There wasn’t a cinema in my town and my parents passion didn’t lie in film, so it wasn’t until my early teens when I was able to travel to nearby Clydebank with friends, that I really discovered cinema and that wonderful moment of anticipation and excitement when the lights go down and you are immersed in this image which could quietly transport you to another world for a few hours. After that it really didn’t matter what was showing I tried to see everything and unaware of the DP role at this time, believed I wanted to be a director. I got lucky one summer attending a Q&A at the Edinburgh Film Festival listening to two DPs in conversation discussing their work and what I then discovered to be the art of cinematography. This was a lightbulb moment after which I sought out their work to understand more, so unbeknownst to Darius Khonji AFC ASC and Seamus McGarvey ASC BSC, these two DPs were something of a compass point in my journey.

As part of an undergrad English lit. and theatre degree I’d managed to wrangle a year studying at USCS where I had sought out film and photography classes knowing now that this was really was what I wanted to be doing. And having always loved images, painting and drawing obsessively as a child, I found the immediacy of creating a photograph incredibly gratifying. After graduating in 2002 I began working as a camera trainee and then later a 2nd AC primarily on UK feature films  (Batman Begins, The Brothers Grimm, Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow) before I was accepted to study cinematography on a Freddie Francis Scholarship at the National Film and Television school (2005 -2007). I had only shot stills prior to this, and I will forever be grateful to Brian Tufano BSC and Stuart Harris who were two of my main tutors at the school, who supported and challenged me, developing my ideas of cinematography as well as the visiting DPs who taught at the school including the formidable Billy Williams BSC.

After graduating from the NFTS I worked on everything I could to build up my showreel; shooting many, many shorts, as well as documentaries which did well at festivals, promos and a couple of low budget indie features. All this served in good stead when I got a break in television on a series of shorts for BBC 3 aptly called ‘The Break’ shortly followed by a block on the popular BBC 1 series ‘Call the Midwife’. After a few busy years shooting back to back tv drama, I had the immense good fortune to be recommended to Fabian Wagner ASC, BSC to cover some of his outstanding work on the final season of ‘Game of Thrones’ and it was later that year in 2018, that I became a member of the BSC having been proposed by Nic Knowland who I feel very grateful to for championing my work and encouraging me to apply.

HANNA (Season 1)

GAME OF THRONES (Season 8 - Additional Photography)

PRESS

MARCELLA (Season 2)

TRUST ME (Season 1)

HAVING YOU