Kay Cornwell / About Kay

“There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.”  – Henri Cartier-Bresson

For me this quote sums up how I feel about photography, why I love it.

I’ve always believed photography is best when it’s raw and completely honest.  I am fascinated by people and the way they live their lives. I take a ‘street photography’ approach to my work, focusing on the relationship between the subject and their surroundings.  I love shooting in a candid and unobtrusive style, capturing spontaneous moments.  Equally, I love working with people having gained their trust to portray them truthfully, whether they are oblivious to my presence or staring straight down the lens.

I was brought up in the age of film photography, where you had to think about composing your shots in camera.  I loved working in the darkroom, making a good photo brilliant.  I reckon I’ve successfully transferred these skills to digital photography and I now really enjoy applying these techniques using Photoshop.

My background is a mash of disciplines; I studied photography for seven years in which time I was awarded ‘Young Photographer Of The Year’ by the Royal Photographic Society, I achieved a Higher National Diploma and gained entrance into the British Institute Of Professional Photography.  I’ve assisted in a professional photographic studio, been a darkroom hand printer in a professional photo lab, created and managed an indoor skate park, managed a live music venue and most recently became a mum living in Portishead near Bristol.

I don’t know what good composition is…. Sometimes for me composition has to do with a certain brightness or a certain coming to restness and other times it has to do with funny mistakes. There’s a kind of rightness and wrongness and sometimes I like rightness and sometimes I like wrongness. – Diane Arbus