about the photographer

London based photographer Mat Smith is an independent professional freelance photographer who shoots editorial, commercial, and personal portrait photography.

"Photography, as a vocation, dawned on me slowly but surely. Brought up and educated as a musician, it became increasingly apparent that I would never be a Brendel or an Ashkenazy.

My early career as a gigging musician helped me to understand the difference between 'passion' and 'calling'; I am passionate about music, but I have both a 'passion' and an undoubted 'calling' in the field of photography. Photography was not my first love, but it is now my enduring one.

My initial interest in photography was sparked at the beginning of the digital camera revolution. After having owned film cameras as a young boy, my first foray into the possibilities of digital came in the form of a Canon digital 'bridge' SLR.

This camera was stolen from my bedroom during a walk-in burglary. Ironically, the best thing to ever happen to me.

It was the acquisition of newer and better equipment and the need to understand technology that led me towards the beginnings of grasping photography, light, visual subjectivity, and eventually portraiture. I am never keen to read user manuals, but I was somehow drawn to reading such things when they were about cameras and lights.

But enough of that.

The real reason for my obsession with photography is borne directly out of a curiosity of the world around me. I love how it looks. I don't see grey weather, I see silver diffused light. Sometimes, I don't just want to capture the world on film, reportage style, I want to imagine the world a better place, and somehow capture that instead.

Photography, like all vocations, has varying degrees of expertise. A decent photographer, like a decent writer, can produce accurate descriptions of a scene, fictional or real. A good photographer does so in a vivid and interesting way. An excellent photographer deals with the stuff of narrative."