Eric Schneider
A London based photographer, I am also an architect by background and a creative management consultant.
My passion for photography began when, still at school, I was given my first book on Henri Cartier Bresson. It became my photographic primer. Every image, each composition, every nuance was pored over. I guess some of it sunk in. I rarely cropped and was forever on the lookout for the decisive moment. It had an effect. Several competition wins and much published work later, in 1969 I went on to win second and fourth place in the UK Junior Photographer of the Year awards. And in 1973 I had my first solo exhibition - at Warwick University where I had won funding to undertake a photographic study of Manchester's devastating new council home building programme.
After my economics degree I went on to study at the Architectural Association and became an architect. My creativity flourished as never before, but diverted away from photography, albeit only for a while.
The photography rekindled with the advent of digital cameras in the early 2000s. Slowly my direction changed too. Street photography remains a cornerstone but it has been complemented by an interest in fashion, in studio work and in creatively photographing people, places and architecture. I undertook the Mastered fashion photography programme. As more influences opened up I began to understand how to make photographs as well as to just take them, how to direct as well to just capture, and how to combine photographic software with CAD. And my own style gradually emerged: often quirky, ideally graphically strong, architecturally influenced, and minimalist wherever possible.