Nan Goldin-

“I take blurred pictures, because I take pictures no matter what the light is. If I want to take a picture, I do not care if there is light or no light. If I want to take a picture, I take it no matter what. Sometimes I use very low shutter speed and they come out blurred…”

The most important reason for me doing this was that I didn’t want to use a flash in my photos, I feel that it can be very intrusive and means that the people being photographed are always conscious of the camera. I also wanted to capture the lighting in certain settings, not make it seem as though the area was well lit and bright when in fact it wasn’t at all.