Exhibition at the Atkins Building is Up and Ready!!

This has been a long time coming.  Probably for as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to be the sort of person who could put on an exhibit. I remember being 8 years old and asking for a camera because I wanted to produce the sort of photographs I admired from others. I always had a fascination with the family albums and our slide projector. I was forever asking to put on a slideshow, much to my parents annoyance. I remember vividly loving some photographs of me as a baby sitting on a shag carpet with the light coming in from a window to the side and thinking it was a fantastic photo. I realise now that I was already admiring good available light. I might dig that photo up one day and post it actually.

So finally I’ve done it. My work is on display and it is everything I wanted it to be and more. I didn’t realise how much seeing all these images in print would mean to me. I spend so much time working on them on a computer and sharing them on social media that I don’t get to have a lot of these in print. Of course my clients do but they don’t stay with me for long before my clients come to collect them.

It made me realise how much more impact a print has over a digital image. When I saw for the first time some of my portraits framed I actually felt a little emotional to the point where I had a lump in my throat. These are images I’ve worked on over and over again, either preparing them for clients, competitions, my Fellowship and for social media. I would have thought they would have lost their impact on me by now. But the way I feel when I see an image digitally is nothing compared to the feeling I had when I collected my work from the framers.  Jo from The Frame Game in Hinckley does all my framing.  She did a fantastic job, as she always does for me.

I am now incredibly excited for the preview night on Friday May 15th. I keep getting emotional thinking about it and seriously hope I can hold it together on the night.

I can finally say that I am where I’ve always wanted to be and doing what I love. I’ve heard it said before that if you do what you love for a living you will never work a day in your life. That feels so true for me because so much of what I do feels nothing like work. Even as I write this now I’m happy to be doing so.

The Atkins building is a superb venue for this event and I’m so pleased with all the help and support from Hinckley council in putting this all together. My exhibit will be running through to June 1st and as I mentioned above we are hosting a preview night on Friday May 15th starting from 7pm. All are welcome and the more the merrier.  So if you are in the area I’d love to see you there.