My name is Ian Seddon, I am a self taught semi-professional photographer based just North of London, my work tends to take me all over the UK and Europe, with some occasional porjects in the USA.
My earliest memories of taking photogtraphs are from back in Liverpool at the age of around seven or eight, when I was given a simple Leica “Diana” film camera by my father, he had always been a keen amateur and so there was always some sort of photography going on while I was growing up, so it has always been with me. Whether I was actively creating images or for some periods not touching a camera.
I have always had an interest in landscape and architecture, but after covering a few local bands in concert some years ago, I moved over to more live subjects and started working with several artists, performers and promoters.
It’s a passion of mine to try and catch the emotion and energy of a ‘moment’ in a performance, which isn’t available when creating static or still life images, and is far more elusive due to working in uncontrollable environments where lighting and the position of subjects can change second by second, originally working with film I changed to digital a few years ago, I find this gives me a greater degree of control over images and more flexibilty in workflow, the only down side is DSLR’s are still not to the level of film regarding resolution.
Some of my influences over the years have been people like Andy Warhol, Man Ray and Richard Avedon and Salvador Dali, those who have created images outside the box and not been restricted by ‘conventional’ ways of working or accepted trends expected by those around them, some other influences come from areas like cinematography, scuplture, music and theatre set design, these help me maintain a diversity in my work and not become entrenched in a particular way of working and give me new ideas of how to view a subject.
Working with people is such a pleasure and if taking a portrait image I will always do my utmost show them in their best light as they have allowed me to be a small part of their world, other artists and photographers are always a source of new inspiration, rather than vieweing them as any sort of rival, all of us work in our own particular way and have new ways of producing images, seeing what ‘kit’ they use and how they create their images.
I am a great believer in learning photography through daily image taking, other people can teach you the basics and small hints on how to improve your images, but at the end it’s down to the photographer to learn the best way of working and to find how to ‘see’ what’s around them, which most people aren’t able to do, my only advice to other photographers is ‘the rule of thirds’ and look at other’s images to try and work out how they created them.
Links:
www.ianseddonphotography.com
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