Positive Impressions Photography

General information

My interest in photography started when I was in high school (A Levels equivalent), back in South Africa. My Grandfather passed away when I was 12 and I felt that loss quite deeply as I was very close to him. I inherited a vintage camera that was his but never knew what to do with it. I went to a boarding school called the National School of the Arts, where you would choose specialised field that you would do on top of all the other ‘normal’ high school subjects, and my chosen field was in the dramatic arts. The other faculties were; dance, art and music. Photography was a specialised subject under the art faculty, which the students were allowed to focus on. I had a keen interest in photography as a subject, but unfortunately, because I was studying drama I wasn’t permitted to study this subject in addition to drama. I did make sure that I always went to art exhibitions held by my fellow students, taking in the beautiful photographic art that they would produce, in awe of how emotionally evoking a photograph can be.

After high school I went on to study drama and acting further and never had the opportunity to follow my other passion of photography during this period. However, I was always the person with a point and shoot film camera at parties and events, capturing the many fleeting moments to create a historical timeline of my social life! Amidst the point and shoot times I had also tried to teach myself how to use my grandfather’s camera, with some semi great results and some really not so great results, but never really fully understanding why.

In 2004, my boyfriend at the time (now my husband) and I relocated to London from South Africa, and within a few months of working and saving I had managed to acquire a Canon film SLR camera and soon after enrolled on a city and guilds photography course; so began my two year journey into the amazing world of understanding photography and I could finally start to understand how my grandfather’s camera worked.

Starting with the very basics of how to work an SLR and eventually worked my way into the darkroom; a superbly technical and absorbing place to discover and advance my skills as a maturing photographer. My fondest memories of this course was creating images in the dark room from film that I had shot; mixing chemicals and the different types of paper and the amount of precision and perfect timing that is required to create an image that is as best exposed as you can make, evoking the same emotions and thought-provoking that I had experienced years earlier in high school at our photographers exhibitions.

I continued to work full time whilst studying and for many years after this; doing various photography projects and commissions in my spare time, under the name Anouska Photography, with the ambition to eventually leave my full time employment and start earning a living through photography. Anouska; a nickname that I had when I was growing up, thanks to a family friend who was a professor of languages and was studying Russian, the name has been part of me ever since.

For too long, I liked the security of full time employment and was wary of taking the leap into self-employment. In 2014, I decided that being secure had gone on far too long and I took the plunge into being my own boss, with the full support of my incredibly patient and loving husband, who I have to thank for pushing me to pursue my dream!

In this transition, after a lot of contemplation, I decided that Anouska Photography had served its purpose over the last ten years, and it was time to move in different direction, and changed the name to Positive Impressions Photography, focusing on the new positive flow and movement forwards in my life.

I now shoot with the Canon 5D Mark ii Digital Camera, allowing me to experiment a lot more without the costly developing and printing of film, however, I do still love working with film because of the greater patience and skill required to ensure that the photos are perfectly captured. There is something intrinsically invigorating about not knowing the results until you have used up the entire 36 image role of film and have them developed and printed. This, for me, is an excitement that is difficult to replicate when using digital as the will to view the image after each and every shot is far too great to supress when you have the image pop up straight away.

I am extremely passionate for close up, macro and candid photography and thus use this direction when creating images. Allowing you to be natural and relaxed during our session. I prefer not to take awkward posed images and just follow you around and let you do what feel natural to you.