I have always loved cinema and film making. Whilst a student I hung out with students from the film making courses and assisted them on shoots.

Whilst enjoying the excitement of Urbexing (see my Dereliction Project) and capturing the decay of buildings left to fall apart, upon reviewing the images once I returned home, I started to see the image as a scene from a film. This started to pop into my head as I was photographing and soon as well as capturing interesting details illustrating the buildings decay, I then found myself actively composing an image as if it would be used in a film. Of course, I was missing a vital element, a person. Luckly, my daughters enjoyed drama and would happily act the character I required, although it would be far too dangerous and as a parent, irresponsible, to bring them with me on a Urbexing trip. Thus, I would photograph them in the comfort and safety of my home and then edit them into to the scene I had taken earlier. I also did the same using models from studio evenings that were being run by the camera club.

With nature of derelict buildings being scary places it is perhaps the reason why many of these ‘film stills’ probably fall into the horror genre.

From the success of these early one image scenes, I then moved on to photographing set series of ‘film stills’ to the later projects such as Kill Bill and the Horrors of Knife Crime.