I must have spent a small fortune on flashy cameras, crystal clear lenses, and all sorts of shady lighting gadgets in my 40 year obsession with photography.

Yeah, pursuing image perfection is a trait expected of us professional photographers. It’s right to give the client the best we can. I’ll continue with that, of course.

Actually though, what is ‘the best we can’?

Last week I turned my bedroom back into my darkroom, for a season of pinhole photography.

I took my first pinhole photographs back in the mid 1990s.

Pinhole photography is uncontrollable, unpredictable, surprising, exciting, a bit grubby, a bit old school, unsophisticated, authentic. It’s about the shadows as much as about the brighter shades. It shows your weaknesses, your shabbiness. It takes effort. It responds to the effort you put in.

Pinhole photography is just like those friends you love dearly.

It energises my soul, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Jerome