THE ODD TREE

Some people pick up a camera...

...for the first time because they want to shoot birds or an event. Some because they are of a younger generation than myself and they have grown up with having one as part of their mobile phone, it is fun and instinctive and they want to share their lives with others. There are many valid reasons to pick up a camera and start making pictures - and I am no snob, I have seen stunning, surprising and unforgettable imagery emerge from a plethora of different devices, made by people with very little or an incredible amount of experience. At the end of the day it is not about what you see, it is about how you see.

That I am bewitched by images that come from simple boxes with only an aperture the size of a pin; that I have dreamed of, and am still yet to own, a 1950's Hasselblad 500C and use it to take cinematic medium format pictures of my beautiful wife looking like the Bond girl that she is; that I have always preferred the depths of tone that can only be found in black and white film imagery...except for my guilty pleasure in highly saturated night time photography (the kind that makes you imagine a night in 1960's Berlin); and I regularly take out my Nikon with a vintage Carl Zeiss manual prime attached as its results make my heart sing - all this is personal taste that's come from years of exploring how I myself want to make pictures, and the work I have seen which I most admire.

I started as most 80's kids did, using single-use cameras and waiting impatiently for an hour (if I'd just had my pocket money) or a week before skipping into Supasnaps to see how many of my pictures had 'come out' and how many were a brown-black smudge with some blurry lens flare in the top corner (prints from which stems my love of grain). I used my mum's Polaroid...ten shots per year... I dedicated hours of study for years, making pictures this way, and in graphite, charcoal, oils, acrylics and spray paints - portraits, landscapes, made up worlds. I went where my curiosity and heart led me, trying to find the medium that would allow me to make my pictures and say what I wanted to say, to tell what I had seen and wanted others to see.

And so here we are. No doubt some might say I should keep this blog for my wedding or commercial work only. But the style, quality and composition of my work has come from, and will continue to evolve through, my total life's work. To endeavour as I always have to improve and to create, is something I think is right to share with you, so you know when we work together, where the passion and the ideas come from. I love that I have found my medium, and I love that it has enabled me to collaborate and work together with some exciting people, share fun and joy with some amazing couples and families, and see some beautiful places - but most of all it has allowed me to continue in my childhood pursuit of recording the beauty in the everyday.

If any of the above has resonated with you - check out my personal instagram: @escott_pictures