How i Found Photography

In the space of a year I had gone from penthouses and living the party lifestyle to losing everything.

What followed were four years of homelessness.

By December 2019 I was at one of the worst points of my life. My Sister, who i hadnt spoken to properly for years, had just committed suicide and My 25 year drug addiction had spiralled out of control and taken me to places I never thought I would go.

I was broken, and had given up on ever getting out of my situation.

I was living in a homeless hostel when my key worker, Jess Parker, introduced me to The Matthew Project, a local drug and alcohol charity.

While waiting for my recovery programme to begin, I attended a weekly photography drop in session. We were given a point and shoot camera, a short introduction to the exposure triangle, and sent out to take photographs.

I took to it instantly.

I loved how you could manipulate an image in camera using manual settings.

At the end of the session the tutor, Mark Allen, told me I had a natural eye for composition and that I had taken some strong images.

I had to Google what composition meant.

But it was the first time anyone had ever told me I was good at something.

I had just started my recovery programme when COVID hit and the centre closed. I was worried about going back to a hostel full of the hard drugs I was trying to kick. I had a couple of hundred pounds in my bank and was close to going out to score when, for some reason, another thought crossed my mind.

Buy a camera, then I'll have no money to buy drugs with.

I found a second hand Canon Rebel Xti (400d) on Amazon and bought it straight away, expecting my camera to turn up the next day.

What I did not realise was that I had accidentally ordered it from the US Amazon instead of the UK.

So I had to wait nearly four weeks for it to arrive.

When it finally turned up it did not have a memory card.

And I did not have the £50 needed to buy the compact flash card it required.

So the camera I had waited four weeks for could not actually take photos.

The camera would let me take one photo without the card. I could look at it on the screen. When I took the next photo, the first one disappeared.

So for a while I did the only thing I could do.

I read the manual.I watched YouTube videos.And I learned the camera inside out.

Eventually I managed to get the memory card I needed and spent the rest of lockdown walking around with my camera, teaching myself photography through YouTube.

I started an Instagram account and began posting, and the comments were pretty positive.

One night during one of my ADHD hyper moments, when I suddenly think I am brilliant at everything, I decided to search online for photography groups.

That is when I saw an advert for a photography degree at Norwich University of the Arts.

I thought about it for a moment.

Then I thought,

Fuck it. Why not.

Four years later I am about to graduate.

Photography started as a form of self therapy. It gave me a way to get out, overcome my depression and anxiety, and rebuild my life without drugs.

Today I work under the name Street Shots, a play on words that reflects where I came from and what helped me turn things around.

Photography not only changed my life.

It saved my life.