When I first set up my studio it was in one of the many and vast empty rooms at O'Neill Towers and, to give it a dry run, I asked some nearby neighbours if they'd come in for a family portrait. Yesterday I bumped into the daughter of the family - dairy aisle at Sainsbury's since you ask - and asked her what she was up to these days...
"I'm a teacher!" she said ..
Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather, and the look on my face must have said just that! "I'm twenty-five now, you know..." she laughed, as I threw my zimmer frame out of the shot, and it dawned on me that those test pictures - those sweet family photos - were now 14 years old! The woman in front of me was an eleven year old girl when I took them! I mean, come on, they were on film, for goodness sake!..
It kind of brought home the shock there must be on the part of all those Dads that walk their daughter down the aisle on their Wedding Day. Their Princess, their little girl, has turned into a woman in the time it's taken to change a vest and go for a pint with the darts team! Now I've never had kids, but when I shoot a Wedding I'm always very tuned in to catching any of that emotion on the faces of those Dads as they look down that aisle with their pride and joy on their arm. It's just dawned on me that part of that expression is the realisation that they've grown old ...
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