About me:

Who are you?

My name is Gill. I live in St Albans in Hertfordshire, UK and I’m currently 57.

I am a Chartered Tax advisor and a Chartered Management Accountant. My specialism is the taxation of individuals and businesses including sole traders, partnerships and owner-managed companies. Many would say it’s very mundane but it is interesting and incredibly varied, admittedly if you like that sort of thing. I am also a very keen amateur photographer.

Tell us about your Photography Journey.

First and foremost – I was never a creative person. I hated art at school.

If handed a pencil, ruler and piece of paper and asked to draw a straight line, despite my best efforts, the result would have looked similar to the Lake District skyline.

At the age of 9 or 10, my school offered a very short photography course. Now, this sounds like a very grand set-up but it basically consisted of the school caretaker spending a few hours showing us some photography skills. The cynic in me wonders if it was just a way to get the school to fund his hobby. He was a lovely old chap so I guess the school were pleased to do it.

We had to work in pairs and my friend and I were given a camera and told to go and take some photos. I don’t recall what we decided to photograph but we duly went out to get our photos. Then, in my mind, the fun and magic began. The caretaker had set up a darkroom in the basement of the school. I remember some spiders, cobwebs and the smell of damp. However, once the process of developing the film and producing the prints started, with the magical equipment & troughs of various liquids, any worry about spiders quickly disappeared. It was a wonderful experience I still remember all these years later. Everyday life & growing up took over and the short experience was put to one side.

Over the course of many years, I owned a few point-and-shoot cameras. The results were usually pretty rubbish. Saving up to get the prints developed in Boots only to find that half of the images had the little stickers on to say something had gone wrong was really disappointing. Somewhere around 2009, I purchased a Canon 350D together with a copy of Photoshop Elements 7. I did manage to get a few quite nice photos but on the whole, still pretty rubbish.

Early last year, wanting to get back into photography I did some research for photography courses. There were a few with an online offering which suited my work-life balance. The reviews for The School of Photography were all excellent and the price seemed very reasonable. What’s the catch, could it really be this good? I rather hesitantly joined The School of Photography in February 2023.

No catch and yes, it really is as good as the reviews!!

I really wanted to dive in and complete the Photoshop course first but all of the instructions suggested it was really best to complete the beginner course first, then Lightroom, then the Photoshop course. They were right of course!

The first course was therefore the Beginners Photography Course.

Wow – what a course! Marc broke everything down step by step. Using a set of kitchen scales to demonstrate the balance between each of the elements was inspirational!

I started the course using my old Canon 350D – it still worked. Getting rather fed-up with my comments about ‘Oh my camera doesn’t have that button’ while trying to follow the course, my lovely partner Steve bought me a Canon R10 to work with.

Next up was the Lightroom course.

There weren’t trays of various liquids sloshing around but to be able to learn and control so much in each photo was amazing.

Finally, I made it to the Photoshop course!

What can I say – apart from a really big ‘thank you’.

In the meantime, there are the monthly assignments. These really get you thinking about different aspects & styles of photography and a really good push to go and get some photos which are way beyond your comfort zone or utilise different techniques.

There is also the members’ area and Facebook. What a great bunch of members. All are at different stages of learning and ability. The whole group is really supportive and encouraging. To be honest, at times it can be a little disheartening – there are so many amazing images posted every day. ‘I’ll never get to be that good’. But slowly, with lots of practice and then some more practice you can see your photos slowly getting better and better. That is a big reward! I’ve still got a long way to go.

I have also completed the courses: Guide To Studio Lighting & Portrait Re-touching (excellent).

I’m partway through the Long Exposure course, the Trudy Kepke Fine Art Landscape course and the Oliver Wright Macro course – all of which I’m enjoying and really need to finish.

A by-product of joining TSOP – I notice so much more, be it the surroundings that I have walked past every day for years or such things as light or the use of colour in advertisements and films.

What’s Next For Gill?

A difficult question to answer.

As you can see from the photos below, I enjoy photographing the ‘little people’ as they have come to be known. I want to continue with this and hope to create more. Beyond this, it will depend on where the mood takes me and the new challenges TSOP presents.

Oh, in case you were wondering, I still can’t draw a straight line with a pencil and ruler but I now know how to do it in Photoshop!