A strong photograph doesn’t explain itself. It asks questions first, then offers just enough detail to invite the viewer closer. Who is this man? What happens in this quiet, enclosed space? The clues are there — the microphone, the glow of a screen, the ease of someone who belongs — but the answers remain deliberately incomplete. The image gives a glimpse, not a conclusion, and leaves the story open for the viewer to finish.

This is Will.

He’s a local historian, but this portrait isn’t really about history in the academic sense. It’s about continuity.

Will stands in the town he knows intimately, not posed against it but comfortably within it. The buildings behind him aren’t decorative backdrops; they’re part of his daily landscape, places whose stories he carries and retells. Shopfronts change, signs fade, businesses come and go — but the street itself remains, and so does the memory of what it has been.

Some portraits announce themselves immediately. This one doesn’t. It wakes slowly.

At first glance, it appears straightforward: a man standing quietly beneath brick arches, winter coat buttoned, scarf wrapped carefully, hands relaxed at his sides. There’s no obvious gesture, no theatrical pose, no attempt to dominate the frame. He isn’t performing for the camera so much as meeting it on his own terms.

This is one of those photographs that does exactly what I want an image to do: it asks questions.

Who is this man?
Why is he here, in this particular room?
What’s the story behind the cabinet of china, the clock, the chair, the accumulation of objects that feel anything but random?

I was genuinely delighted with this photograph of Revd Fr Anthony Searle, the Team Rector of All Saints Church, High Wycombe. It was taken for a magazine article in 2024, and it’s one of those frames where everything quietly came together.

This photograph is a good reminder of why I find portrait photography so rewarding.

When we started, the subject was — by her own admission — not entirely comfortable in front of the camera. Not resistant, not awkward, just gently guarded. That familiar combination of politeness and self-consciousness that so many people bring with them: I’m not photogenic, I don’t really know what to do, just tell me where to stand.

I see that a lot. And I’ve come to enjoy it.