Where it all started

It's funny how people assume I've always been into photography, like my mum must have looked like a whale when she was pregnant with me because of my 70-200mm lens. When I say I do photography, no one ever asks how I got there; what happened that made me jump into it. Why photography and not pattern knitting?

I must admit, I do nothing to fight the myth. I live and breathe through my lenses and bore the hell out of everyone. When my daughter was born I thought we would become the couple with child that single and childless friends avoid from fear of talking dirty nappies and midnight vomits.  This didn't happen. I kept talking Lightroom2 and Photoshop, which still makes us the couple that single, childless friends AND families with young children avoid.

The truth is, I had a life before photography. Four years ago I thought Aperture was a brand of organic cosmetics. I used to do normal things like go out without a camera. When I looked at friends' holiday photos I didn't think that increasing contrast would add that extra bit of punch.

So how did I catch the disease? In 2006, I bought a DSLR camera: mistake #1! I even started taking photos with it: mistake #2! And then there was Suzie and Matt's wedding.
I naively brought my camera along, with one of my two lenses that came with the "starter kit". Like enthusiastic guests do, I started taking photos (I didn't know at that time that I was, in fact, pressing the shutter). We had a great time and went home. A few weeks later I made an album for them as a wedding gift, and upon looking at it Matt suddenly said "you could be a wedding photographer"! Looking back at those photos now I think he was just being extremely polite. Nonetheless, it got the ball rolling, and I've been matchmaking people ever since just to create weddings to shoot. Well, not exactly, but anyway, here are some shots I like from that very first experience: