Heart Matters Magazine

It is my personal work that leads me to getting fun commissions. The self funded and self organised work of a photographer is often what defines them, it is the thing that makes them individual and interesting. Everyone has been commissioned to shoot the same old things, by doing personal work I can expand my portfolio and find out new ways to take photos. If I did not do personal work I would be just like everyone else. It is my personal work that helps me stand out and get commissioned to shoot the more fun assignments.

My People and Animals project makes up a large part of my current printed portfolio. It is a totally self funded and self organised project that has taken up a lot of my time. When visiting Johanna Ward, the picture editor at Wardour publishing, she knew that my animal images would interest Rob who art directs Heart Matters magazine, the images from the project went down really well. A few weeks later whilst speaking with Rob on the phone he tells me that his client loves my animals shots (almost all from my personal work) and that he wants to send me to a beach to shoot the front cover of his magazine. I was well up for it - messing about on a beach with a camera sounded like my perfect day. On top of that he wanted to make the story about a man and his dog - I knew the perfect person to contact.

I photographed Jim as part of my people and animals project on his farm in Devon a while back. And when given this shoot I gave him a quick call to see if he wanted to take part and star with one of his beautiful dogs on the magazine's cover. Jim was well up for it and took the day off from looking after the farm to mess about on the beach with me and my camera.

It was a lovely and warm day when we did the shoot near Exmouth. Jim was a star pretending it was not a hot summer day and that it was actually November. It was great to see Jim, Penny and their dogs again and give something back to say thank you for taking part in my personal project.