I put together a large collection of over 400 images from the last few years on my travels, along with some from recent photoshoots I’d done in preparation.

As I was dealing with quite literally hundreds of images, and still a good 150 after selecting which ones I could use for my photobook, I wanted to set out a baseline aesthetic for each image; prioritising a warmer colour palette and low contrast, which I achieved through colour grading and changing the input level of blacks to roughly 23 on the tone curve. These settings were then synced and adjusted accordingly on each image.

Afterward, I sorted through which of the remaining images I wanted to keep, and were actually usable for the narrative I wanted to portray in my photobook. I was left with roughly 40 images that I then put into an order, starting briefly with my parents house and my room there, showing an image of a friend walking through a street in Jersey on a double page spread. The idea of being stuck in Jersey is a reoccurring motif throughout the book, after each collection of images from a trip away, either to Spain where my grandfather lives, or to the UK where I’m seeing friends, I still end up back in Jersey. The imagery from Spain reflects on my relationship with my grandfather and my time spent living there, and how it differs from Jersey, whilst the imagery from the UK reflects on the people I meet and my perception of them. Whilst I wanted the book to capture a sense of nostalgia, I also break this on the occasion and take a focus on the loss of different people I’ve met, whether they’ve passed away or we’ve lost contact through one way or another, which I feel grounds the narrative more in reality.

I drew up a rough version of the tattoo on my back – a lotus flower- to put on the cover. I experimented with different ways of doing the cover; using handwritten text on a white background, down the spine etc., but it didn’t fit the aesthetic of the rest of the book.

I came up with the title finding home, as the book surrounds concepts of self-searching and freedom, and finding a place to call home has always been a personal struggle of mine. I put the drawing of the lotus flower over the cover as a graphic, lowering the transparency, and finding a nice caramel colour that emulated the warmth and nostalgia from the images in the book itself. I also experimenting with using handwritten text from paper that was scanned in, but ultimately it became too big a job, and it would look more authentic to write it on the copy that I order.