My Diary, intro

Classmates,

This diary will serve as a record of the journey I've commenced, with the help of the LCC course, to becoming a full-time documentary photographer/photojournalist focusing on the topics, projects and issues that have interested me as a photojournalist/documentary photographer. If during this transition I manage to carve out a decent living to accompany this lifelong goal.... then I will be one hell of a lucky person.

For me, like the most of us, this blogging is also a first. When I made the picture of the baby camera above earlier this summer, I was thinking it would serve as a logo for an old fashion business card.....the same week while viewing the graduate photography exhibition in the Hague Netherlands the students were asking not for a visit card but an internet address. Don't get me wrong I've been at the website photo-sales counter since the outset but those little requests for a blog address made me think.

I am astonished at the speed and development of the digital era and more than surprised at the complete shake-up or shake down of our newspaper industry over the past number of years....my last two post were on the picture desks of iffy national tabloids ........but that's part of the life in being involved in a technological revolution, which these days, is simply continuous. You never know what's around the corner.

I returned to the UK after enjoying the nineties and the first part of this decade, living, travelling and working in central and south east Europe, the Med basin and the near East from my base in Bucharest, Romania..........As people in a similar situation you can imagine my amazement at the change of attitude towards the status of the once respected press photographer. It all got summed up in a footnote on the BBC's website news pages inviting the world's citizens to help out and donate their pictures to the agency with a short line cautioning them on laws and personal safety.
Everyone was now the worlds press.......but strangely enough....rather than humble our work as professionals, it seems this surge in cheaper digital visual communication has enhanced the general public's awareness, appreciation and appetite for the best photography this remarkable medium has to offer.....we need to find new highways and by-ways to feed that hunger. For me, as a student once again, the LCC programme is a revolution in itself. A programme that has stepped forward in a time of change to lead and guide...........so good luck to ye all and lets work as a team to achieve our common aims.............