Liam Smith

Talented Photographer Discovers Passion and Skill at Young Age

There is a pigeon who lives in my garden and regularly walks into my house looking for food. He is called Gary. As I write this Gary is looking at me from the edge of my pond. He seems angry. Maybe because I feed the fish more than him. I keep Koi because they are like living ornaments and incredibly therapeutic to watch. I have an AGA which is ridiculously expensive to run but it cooks food like no other contraption. My smart meter is always in the red but my dinners are always delicious. I can do a really good impression of a goat. I don't take life too seriously, I do all my own stunts and listen to hip hop every day. My life is full of contrasts, Kendrick Lamar and Koi, Tribe called quest and researching which house plants improve air quality most efficiently... I began my photographic journey at 16. My art teachers hated my abstract paintings so I moved to what I thought at the time was the most literal medium to depict reality - I landed on photography. My father influenced my artistic endeavours, teaching me to draw and how to understand images from an early age. He would turn our bathroom into a darkroom and print large-format glass plates. My travels and diverse interests have helped shape my style. I am a lover and admirer of people, I have no real interest in things or places. I am also a lover of storytelling, from the establishing shots or Terence Malick to the re-arranged narrative structures of a Quinton Tarrantino, establishing narrative has always been at the heart of my love of imagery. I shoot approximately twenty weddings per year. I invest so heavily in each one that I am both physically and emotionally exhausted by the time it has finished. I believe in order to tell a story, you have to live it. To go on that roller-coaster with each family every week is magical, but it also means shooting sixty weddings in a year is an impossibility for me, something that I couldn't even conceive. It's not about money, it's about crafting the best set of images possible. I have a degree in photography, but I do not feel as if this influenced my ability in the slightest. Completing the degree made me more of a writer than a practitioner. My interests outside of photography are numerous and eclectic. Currently, I am fascinated by ancient Egyptian philosophy and how stories and knowledge are encoded into our society. Buy me a drink and I'll tell you all about it. Weddings are fun, emotional, crazy events. I want to tell the story from the morning nerves to the dancing on the tables. Remember, if partying was easy, it wouldn't be called partying hard.