Public Outcome

by LEN Final Major Project

The goal I set myself was to get my work out to the widest audience possible and for it to have meaning. The process of photographing my project has helped me through the most difficult time of my life. An intent of my work is to help other people in similar circumstances.

Multiple Sclerosis Society

My work is to be published in the MS Society magazine in 2021 and will go to 26,000 members. Additionally there will be a major press release in the UK at the end of January reporting on my project and the process of doing it. It is expected this will get national press coverage.

This choice of public outcome is targetted at people who are now going through what I went through as the spouse of someone with chronic MS who then died. I never thought I would be happy again, I wanted to die and I have survived. It was not easy is part of the message.

Espacio14

My project will be exhibited at Espacio14 in Spain over March/April 2021. The intent in this space is again to help others who are experiencing the intensity of emotion I went through. This exhibition is also to publicly further build my artistic presence.

We are all at the mercy of COVID-19 restrictions. Ordinarily there would be massive footfall during the Easter Holidays with tourists from all over the world. Espacio14 is in the basket weaving town of Gata de Gorgos, one of the tourist hot spots of the Costa Blanca.

YouTube Video

This channel is all about getting to the global market to help a wider audience and broaden its artistic footprint. The video will contain the images from my exhibition plus many others. There will be voiceover and music composed by Deniz Güngören the work to deepen the experience of the work. The aim is not to explain the images but to deepen the experience of them.

The video will be entered in to short film category of the Nottingham International Film Festival being held in November 2021.

Categories: Final Major Project, Project Development FMP

LEN

I am a Photographer. As well as taking many photographs I am currently studying for an MA in Photography at Falmouth University. I will direct my attention through the lens of my camera for the next couple of years and see what shows up. I see a photograph as a little bit of magic capturing a moment in time. If successful it surprises and engages your emotions. It tells a story about the wonders of being alive or tells us what we need to change to make it a better world to live in. That is enough for me to get going and then like walking a 1000 miles, which I did across the UK in 2010, or walking 200 miles across Cyprus, which I did in November last year, it is one step at a time.

I was a writer. The title of my unpublished book was ‘You Would Have Done The Same.' It is about a successful guy in love with his wife who lets her die when he discovers her in the process of committing suicide. The title gives a clue as to what I think you would have done. The book is 200 pages long. I found it cathartic to write it but after two years of work and reviewing with agents decided it probably needed another 2000 hours to get the whole book up to the standard of some of the pages. Writing is great but it is a lot of sitting down so I decided to get out and walk, play tennis, play bridge, go birding, watch football at Nottingham Forest, Arsenal and Valencia and anywhere else if I can, meditate, cook and eat. I was a writer who has so far failed to become an author.
I was a young man who loved Mathematics and thoroughly enjoyed getting a BSc at Liverpool University. While there I went often to Anfield and the Philharmonic Hall. I was all set on doing a PhD until I went for interview practice at BP and got seduced by the excitement of an International business career. BP was a great adventure building trading teams and businesses in London, Antwerp, Cleveland Ohio and Singapore. Fabulous people and some great challenges and also very hard work, constant jet lag and lots of fun along the way. I married Karen, my stunning wife, and had the most amazing time with her and our three boys Alex, Tom and Dan. She has multiple sclerosis and we have taken on many challenges together but somehow keep creating a new normal against the horrors thrown our way. She is the love of my life.

After BP I decided to coach senior executives and quickly realized I had a lot to learn
about what makes people tick. I had a fantastic 18 months on the International Programme of the Cleveland Gestalt Institute. A great faculty and a
wonderful group of people on the programme. We studied and worked in Dingle, Singapore, Holland, Cape Town and
Lisbon. This also got me interested in the way we think and make decisions so I studied for an MSc in Psychology atUniversity College London in 2010. The
Masters was in Cognitive and Decision Sciences and I found it fascinating what
we do know but also how much we don’t know about how we think and make
decisions.

I loved coaching and making a difference. I got a number of people to hear themselves, remove some of their own chains and free up the way they thought about the world. I remain fascinated by how people react to and engage with the world. My Masters thesis was why do two people given the same information make different decisions? Put simply, it is because each of us are unique in the way we are constructed.

Since returning from Singapore I found English winters tough so moved to Spain where I now live. The people are lovely, the scenery amazing, food delicious and the sun shines all the time. Almost.

All of these experiences will feed in to my time now as a Photographer. Three motivations I am lucky to have are enthusiasm, curiosity and a continuous interest in learning. All the time I look forward to meeting old friends and making new friends and experiencing this wonderful life together.