Rediscovering the passion...

It has been years since I picked up a camera. Not like the snapchatting, facetiming video camera on the back of my iphone, but an actualy DSLR camera with the ISO's and Apertures etc... Back in my GCSE days, when photography was my favourite subject, I loved capturing images of everything. I would take photos of trees, the sky, people who didn't know they were being photographed. Hours were spent poorly editing them on Photoshop, trying to understand the point of the contrast buttons and why my pictures were always so grainy. It was something I was passionate about, but as soon as the course ended I dropped it.

Why?

Because I found DRAMA. Acting and directing, writing plays and expressing myself through words rather than images. Well, that's what I thought at first. It took up until a few weeks ago to realise how actors and photographers are actually quite similar. We both look for the perfect image. Not in the sense of appearance, although that is a part of it, but also what happens on the stage. The stage for an actor; where you're standing, how you are connected to the other characters, facial expressions, movements across the space. How this is represented by the words you speak and the images that the audience can see. For a photographer, these are the factors that can make a great image. You look for the subject, why there are there, and what are they doing? You try and capture the moments which look the best in your eye, and this is something that actors do the entire time they are performing.

Once I had noticed these connections, I thought to myself, why not combine the two? To use my abilities as an actor and director, alongside my photographic skills and creative insight to merge the two areas together. To focus on grasping the emotions being portrayed on stage by capturing the image which will show this in a still picture.

With this in mind, I find myself embarking on a journey, to understand the use of imagery and filmmography, and how we can take the moment, and keep it forever.