You Know Where To Find Me — The Story Behind My Ocean Work

I grew up in Bournemouth. The sea was just always there — at the end of the road, part of the furniture. I didn't think much of it at the time. It was just home.

I started shooting seriously in 2015 and naturally gravitated back to the beach. It felt like the obvious place to start. But for a few years I was still finding my feet — learning the technical side, experimenting with light, trying to figure out what I actually wanted my photographs to look like.

It wasn't until 2019 that something really started to click.

The photograph that changed things

You Know Where To Find Me was a bit of a turning point for me. Up until that point I'd always shot from the shore — standing on dry sand, keeping my distance. One day at Bournemouth I just decided to get in. Camera in hand, actually submerged in the water, shooting from inside the wave rather than watching it from the outside. The difference was immediate. Suddenly I was getting angles and perspectives I'd never had access to before — the light hitting the water from below the surface, the wave towering above rather than rolling past. When I edited that first shot and shared it, the response genuinely surprised me.

People connected with it in a way that felt different. It wasn't just that they liked it — they kept saying it didn't look quite like a photograph, that it felt like somewhere they wanted to be. That meant a lot, and it gave me a much clearer sense of the direction I wanted to go in.

From Bournemouth to further afield

Once I'd found that approach I started noticing similar light and colour wherever I went. Vancouver Island, Tenerife, Vietnam, California — different oceans, different skies, but the same thing I'd always been looking for. That moment when the light hits the water just right and everything comes alive.

Bournemouth is where I developed my eye. Everything since has just been more opportunities to use it.

Why the ocean

The honest answer is that it's never the same twice. You can go back to the same beach a hundred times and never get the same shot. The light shifts, the swell changes, the sky does something unexpected. It keeps things interesting.

The colours help too. The way the ocean picks up and reflects light — the deep teals, the gold caught in a breaking wave, a pink sky turning the whole surface warm — it genuinely never gets old. That's not something conjured in editing. It's just what the sea does when the conditions are right and you happen to be there.

I'll always keep coming back to it. You know where to find me.