Sport has always been a part of my life, I've been lucky to have inherited the passion from my dad and granddad. I remember the first time I watched part of a Formula One race on television and being fixated by the brightly coloured cars and the sound of the engines when I was very young. Watching and playing football throughout my school years, watching the dramatic moments for my team inspired me to dream I could maybe emulate my heroes one day. 

However, it was horse racing which took a firm grip and became a big part of my life. For most of my life I have lived in the same area as York racecourse, so family days out to the races were a common thing for me growing up. I didn't understand the concept of the sport back then like I do now, but the atmosphere and excitement stayed with me. Like most people, the Grand National was a big factor for my education of horse racing. Throughout my childhood, the National would be the only horse race I would watch every year, but the added excitement of picking a lucky number or favourite colour and seeing how the corresponding horse would perform in the race was memorable. I would visit my grandparents every weekend and always find my granddad scouring through pages and pages of horse racing facts and figures, working out which horse would win. I became fascinated by the process and algorithms involved and as I started to watch horse racing more frequently, I appreciated it a lot more. In the first year of being interested in horse racing, a horse named Zarkava won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and became the first filly in decades to win the race. That showed that there is always a potential story and excitement in any race. 

My passion for photography wouldn't be fully discovered until I went to college. Studying a print based media course, it also involved a photography module. It was during this module where I started to look closer into professional photographers like Edward Whitaker, a multi award winning photographer whose work features regularly in the Racing Post newspaper. I learned more about how photography can capture dramatic moments or significant pieces of history which can be kept forever. I picked up a SLR camera for the first time during this period as well, playing around with the settings and discovering there is a certain skill and artistry to capturing a good photograph, not just a point, click and hope for the best. The college course inspired me to buy a SLR camera of my own for the first time. My first camera was an Olympus E-540 SLR camera. I decided to combine my new found love of horse racing with my newly discovered interest of photography. I spent a lot of time travelling to York racecourse and Doncaster racecourse to take photographs of the horse racing action. 
As time went on, I felt like I could keep bettering myself. I started to expand my travel radar to Beverley and Newcastle, before in 2018 I decided to upgrade my ageing camera. I bought a Sony Alpha-68 SLR camera which I still use today and started to take my hobby more seriously. I had caught the bug and started to expand my horizons even further. In 2019, I can count off ten different racing venues which I attended that year. From York to Wetherby, Ripon to Thirsk, Newcastle to Sedgefield and Warwick to Wolverhampton, I started ticking off various locations of British racecourses. To date, I have covered twenty racecourse, the most Northern being Sedgefield and the Southernmost being Cheltenham.

When I hold a camera, my creativity starts to flourish. I love the feeling of accomplishment of having an idea of a unique image or a perfectly timed capture. I always try to keep my photos fresh, I try to sample with different angles or settings. A possible stereotype of photographers is to just point a camera in a certain direction and capture the same image repetitively, but I try to avoid that. I try to find ways of making images standing out. My favourite type of photograph is one with a slow shutter speed. This allows me to pan the lens in one direction, take an image but keep the subject in focus whilst the background is blurred. This gives the impression of the subject or subjects being 'frozen' in time while the surrounding area passes by. I also enjoy taking portrait images of horses before the start of a race. Capturing horses as they canter towards the starting point of their race can be a challenge depending on the mood of the horse. The more relaxed horses appear more natural but the occasional keen horse can look more excitable. 

Photography has become a big part of my life and it's something I'm glad to have a passion for. The creativity and sense of achievement that it brings is very rewarding, and hopefully this showcase of my work from recent years and into the future will be enjoyed by you, the viewer, as much as me, the photographer.

My Set Up:

Sony Alpha-68 Mirrorless SLR Camera
Tamron 18-300mm lens
ZoomBall mirror sphere

Canon EOS R6 Mirrorless SLR Camera
Canon 28-75mm lens
Sigma 100-400mm lens

Sigma 150-600mm lens