Howard Guest

I was born in 1959 and have been taking photographs most of my life. Whilst at University, studying English, this developed into a passion, possibly as an alternative to reading nineteenth century novels! I worked exclusively in black and white which enabled me to control the image from preconception to print. Most of my work from this time was street photography. I spent days wandering around Central Scotland photographing anything. At the same time I started to play with alternative processes and a variety of different films. I worked in the theatre on leaving University, mostly with dance and opera companies and it was here that I started to do portraits of the performers. This period culminated in two exhibitions, one at the MacRobert Arts Centre at the University of Stirling and the other at the Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh and some work was used by the Scottish Arts Council.

In 1984 I started working in investment management. A variety of jobs saw me moving around the UK until I arrived in Cambridge in 1990. I continued to work in finance specialising in small quoted company investments and early stage technology deals. Finally in 2005 I decided that a change was in order and I went to college to study photography and thence to working full time as a photographer.

My photographic interests are eclectic. Portraiture, landscapes, still life, documentary, the list is seemingly endless. However, portraiture remains my passion. I love the interaction with the sitter, of trying to capture something of the essence of the individual. This is not always easy but I thoroughly enjoy the process. I am particularly interested in the idea of portraits of people in their workplace.

Landscape photography is my “hobby”, a way of relaxing, and almost always with black and white, medium and large format film. I grew up in the country and have lived in towns for most of my adult life. We are surrounded by vistas and landscapes allow me to look.

I have a small studio and still life work intrigues me. It is the control of the whole image; the choice of the subject, the lighting, the film…everything. This seems to be the one area of photography where control over the final image is absolute.

We are surrounded by images, in print, on the web, in books and exhibitions. For the most part we hardly see the images – they are a sort of wallpaper. Books and exhibitions intrigue me as they are the only time that collections of photographs are put together to tell a story, to make a statement.