A Good Start With Exciting Times Ahead.

"It's never too late to be what you might have been."

George Eliot

It's only been a month since I finished university, but the last few weeks have brought a few unexpected and very welcome successes.

The first came when one of the images from my degree show was selected for exhibition at Four Corners Gallery in Bethnal Green. Alongside the work of around fifteen other students, it will be on display from 8th - 10th July as part of a showcase celebrating the breadth and diversity of Falmouth University photography graduates. To add to that, the university also selected the same image for its marketing material. It's a relatively small achievement in the grand scheme of things, but it's incredibly satisfying to know that the work resonates not only in an academic setting but also in a commercial one. To add to this was me receiving a first class honours degree. All in all not a bad end to three years of academic endeavours.

Then came last week.

Two separate bodies of work - one from my second year coursework and the other from my final degree project - were both selected as finalists in the AOP (Association of Photographers) Student Awards. After what has been a fairly tumultuous three years, I can't really put into words how pleased I am to have reached this stage.

Of course, winning would be wonderful, but simply being shortlisted already feels significant. More than anything, it reinforces something I've quietly hoped throughout my degree, that abstraction still has a place in the art world, and that photography can be a meaningful vehicle for it.

These opportunities have also made me think more carefully about where I want the work to exist. For a long time I've been drawn towards galleries. The work has always been intended to be experienced at scale. Large prints have the ability to envelop the viewer in a way that smaller works simply can't. The space surrounding the image becomes part of the experience, allowing the colour, light and atmosphere to breathe.

The Four Corners exhibition will see my photograph printed at B0, which I'm genuinely excited to experience. But if I'm honest, I'd still like to go bigger. They're aspirations, of course, but if you don't have goals, what exactly are you working towards?

The AOP Student Awards could also prove to be an important stepping stone. Exposure matters, and although I've entered plenty of competitions over the past few years, not all awards carry the same weight. The AOP is one of the most respected organisations in the photographic industry, and I'd like to think there will be people paying attention to the next generation of photographers. Whether anything comes of it remains to be seen, but it's certainly an encouraging position to be in.

I've had ideas for a new body of work for quite some time now, but turning those ideas into reality is another matter. Funding is always a challenge, and so is finding an appropriate space for the finished work to live. Galleries, understandably, tend to invest in artists with an established audience. Wall space is valuable, and taking a chance on someone relatively unknown is a financial risk few are willing to make.

Right now, I'm still very much a small fish in an impossibly large ocean. But perhaps that's exactly where everyone starts. These last few weeks have given me confidence that the work can find an audience, and that's reason enough to keep going.