After a busy few weeks in the grips of Summer holidays and mid summer magazine deadlines, I’ve accidentally found myself re-visiting where my passions and influences stemmed from.
I’ve been looking over old work and ways in which I’ve incorporated my passion for conservation into my passion for media communication, which I’ve found myself doing for the purpose of organising a series of photos that I hope depict the nature of zoos. It’s been a fascinating experience of reflecting, and I’ve come to the conclusion that when you’re an ambitious person, you can become so focused on making steps forward that you can forget to take a look back once in a while , to remember how far you’ve come and why…
I think the seeds of my ambition were sown when I was around the age of 14. Somehow ideas of being a journalist (or as I quite arrogantly like to position myself; an educational story teller) had entered my head at a very young age – perhaps from the days where my nan had taken me down to her local newsagent-cum-grocers just down the road from her front door, handed me a couple of coins and told me I could pick any one of the “comics” to take home.
I’d stand for ages, fussed over by the gentle old couple that ran the little independent store; just staring at all the colourful glossy pages until the two pound coins in my palm were warm by the time the decision was made and I finally handed them over. I usually opted for a Disney-owned children’s magazine called Big Time, in case you were wondering.
But it was at the age of 14 that the first of my own articles was published. I rushed into WHSmith the same morning that the magazine hit the shelves, only a humble regional magazine, but a magazine that I could open up and feel the buzz of seeing my own name, nonetheless. And the article topic? A local wildlife park.
A featured photograph of a serval critiqued in Photography Monthly magazine followed, and I was hooked.
To add to this, I’ve also recently unearthed my old A-Level photography project – based on the concept of freedom. I think exploring the thought processes of my 17 year old self, just months away from making my well-planned trip to Shamwari is teaching me that my passions, interests and ambitions have long been mixed and entwined, and – hopefully – long will they be.
I’m sure there will be more to follow on this musing – there’s probably some great purpose for re-connecting with this thought, and may some divine intervention will come along to prove that, but in the mean time – here’s that series of photos I mentioned:
Through Captive Eyes.
