So who's this guy?...i here you ask. Well just an average guy thats trying to carve his way through life, i suppose is the simple and short answer. If that where your interest ends, thanks very much for stopping by!!
The longer answer:
My name is Jamie, 41 and i live in Manchester, England with my beloved wife (whom ive been with since i was 16 and i still worship the very ground she walks on!!) and our 3 sons. All of whom im extremely proud of.
I'm an ex-British Soldier that served a lengthy career as an infantryman with the 1st Battalion the 22nd (Cheshire) Regiment, completing numerous operational tours and foreign exercises around the globe. I left the military in 2004. I'll write more about the ups and downs of military life as and when the need arises.
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| Me when i was a machine gunner... OMG the kit was heavy!! |
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| Brecon- Stuff that nightmares are made of |
After leaving the military i went onto a couple of business ventures which included: a corporate chauffeuring & close protection business, a driving school and a long distance lorry driver. All of which were successful in one way or another, but i never really found what i was looking for, and i never really fitted in! Come to think of it, i didnt fit into the civilian world... Its so damn chaotic and un organised, with no sense of purpose!!... Or so i thought!!
2010 i guess is the year that probably shaped the rest of life... with things turning for the absolute worse. I was working 24/7, pushing all my friends away, being aggressive and getting into fights and even came close to taking my own life!! Things all came to head (i wont go into detail...i dont see the point) Suffice to say i had to take a long hard look at myself and realise what i was doing, not just to myself, but more importantly my family. I was ripping them apart. Finally understanding that something wasnt right with me, i agreed at my wife's request to get some help. It turns out through her prior and frantic research, that she knew exactly what was wrong with me.... PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), but i had to be the one to agree to the help. I reluctantly agreed to go for an initial week long assessment at Combat Stress's Audley Court in Shropshire. By the end of the week, i was certified 'mad as a box of frogs' and have been following a comprehensive recovery program since, whereby a large emphasis of treatment is focussed around Occupational Therapy.
Why the hell am i telling you this???... Like i said, my new life was now unknowingly being shaped!!!
It was time to leave the military behind once and for all and create a new life, that doesnt have all the rules and regulations that are so necessary to being a successful soldier. I must be successful, because i'm here able to write about it!!
The first thing that had to go (strangely) was work!!! I had to stop being a workaholic...The only way to do that was to take some 'time out'. Doing so (luckily for me my wife was working), meant that yes we had to seriously pull the purse strings in, but oddly to me, we didnt lose the house, the bills were still getting paid.... i didnt have to work stupid hours!!! That was lesson number 1.
Lesson number 2 was re-establishing my relationships with my family. At least with the ones who didnt dessert me... Less said about that the better! And to rebuild the trust that i had so ashamedly broken... This was a long slow process, to which i had to quietly ride the wave on and take what ever was thrown at me.
Lesson number 3 was and still is the most difficult. It was to learn about my condition, and how to control it. Also how to establish a new life for myself, to regain a sense of purpose and self worth, and learn how to integrate into this alien world that is often called by ex-military personnel - 'Civvy Street'. Learning to keep core values that i had learnt in military training and life, but letting go of some of the thought processes and military ways, was and still is one of the toughest lessons i continue to master. This coupled with learning about PTSD and how to control it, rather it control me are perhaps my proudest triumphs! Even though i still suffer with the condition, and probably will do for the rest of my life, i now know what it is and how to deal with it.
This is where the occupational therapy kicks in. You or may not know, that PTSD is an actual physical brain injury, that is caused by chemicals released by the body in response to abnormal circumstances. Chemicals such as adrenaline, that trigger normal reactions such as the 'Freeze (scared rabbit), Flight (Runaway) and Fight (what the military want soldiers to do). Obviously fighting in the military can be for prolonged periods, which gives for greater demand of these chemicals in the brain. This great at the time, because it keeps soldiers alive. The downside is that long term, the chemicals effectively burn areas of the right side of the brain - essentially causing PTSD.
The occupational therapy encourages sufferers to use the left side of the brain. The side that is associated with creativity!!! Hence why so many veterans turn to things like, poetry, writing, drawing and painting. However, i tried many of these..and failed miserably!!!! My so-called paintings looked like they had been done by 'little Johnny aged 5'!!!! Beginning to lose hope in finding my healing therapy, i remembered that during my time in the Army i always enjoyed taking photographs of the countries i visited and documenting my experiences on with those cheap disposable cameras for my family to see in years to come!! I should point out that many of these images now take pride of place in a 15 foot montage in my house, and they do generate huge interest with all that see them.
Needless to say, i bought a cheap £69 compact camera from Tescos and began to experiment with it and not just on 'Automatic' settings. Wow i surprised at what results i was getting, so much so, i started to read and study the subject. Had i now found something that was able to fill that massive void left by not working?? I was certainly intrigued and wanted more. It wasnt long before i saved enough money to buy my first second hand DSLR - A Sony A350 with kit lens and a terrible 70-300mm Tamron lens for the modest sum of £400. Although i have moved on significantly in cameras, this camera is still going strong and my brother still uses it to this day albeit with a nice Carl Zeiss lens, and he too has learned about this great subject! I would certainly recommend to any potential photographers out there, to resist temptation on spending a fortune on a camera. There are so many factors to consider, and i'll come back to that in another post!!!
Still learning how to shoot images with the Sony A350, i was at Audley Court in the gardens practising different photography techniques. In particular HDR (High Dynamic Range) when a storm blew in and it began to pour down with rain. With army training instilled in me i was crawling around the gardens looking for the perfect shot of a double rainbow that had now appeared!!!.... I got it!!! So quickly back to the 'occupational therapy' room i downloaded the images onto my laptop and began to build the HDR image that put me on the path unknowingly at the time to becoming a pro-photographer!!
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| The terrible picture thats responsible for my photography path! - Pot of Gold |
The image was for some reason spotted, and chosen to appear on a book entitled Courage & Strength. Its a book that is written by PTSD sufferers and is an anthology of poems and stories. Check it out..its still available on Amazon. To be honest, i never did like the edited image and it was never finished. In fact i could write an entire post on why this image is so bad!! But i won't. What i will say is that with this image on the cover of a book, i was invited to Guildford Cathedral where all the works from the contributors were to be exhibited. Including a 48 inch framed print of my image!!! It is from that exhibition i realised i had the potential to make a go of things, and get my sense of purpose. The Birth of a Photographer was now upon us, and i had finally succeeded in changing from shooting with a rifle to shooting with a camera!!
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