For my first project at university we were asked to take between 5 and 10 photographs that depicted something we individually found beautiful. After having a good hard think about this and exploring many different ideas I found that they was a common factor amongst most of my photos, Light.

One of my oldest memories is of a red light shining through my bedroom window when I was about 3 years old, it petrified me at first and like most children of that age my imagination ran wild and I thought it was some kind of UFO attack. I remember crying for my mum who rested me assured that it was just the lights of the Radcliffe on Soar power station that provided my town with electricity. From that day the lights didn’t scare me anymore, in fact they had the complete opposite effect, I suppose it became a kind of night light. As I grew old enough to drive the power station became an iconic backdrop to my hometown and at night time the flickering lights guided me home from as far as Leicester 25 miles away.

During my most darkest hours serving in Iraq and Afghanistan I would often look up at the stars and I wouldn’t feel scared anymore, it was almost as if the flickering of those lights completely diverted my attention from all the darkness around me. I think that the most beautiful and comforting thing about starlight is how each particle of light has travelled billions of miles through absolute darkness to reach its destination safely and in one piece so in a sense I felt like my memory of the lights from the powerstaion had a similar kind of journey.

This is a project that I really enjoyed, so I have no doubt in my mind that I will be revisiting this in the future and adding more photos exploring my journey home.