After studying a Bachelor Arts in Interior Architecture and Design at Nottingham Trent University in England, he immigrated to Sydney in 2001. But after the global financial crisis, satisfying interior design projects were hard to come by. “It’s probably worth noting now that I failed my Year One module in ‘Photography and the Darkroom’,but undeterred I turned to the camera to feed my artistic output.”
With his experience in architecture, his first photographic subject was, not surprisingly, the built environment. “To this day, it continues to be the driver of my photographic works. The challenge of architectural photography is to capture a three dimensional mass in a two dimensional format. I’m continuously drawn to the basic elements of form and geometry and how architecture can be reduced to a series of lines and shapes. Add to that the intriguing effects of light and shadow, the urban environment provides me with a continuously changing palette to work with.”
His photographic training relied mostly on a few beginners’ guide books and the Internet’s wealth of how-to sites and online forums.
“After borrowing my dad’s DSLR, I set upon a journey that was equally frustrating as it was rewarding.” Watson has an exhibition at Melbourne’s Brunswick Street Gallery in January.