My studio

All photography is about light, and food photography is very much about how the light is best used to describe the subject. Years ago I had vowed I wouldn’t be a photographer if it meant living in the dark and working only with flash lighting. I needed a studio with wonderful natural light

I looked at dozens of spaces when I was looking for a studio to buy, and found this one, with its ten tall windows on three sides, fairly early on in my search. I made an offer but the apartment was withdrawn from the market and I had to go on looking. Several times I thought I might have found a replacement, but I kept on looking at the snaps I had taken and nothing matched remotely the magical quality of light in this space. Eventually I found somewhere I could contemplate offering on, but before I did I made one last call to the original agent again, to discover that the vendor had just walked into their office to put it back on the market. Well over a year after first seeing it, it was mine.

So I’ve had my studio near the Barbican in London since 2000. I took some rather pristine photographs of it when it was first done up, but since then it has evolved. My stock of props has increased and I have found many ways of using the space. Sometimes I remember to grab a current pic of it and so these are a rather random collection!