About
I am MJ. I am British, and currently live in Singapore.
This is about as much of me as I am comfortable having in a picture. I am infinitely more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it.
I have always loved photography, but as a dabbler in happy snapping and point and pressing. In 2022 I picked it up more seriously as a way of managing stress. I took an online course to go back to basics on what a camera does and how to wield it reasonably effectively, and the rest, as they say, is history. Well, not quite.
I kept reading about ‘finding my voice’ and talking to other photographers that were confident in theirs, and I felt lost. I didn’t know how to do that, or what ‘my voice’ looked like. I will see something that catches my eye and want to capture how I am feeling it.
I am still no clearer on what my voice is, perhaps it is the overlooked or disregarded. I love light, landscapes and small things. So welcome to my world.
The words and pictures are all my own. However, I did get help from Open AI’s ChatGPT on wordpress technical support and website structure and they helped me to thrash out ideas for what to include and how.
In March of 2025 I was diagnosed as austistic. I am in my 50s, so you can imagine this was quite a revelation. However, it gave me a sense of absolute and overwhelming relief. I am reasonably successful in my professional life, but it has come at a significant cost to my personal life, my mental and physical health, and I have felt deep shame and self-loathing for not being as together as I think I should be.
I have always felt ‘other’; too much, not enough, too weird, too engaged, too detached, too excited, too flat, too loud, too quiet, too candid, too intense. I have suffered lifelong bouts of Chronic Fatigue, as well what I thought was depression, but is more likely to be autistic burnout. I have melted down, shut down and have felt stupid and useless for not being able to human properly and not able to understand why I am so different. Why I can’t just fit in.
I shouldn’t have needed a diagnosis to be kind to myself, but I did. It was like an optical illusion. Suddenly seeing the image appear from a mess of chaos. All the pieces fit. An explanation for everything. I have been reading about other people’s experiences with being autistic / having autism, and it is like reading my life. I have to give a special mention to Pierre Novellie’s awesome ‘Why can’t I just enjoy things?” book. This was the first book on autism I read after I was told I was on the spectrum. I laughed and cried and knew deep down that I had found some peace. Thank you Pierre.
I was already planning to create this website, but just as a way of bridging a gap I’d experienced with online photography resources either being about selling services, or gear, or being far too technical for someone like me, that only cares about using four settings on their camera.
However, after the autism diagnosis, which is still only four weeks old at the time of this writing, I decided I would create this as a way of sharing the peace I feel when I am looking through the viewfinder and my experience of trying to define myself after a lifetime of masking.
I asked ChatGPT to help me with a neurodivergent friendly font and colour scheme, and asked them what other people would be interested in seeing.
So this is the result. My vision for this site is to be somewhere where there is calm and peace and I am sharing something I care deeply about. You are very welcome to rest here.
Come in, and enjoy.
MJ, April 2025.