What got you to make that conscious decision? Or was that sort of initially an accident and you thought that kind of works?

I think I'd be lying to say it was intentional.

When I started photography, I remember after, you know, being in photo school in Manchester for eight months, I get called in for, don't get called in, but I'm having my first tutorial with my three tutors and they're sitting behind the desk and I'm presenting the work that I've done and guy called Paul Blatchford, who was one of my tutors, just goes, yep, another one with centralitis.

Yep, centralitis.

And he starts throwing down my pictures.

In the middle, in the middle, in the middle, in the middle, in the middle.

So he sent me this, I remember he sent me this project that I had to do something and I wasn't, first of all, I wasn't allowed to shoot any portraits in portrait format.

which is a phenomenal book and you know you could just as the expression goes keep doing what you're doing but you made a decision at one point that you wanted to tackle photographing dancers maybe talk about kind of the the germination of that idea um because the resulting book is beautiful

What, like 30 years in New York now or in America?

Yeah, 30 years.

You know, it's just so bizarre.

It was genuinely, I mean, you know, landing in New York was genuinely like, my head was kind of set to this two week, three week kind of thing.

What was this going to be? How is this going to be? I mean, I was so incredibly green and naive.

I mean, I still am green and naive, but back then, man, it was whatever.

And, you know, and it was funny because at that point I was staying with a friend for a couple of weeks and I basically picked up what the equivalent of a yellow page is.

But then went to uni in Glasgow.

How, how do you go from man with a camera to photographing these people? Like, I mean, these are A-list people.

It's a mystery to me as well, but what's really interesting about, you know, being freelance and, you know, having a career in anything is that most of the time that I'm doing something, you know, I am just literally thinking about what's next.

How am I gonna, how am I gonna feed my family next? How am I gonna pay for, you know, dinner next or, you know, this new lens I want? So I, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about how things happen because, uh, you know, you don't, I don't have time.

I'm just, you know, you're as good as your last shoot, and if I'm not shooting, then, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not doing anything.

But what was interesting during the pandemic is when every- everything kinda stopped, a lot of people were kind of looking for content and, uh, trying to ask people about how they did stuff.

And I think what, what I kinda worked out was that I've always been truly fascinated by faces.

Um, I love faces.

I don't know.