I was out for a day with my girlfriend, Carrie when I saw this very special lady sitting on a bench reading a magazine. We’d just been to the Van Gogh exhibition at the @Tate which is heart breaking, brilliant, inspiring and amazing and I was in the mood to make something myself, to take some photo that said something or at least to try. So I approached Nuala and I crouched down and asked to take her portrait and before she agreed we got to chatting, she told us about some of her adventures, she has been a dancer and a nurse, she hails from Waterford in Ireland but has lived in far flung places like Hong Kong. She loves her son but now he himself lives in China and you can see that she misses him. She told us about a removal company she has used made up exclusively of out of work actors, and about the day that she was picked to be in a @lanvinofficial campaign by the iconic photographer @timwalkerstudio and what fun she’d had on that shoot. She’d come in to town on the day we met to visit a specific shop which was closed when she got there and confided that she was feeling a bit down before we arrived. My god She was so incredibly witty, insightful and magical and made us both feel intoxicated by her spirit. I can only hope she came away from the meeting as happy as we did. The great gift photography has given me is a way to meet people who I’d never get to make contact with otherwise. Moments like that do something profound to me. They make me fall back in love with life and renew my love of other people too. We all know that every other person we will ever see, meet or pass has their own full universe inside them, their own loves and tragedies, achievements and failures and all the dreams they are still pursuing but It’s so easy to forget. When I can keep that truth in my head the world seems like a very different place. Thank you very much to all the people I approach who open up to share some of themselves with me and let me take their photograph you wouldn’t believe what a difference you make to my life.