Jon David Aspinall

I have been doing this for the best part of 15 years now, when I enrolled on the City and Guilds Level 1 course at Oldham Lifelong Learning in September 2010. After this I went on to complete levels 2 and 3. The level 3 course was two full days a week, which introduced me to the type of photography I remain very passionate about: social and environmental portraiture with a nod towards editorial (storytelling). In short: I am interested in people and forming real connections. This is an intuitive thing for me, but one that transmutes into the aesthetic when accompanied by an understanding of what works visually.In a previous life I gained an English Literature degree from the University of Sheffield, which is demonstrative of a firm basis of learning and academia. I have taught English in High Schools as a Supply Teacher, along with Adult Education many years ago. More recently I taught photography to absolute beginners of a Saturday morning.I have a decade's worth of experience working in Adult Social Care (two-and-a-half years as a manager in a learning disabilities project; Access to Nursing qualification), which gave me the interpersonal skills necessary for working with people on many different levels. This understanding of what makes people tick goes hand-in-hand with what I understand a portrait to be: an authentic character study of a person in their own space, as opposed to a mere “picture of a person”).