It was around my mid-twenties that I got into lifting weights in the gym. I mean I really got addicted to it. So much so that I trained six days a week and started taking lots of photographs of my physique changes and progression and videos of my lifts and workouts.

I guess I can’t really deny that it was a little vain (especially those mirror selfies). But all along it was my way of telling a story and expressing myself. Something that I often found hard to do whilst growing up. I shared clips and photos to Instagram and behind the scenes stuff of the food that I’d eat to get to where I was. It was always about taking others along with me on my journey through this life and passing on some of the things that I was learning. I saw a quote once on the Internet that read:

‘‘Be the person you needed when you were younger.’’

So I guess that is what that was all about and the message has continued with me on the next path that I chose to walk.

My aim was to become a full time personal trainer and do some travelling whilst running an online business where I would help other people to strive to reach their own health and fitness goals. I’d created this whole dream life and wrote it down in an old journal (oh how I can’t wait to dig it out one day).

It’s safe to say that I now know better than to allow my thoughts to run too far into the future as you just don’t know what surprises life might be hiding around the corner. Especially if you allow curiosity to lead you. The camera hadn’t even found its’ way into my hands when I was drawing up my three year plan to become a personal trainer.

Back in 2018, I was actually half way through my studies when my own curiosity led me to pick up my sisters Nikon D5200 and take it with me to Pistyll Rhaeadr, the place where I guess you could say that this whole journey started. I got home after an afternoon of photographing, loaded all of the photos onto my computer and couldn’t work out, for the life of me, why the photos were either completely black, white and/ or blurry.

Brad Carr taking a photo beneath Pistyll Rhaeadr — My first time with a ‘proper’ camera. Pistyll Rhaeadr, 2018.

I have to know ‘why’ to most things in life and so I asked Google the simple question; ‘why are my photographs blurry?’ And right there, it began. One rabbit hole led straight into a network of other rabbit holes. One week passed without studying, followed by a whole month.

My sister could see how my love had grown and was kind enough to loan me her old Nikon D3200. And that was it.. I went out and photographed literally everything that I could. I dabbled in street photography, portraits, events, weddings and sports. None of these genres generated the same level of excitement and personal satisfaction that photographing the great outdoors did. I decided on my course very early. I just could not stop going out into the landscape and putting what I’d learnt into practice. Go out, take photos, come home, edit, review, watch the likes of Nigel Danson and Thomas Heaton on YouTube and then spend the week pretending to work while I sat and asked Google questions and studied photographs on the Internet.

Eat. Sleep. Lift weights. Take photos. Repeat.

Before I knew it, I had to make a phone call to extend the deadline for my personal training course. They could have granted me an extra couple of lifetimes to complete it, I don’t think anything would have changed. My love of photography blossomed with every week that passed and stole what little love I had left for my job and for studying the anatomy of the human body.

Photography made me feel like I was returning back to myself after years of trying to be something that I wasn’t. I spent much of my teenage years and early twenties floating around, never really understanding quite where I belonged in this world. There was always something that felt like it was missing. The camera opened my eyes to the person that I really was; the emotional and introspective human that I had sacrificed by trying to please the world and impress certain people in my life to fit in somewhere. The camera helped to reconnect me to my inner child; a shy and reserved boy who spent hours tangled up in his own imagination, buried himself under mountains of books and roamed through woodland.

I guess that is, in a nutshell, how I ended up here… Pursuing a career standing behind the camera on grand mountains and amongst graceful trees. I dived right in after pulling the plug on my job in the corporate world at the end of 2020. Seems fitting that I am writing this exactly one year on to the day that I worked my final shift in the office. To be honest, I worked with some fantastic people and at times I do miss them but I would not trade this life for anything. I wake up every morning filled with bundles of energy to get out, create and share a story with the world in the hope of inspiring someone in the same way that I found my own inspiration.

In 2021, I enrolled in The Prince’s Trust’s ‘Enterprise Programme’ which was set up by HRH King Charles (was Prince Charles at the time). The Prince’s Trust are a wonderful charity that help young people (18-30 year old) to set up businesses in the UK. I have met some truly amazing people through the charity so far. People who have pulled out all of the stops to help me follow my dreams by turning my love for photography into a business that will provide me with a very long and fulfilling career. There is something written somewhere that says that you know you are on the right path when people want to help you along the way and watch you succeed. I knew right from the day that I picked the camera up that this was the true path for me.

I’m lucky enough to have had my work featured in some magazines over the past couple of years. The first were in the Welsh Country Magazine and most recently Outdoor Photography, where I covered Snowdonia National Park for their ‘On Location’ series.

Thank you so much for showing an interest in my story. I hope you enjoyed reading this little bit about me. If you have any comments or questions, you are more than welcome to contact me via email or one of my many social media platforms, or you can visit my journal to dig a little deeper.

VISIT Journal

These were some of the photography highlights of my first year with a camera. I don’t think I knew how to focus the lens for some of these. I guess there is hope for anyone!

The first photo is the first one that I ever uploaded to my photography Instagram page. Those first few months of my Instagram feed make for some great viewing by the way if you want to kill 10 minutes.