Where did it all begin?
One of the most common questions I get asked is “how did you get into photography?” so I figured for this month’s blog, it would be fun to walk you through how I got into photography as a full time career.
I’ve always been an arty type, always the kid who carried a sketchbook around at school and could be found drawing in lessons rather than doing the work. And as a creative human, when I got my hands on a DSLR in my teens, naturally I wanted to take arty photos of everything in and around my life.
I would photograph all the horses we had at home, the cats, the handful of sheep we owned, as well as the natural world around me and anything else that caught my fancy (I once took a really pretty photo of some mud at golden hour and I’m still impressed with how inventive that idea was!).
When I reached college (A place that was very much my personal hell - I hated formal education), I took up photography at A level.
I did art for my GCSEs, and it was the only subject I managed to get an A in, but unfortunately my perfectionism and obsessive nature ruined the subject for me when things were never good enough for my standards. It was during this period that I first started experiencing panic attacks as a result.
So, when it came to college, I still wanted to do an artistic subject, but didn’t want the pressure of fine art, so photography was the obvious choice in my eyes.
We had to choose a subject for our project to be on over the course of the school year, and being the horse mad child I was (And still am), I linked it to horses, specifically, hunting.
I took a few days off over the college year to follow hounds on my pushbike with my camera swinging around my neck, and my passion really started to come alive.
Funnily, I was failing photography in college (Oh how I’d love my teacher to see me now, I certainly wasn’t her favourite student at the best of times!) As soon as I got my driving license, I dropped out of college and started working part time as a groom, a job which I soon realised wasn’t my calling in life.
But over the next 3 years of working with horses, I was still following my local hunt with a camera around my neck, and it was where SkyLimit Photography was born.
It was on the hunting field that I began to get to grips with the very basics of photography, learning how to shoot in manual mode, basic editing, and trying my damnedest to make my photos sharper and less grainy.
The early days, winter 2013!
When I saw a local yard was looking for a regular event photographer, even though I was locked in a 6 day a week contract as a groom for another month, I reached out and said I’d do it.
That was the step that really made me see this as a viable business, a way out from being a groom and following my heart to become a photographer.
From there I reached out to other equestrian centres to cover their events, began to push for private shoot work, learnt how to use off camera flash, and moulded SkyLimit photography into what you see today (This is obviously the “life at a glance” version of the SLP story, it was a lot more complex than this paragraph lets on!)
It’s been one hell of a journey so far, with non stop lessons to be learnt, huge challenges faced, and some unreal “pinch me” moments. I really am blessed to be trusted to capture portraits of people’s beloved horses and dogs for a living, it’s such an honour and a privilege, and I can’t wait to see what the next few years of this ever changing career will bring me.
