My Mental Health Journey
My featured work in the Young Minds Article
When I first started taking photos, it was just a way for me to get out of the house and clear my mind when it became cluttered with negative thoughts. I found myself exploring the city quite a lot. I met new people, visited new places and sure enough I began to become obessed with anything related to photography. Fast forward to the present and it’s the thing that most people know me for…
I’ve wanted to work with Young Minds since around 2019 as at the time, I used a lot of their resources to help support myself. After seeing how much they had supported so many different youth communities across the country I really wanted to join the organisation in some capacity so I could also help those who may also be struggling with their mental health. So when the opportunity came up to work with them on both a personal article and a photoshoot campaign, it was like a dream come true…
I was lucky enough to join their Writers Programme last year and I knew that if I was going to do write about anything to do with mental health, my photography journey would also have to be mentioned as the two are very much connected.
So when the time came to begin producing images for my final article titled ‘Navigating through the Mental Health Maze', I went out to Crystal Palace to shoot around ‘The Maze’ found within the park.
These are the photos I ended up using in my article.
I wanted all the images to feel mysterious and somewhat lonely to reinforce how I felt when I was struggling with my own mental health. My favourite image has to be ‘The Escape Gate’ shot as not only does it help highlight points I make in my article but it’s very well composed (even if I do say so myself.) This shot is a reminder as to why flip screens are far better for my current workflow compared to a tilting screen as I do find myself shooting self portraits fairly regularly…
If you would like to read my article in the Young Minds zine ‘This is our Story’ click this link and have a read! I’d highly recommend reading through all of it as the other articles are so well crafted. I’m incredibly proud to have been a part of it and to also of had the plesure of meeting these amazing people with such amazing writing talents!
A few weeks later, I was asked to do a shoot for an upcoming Young Minds campaign and obviously I couldn’t refuse.
What made this shoot so much fun was how much freedom I had to inject some of my own ideas into the campaign. I used some street photography methods to get some really interesting candid shots around Parliament Square. The use of props really helped elevate not just the shoot but the overall message and has made me want to integrate this idea into other shoots I do in the future.
The more I use the Fuji XT4, the more I love it. I’m definitely going to stay with Fuji for a while because everything from the images produced to the ergonomics of the camera helped make this shoot both easy and fun.
I’m really excited to share more of the work I have planned surrounding the topic of mental health so I’ll make sure to keep you all posted when there is more to talk about.
But to end off I want to reiterate my point from my Young Minds article which is to always put your mental health first and find a good outlet for when you need some time for youself. It’s a long journey to find stability when you feel like your struggling but I promise you the journey is a rewarding one.
“Mental health is just as natural as physical health and it’s time we treat it as such…”
- Theodore Kennedy, This is our Story 2023
