Joy Geldard-Smith is a fine art photographer based in West Yorkshire, UK.
My story is one of transformation, discovery and realising the obvious.
I have always taken photographs, as long as I can remember. My mother's first photo appeared in the local paper, and my father used to take Polaroids of me and my siblings as children. The power of the pictures was made clear, as my father wrote storytelling captions on the back - no matter how the children in the picture were behaving!
On family holidays, I used an old camera that took cassette films to document our time together. When I took my gap year, the biggest step I took to feeling prepared was when I bought my first SLR (and packing my first aid kit!). Moving from film to digital was another big step, which felt somehow historic. I was interested in technology, but digital photos felt surreal to me, initially. I had always liked the excitement of wondering whether or not a particular shot would come out right, and loved the buzz of looking through a packet of freshly developed photos. I soon learned to love digital, though, probably partly because I ended up working in technology.
Throughout my corporate career, I worked on transformation, believing that while the public sector would never be perfect it could still be improved. I developed my creative practices in order to feel less trapped in my day job. Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis and then had to rethink everything I had just built. It was during this period of re-evaluation that I realised I had been literally taking pictures of escape routes the whole time I was working in an office.
I have been running my own business since 2017, having worked in a number of public services prior to that.
Reflecing on my time, I realised that photography is the capture of a single image. It sounds simple but is far from it.
By its very nature, a photograph is a frozen moment in time. It's a way of grasping a grain of sand as it runs through the hourglass. No one knows how long we have left, but when life flashes before our eyes, it will be composed of moments - those grains we snatched and held with us - and it will show us who we are.
If you're like me, you're curious about the world and our place in it, the interaction of nature and humankind. You want to keep on growing, moving, learning, and finding beauty and meaning throughout that journey.