I’ve always loved making things. Not to make it a business, certainly not to the standard where I could sell anything, but with a kind of wholehearted enthusiasm that’s hard to explain if you’ve never felt it.
It started with craft weekends with my mum and my sister. The three of us, sitting at a table with materials, making something with our hands. I’m not even sure if we had a specific plan or if we just went for it. We made decorative tat, wall pieces, placemats from beads and clay figurines.
The things we made weren’t always beautiful. Honestly, sometimes they were a bit of a disaster. But that was never really the point. The point was the process – the focus it required, the quiet satisfaction of it, and the fact that at the end you had something tangible. Something that existed in the world because you made it.
Even now, as an adult, I remember to continue our traditions through pottery classes, painting workshops and the sewing machine Lee’s daughter left at ours “for safekeeping”, that turned me into a hobby bag maker a few years ago.
I think about that feeling a lot when I pick up my camera.
The gap in my photography portfolio I couldn’t ignore
A few weeks ago I sat down and went through my photography portfolio properly. The kind of review where you look at everything with genuinely fresh eyes and ask yourself: does this represent the work I actually want to be doing?
And I noticed something that stopped me.
Almost no makers. No craftspeople. No seamstresses, potters or jewellers or painters. No one working with their hands to produce something beautiful and entirely their own.
I knew why, if I was honest with myself. People who build handmade product businesses often don’t have the same budgets as service providers selling high-ticket, scalable offers. It’s just the reality of making things – you can only produce so much, your margins are tighter, and investing in professional photography can feel like a luxury you can’t quite justify.
But here’s what I kept coming back to: makers need visibility more than almost anyone. You can only produce so much. Every person who finds you, connects with you, chooses you — it matters enormously. And if the imagery representing your work doesn’t match the quality of what you actually make, you’re invisible to exactly the people who’d pay what your work is worth.
I didn’t want that gap in my portfolio to stay there. More than that, I didn’t want it to stay a gap in the market.
The idea: Makers of Sussex
Because of that portfolio review and my realisation that something needs to change, I created a new offer.
Makers of Sussex is a documentary photography project celebrating craftspeople and makers across Sussex. It’s for people who work with their hands – potters, seamstresses, jewellers, painters, woodworkers, ceramicists, anyone whose business is built around something they make and the skill it took to learn how to make it.
It’s not a discounted version of my usual work. It’s a different offer, shaped around what makers actually need and how maker businesses actually work. Extended sessions with no time cap, a full gallery of edited images, and an optional short form video add-on – all at a price point that reflects the reality of running a handmade business.
The offer
£450: extended documentary photo shoot, full edited gallery, no time cap, no restricted image count.
£550: everything above, plus short-form video content edited/unedited and ready for social media.
Sussex-based makers only. Limited sessions available.
I want to photograph you in your element. In your studio, your workshop, your kitchen table. Hands in clay, thread through fabric, brush on canvas. The real version of how you work – not a staged version of it.
The bigger vision for Makers of Sussex
Here’s the thing about this project. I don’t want it to just be a series of photography sessions.
Sussex has a remarkable maker community. Maker’s markets are a huge hit, people flock to them. That proves my point: Hand-made products are in high demand!
I want to give these makers a platform and a way to become more visible. These people produce extraordinary things in studios and spare rooms and garden workshops all across the county — and most of them are nowhere near as visible as they deserve to be. I want to change that in a small but meaningful way.
The long term vision for Makers of Sussex – and I say vision because nothing is guaranteed, this is a dream I’m working towards – is an exhibition. A physical space where these stories and faces and hands are on walls, where people can come and experience the breadth of what’s being made in this county right now. Maybe eventually a book.
Every maker I photograph becomes part of that body of work. Part of something that outlasts a social post or a website update. A record of craft in Sussex, made with care, built over time.
We’re building something here. And I’d love you to be part of it.
Are you a maker in Sussex?
If you make things with your hands and you’re based in Sussex, I want to hear from you. Head to the Makers of Sussex page to find out more and get in touch — I’d love to have a conversation about what we could create together.
→ Find out more about Makers of Sussex
And if you know a maker who deserves to be seen properly, please share this with them. The more people who know this exists, the better.
