Back on track

Train departing from Manchester Piccadilly station

The Transpennine route from Scarborough to Manchester is a rail journey that i got to know well during my student years. From 1994 to 1998 i used to travel this route on a semi regular basis; today i was on it again for the first time in ten years.

The photographer sat on the train today was very different from the photographer who sat doing a similar journey ten years ago. The two years of the photography degree had taken their toll. I was burnt out creatively and disillusioned with photography. Worst of all, the confidence i had to produce great images seemed to have gone. It had been shot to pieces and i just seemed to lack any direction.

A decade later (almost to the month!) i feel completely different about my work and the art of photography. It took a few years to be fully able to get that passion for photography back but it came back slowly. Some of that passion was reignited by digital photography, some of it was from a clearer and broader understanding of what photographic direction i should take. I'm certainly no longer that 'lost' photographer i was when i was 26, on a train heading to Manchester Piccadilly.