United Kingdom

I sailed as a kid, then spent years chasing the same feeling through windsurfing, kitesurfing and wing foiling - the speed and the immersion in the environment. The water rushing past inches below you. Being pulled along by nothing but the wind. It sharpens everything, and you're completely present. That's what I'm after when I shoot racing. I know what those sailors are feeling, and it tells me where to put the camera, low and close rather than watching from the shore. Up close, the water stops being a backdrop and becomes texture: spray, chop, the surface tearing past under the foil. That texture is what carries the emotion. Without it you have a boat in a photograph. With it, you're on the water with them. Those years also built an appreciation for how beautiful it is out there, and how fragile. If an image can put someone inside that feeling for a second, it might make them care about the place it happens in.