I captured this image for mental health day, a while back.
It reflects how my brother's death tore me apart.
I expect most to hate this image.
Back on April 11th, 2010, my mother's birthday, the same very same day I was competing in the prestigious Bob Church Open Fly-Fishing Championship.
A competition which I won and later drove home with the trophy feeling pretty good about myself and life in general: My ego full to the brim.
I went to bed with the trophy at my bedside...wonderful.
The phone rang.
My sister told said my younger brother had been murdered, he'd be shot.
I lay in bed totally shell-shocked.
Rather than drive from my home in England, to my place of birth, and parent's home in Scotland, I took the long train journey home. Simply because my head was so 5ucked up; I didn't trust myself to drive.
The sorrow, conflict, anger and full-on rage, I hope none of you ever experience.
It is monstrous.
I was going home not just to comfort my family but to kill whoever killed my brother.
I can vividly remember thinking that I'd never see my wife and 8-year-old son outside of a prison wall again, or a least for some 25 years.
As I write this now, during my coffee break, I'm tearing up. The rawness of then, still haunts me.
Bear in mind, my sister was in the police force, and her husband was a chief super intendant.
I arrived home and was then informed that forensics had examined and established that my brother had taken one of his shotguns, placed the barrels on his heart and pulled the trigger.
It was suicide.
Now imagine being in my frame of mind, in my position.
The relief felt from knowing I wasn't going to prison and the total 5ucking anguish that replaces the rage is something I would not wish on anyone.
It pulls you apart at atomic level and revels in your pain.
It took me several years to really come to terms with all of this.
I searched and read so much on mental health and suicide just to try and get a handle on the 'WHY.'
He had a good life, a wife, a daughter, friends and like me a love of the great outdoors. Falconry was his passion. Fly fishing mine.
If there is one good thing to come out of all the aforementioned; it is my love of photography and how it helps heal my mind, my body, my soul.
I now consider myself a master of light and shadow, well, thereabouts, especially within the portraiture genre.
Many will think the above image was captured by a drunk out of his face on whisky and cocaine while smoking a joint.
However, this capture took near 300 shots and much manipulation of the objects used to achieve the result I wanted.
I wanted to show just how I felt during this terrible time and how mentally torn apart I was back then.
If you're still reading this and thereafter look at the right-hand side within the lights you will see my head: well hair and forehead, mostly.
I'm there, even though I'm behind the camera lens, I managed to project my image into the centre of that great tumult of confusion, that maelstrom of light.
I wanted to express through light and colour and confusion just how I felt back then.
The objects I used to create this image: two cut crystal vases, one round and one square, Christmas tree lights and a tin of tuna I had to stand the round vase on the tuna tin to have the cut in the crystal vase in the right place.
The blurry line at the bottom of the photograph is the base of this vase, which I make no apologies for.
I placed the round vase in front of the square vase with the square corner on to the camera, then placed the lights behind the square vase.
I then made sure my reflection was on the round vase which threw my image onto
the square vase which was directly in front of the lights.
After manipulating the square vase some 300 time, I managed to achieve as near the image I wanted: my head in amongst the torn apart confusion.
The tin of tuna propped up the round vase as i needed the cuts in the glass, to be just so.