Julian

I’m a photographer living in Brighton, on the south coast of the UK (that’s my wife and partner Jessica, she’s a photographer too).  I’m British but have lived all over.  My dad was an aircraft mechanic and he moved us out to Saudi Arabia in the early 80’s.  It might sound strange, but imagine the kids in E.T.  Thats kind what it was like, on a compound for westerners, riding around on my Raleigh Chopper Junior with all the other kids.  It could have been southern California for all we cared.  Palm trees, pools, HEAT!  I think this wet my appetite for travel.  That said, I’m not the most traveled person, but I don’t think I would have so easily fallen for an American (Jessica is one) if it weren’t for my early introduction to people from different tribes, and learning early on that we’re all the same really, regardless of what we look or sound like.  I met Jessica in 2003 while she was studying in London.  We married in 2004 and moved to San Francisco later that year when she graduated.  She’s a photographer too, but from a different background.  She has three degrees in Photography and fine art.  Photography was part of my life from quite early on.  I fell in love with cameras as opposed to photographs.  I was given a small 110 type camera when I was maybe 8.  I remember taking it on a school trip in primary school.  My brother then gave me a Kodak Disk camera – it was a strange format, a disk kind of like the one you put in a viewmaster, tiny negatives, not very good in the grander scheme of things.  I remember my mum teaching me a little about composure, about using the environment to frame a shot.  My dad bought my brother and I an Olympus OM1 SLR to share when I was about 14.  My school had a dark room but non of the teachers knew how to use it.  I think it was a substitute teacher who showed my best friend an I how to develop and print black and white film.  Since we were basically the only kids who knew how to use it the dark room became our exclusive room in school.  We hid out there as much as possible.

When I left school I went to the only photography shop in town and asked the guy there if he had any jobs.  His assistant had just left so I became the knew one – helping him out on a few shoots but mainly running his shop which was the only 1hour photo place in town.  He had a Fuji Minilab that he taught me to use.  I handled a lot of film, and got to develop and print my own photos at a pretty good discount.  He allowed me to use his discount at the camera shop he used to buy my first Canon EOS SLR.  I think it was a EOS 500 (this was all pre-digital remember).  I saved my wages and a year later quit and went travelling with a couple of friends.  We were 18 and didn’t have a clue what we were doing.  We bought a month Greyhound pass and spent that month travelling across the states, from D.C. to LA.  It was pretty interesting to say the least and I used my Canon a lot.  We flew from LA to Sydney and spent three months working there.  We worked temp jobs, them in kitchens and me in an office, and saved up a bunch of cash so that we could fly up to Darwin and buy a camper van and spend the next 6 weeks travelling back, down the east coast of Australia, finally arriving in Melbourne.  .