My first serious forays into photography were very clandestine. I was working in London as an art director in a large advertising agency and found that photography came as a private creative release for me. I could think of an idea and execute it exactly how I wanted without needing approval from the committees of clients and creative directors.
I began taking photographs by moonlight in 2006 during a trip to Japan to art direct a car shoot . We had commissioned a Japanese photographer, Satoshi Minakawa, who at the time was taking amazing nightscapes in and around Tokyo. One of our ads was set against a backdrop of Mount Fuji and on the day of our shoot we were lucky enough to have a clear skies and a full moon so we shot it at night.
Satoshi used a large format film camera, with exposures lasting up to an hour, so I had plenty of time to experiment with my recently bought digital camera. I didn't have a tripod but I found that by resting the camera on a glove on the ground and shooting for 30 seconds, I could get a half decent picture (nothing in comparison to Satoshi's though).
It was enough to get me hooked and on pretty much every full moon since I have been out with a camera, in and around Brighton where I live or wherever I happen to be.
This blog is a journal of my photographic journey and how it emerged from the darkness and into the light.
