I found myself somewhere behind a camera lens, a place that defined a new way of living. But as it turned out, the circular nature of life simply revealed itself.  It was a reconnection.  During a period of profound grief in 2010, photographing sunsets was part of my healing. Along the way I found that photography is part of my DNA in a wide sense, eventually connecting that my grandfather was a photographer processing his own images in a dark room back in the 50s and 60s. And, that as a child I always had cheap little cameras at school and around family and friends. I'm told we both drove people mad taking their pictures all the time.  Finally I knew "this is the way"! My grandad was incredibly accomplished, and I grew up around stunning portraiture, dramatic wildlife images, and reportage photography from his time in Kenya and travels around the World.  Beautifully taken and presented, several still hang in my mum's house including these two above - a lion he must have been scarily close to, and a proud member of the Kikuyu tribe. Incredibly - the brand he bears is almost exactly the same as the one my Lusitano mare carries.  I have an enormous box of slides to go through and process one day, and I believe there is some very important work hidden away in his archive as it includes many images around the very difficult time of the Mau-Mau uprising and a time of huge change across the whole World as well of course as many family photos that need to see light of day.

After discovering a new way of seeing the World during that period of grief, I learned to look up, to live in the moment, and to be grateful for the World around us.  I photographed sunsets obsessively and developed my personal style and quest for meaning during this 5 year process.  I took thousands of pictures, entered endless competitions and did 52 challenges constantly. I found the sweet spot on the lenses I use, and then threw most of the images away. This cute little image was taken on the cliffs on Tintagel, on a teeny pocket camera, but was a moment of clarity when I found a way forward through unbearable loss, the lone seagull still soothes my soul even today.  And I still today believe in some way my brother handed me a beacon - a baton of creativity.  During this time I published the fine art collection in a book - "When the Sun Went Down at Widemouth" documenting the very best sundowns in this stunning location with a clear line of sight of the sun all year round.  I learned to seek the mystical in the moment as a way of understanding love,  grief, and beyond. The book featured giant guitars in the sky, bubbling cauldrons of colour on Halloween, the night the sky went blue blue electric blue when Bowie passed and many many more.  The very best sunsets from this time are still available in prints and gifts.

  A lifetime around musicians, creatives and artists now makes more sense to me as I reflect on life and photography.  I believe I was gently guided home, and this blessing of the people around me gave me a vivid palette of reference that underpins everything I do.   My brother was a musician, an artist, a storyteller, a creative in the true sense of the word.  He had many struggles in achieving what he wanted with his creativity, and at the time I failed to understand, he was so gifted, the struggle seemed strange.  Now having completed the series "the Iberian Horse in the English Landscape" where I travelled the length and breadth of the UK, I understand what it is to have a concept with artistic merit, with it's own voice,  and to try and bring that to fruition.  The constant battle of whether it's good enough, to believe in the concept, and still find the magic in the process amd the images themselves can be impossible to manage and creates huge vulnerability.  At the end of this series,  I was exhausted and emotional beyond measure (visual of this below!), and had to take a break from the work being my life for a while, but my passion for photography thankfully reignited.   I like to think there's a few pixels of my brother's creativity in every picture. I'm so grateful for this journey, which as I see as a gift from him.