What makes a good photograph(er)?

Photography has its own rhythm, and its own references: repeated shapes in a scene, a line that leads the eye, a colour that lifts itself from the page, a stopping point.

I take a deep personal satisfaction from taking photographs; in many ways it is my personal way of making sense of the world.

I love photography’s power to capture and to convey; to simplify, challenge and inspire. There are photographs that reside in my mind and that continue to inspire me years after first seeing them: Paul Strand's 'Family, Lazzura' (1954), Andre Kertesz' 'Mondrian's Studio, Paris' (1926), Richard Avedon's series of portraits 'In the American West' (1979-84), Sebastiao Selagado's photos of the goldmines in Serra Pelada - the 'garimperos'(1986). And once you've seen the photos of Arbus, Sherman, Gursky, Walker Evans, Mapplethorpe, there is no turning back. Their vision becomes part of our vision.

In a commercial context photography is an immensely powerful tool, which has only been made more powerful by the advent of digital imaging. This applies as much to the ability to manipulate an image more easily out of the camera as to the changes in approach to the subject (for example, in commercial wedding photography where a days shoot can generate over 1000 images as opposed to a hundred or so on medium format film). Most photographers do still hold a desire to 'get it right in camera' rather than change things after, but it has always been part of the photographic tradition to emphasise a subject, and perfect an image, through post-production cropping and printing techniques. Digital gives you more control, and also puts the required basic skills in the hands of the many. But for all the possibilities of digital manipulation, you still need to be able to 'see' and to capture an image. When you chose a photographer you are choosing a style and an approach.