Turning fifty has a way of concentrating the mind.
I’d spent the previous twenty-odd years running Dimensions Displays, a creative manufacturing business. It kept the lights on and it kept me busy, but by 2019 it was clear that the landscape had shifted. The market had changed, margins had tightened, and I’d been grinding away at something that no longer felt like mine.
The photography had always been there in the background. I’d picked it up seriously again around 2005 — portraits mostly, performers, anyone who’d sit still long enough. If you knew me back then, you’d almost certainly had your picture taken. I’d built up a decent body of work, entered a few competitions, won a few. But it had always been a sideline. Something I did rather than something I was.
The Move That Changed Everything
The catalyst was moving premises. The new arch — Arch 267 in Camberwell — was about fifty percent bigger than the old one. That extra space changed everything. I could see immediately that one end of it could become a proper studio. Not a corner with a backdrop stand. An actual working space with controlled light, enough room to move, somewhere to bring clients.
Design School Never Really Leaves You
My background is in textile and woven textile design — I studied at the Scottish College of Textiles and did my MA at Central Saint Martins. That training never really leaves you. Design school teaches you to work iteratively: make something, look at it properly, adjust, repeat. I’d been applying that logic to manufacturing for years without really thinking about it. It turned out to be exactly the right mindset for photography.
Building the Studio
So I built it. It took longer than expected and cost more than budgeted, because that’s what building things always does. The before and after tells the story better than I can — what was a badly lit, damp-walled cave became something I was genuinely proud of. The pandemic arrived almost immediately afterwards, which was its own kind of test.
The Work That Came After
The studio survived it. The practice survived it. And somewhere between the lockdowns and the reopenings I stopped thinking of photography as something I did on the side and started thinking of it as the work.
If you want the full story of how the studio itself came together — the decisions, the problems, the lighting rig — that’s in another post.
How I Built a Photography Studio in a Camberwell Railway Arch