A new career direction
After 38 years working within the Banking Industry I finally bit the bullet & decided to leave the rat race & pursue my photography dreams.
To be honest, back in 1986 I stumbled into banking. I was doing my A-Levels at 6th form & after a year of these decided that studying wasn’t for me & I certainly wasn’t looking to go to university so I decided I needed to get a job. Back in the mid-eighties Careers Offices still existed, so off I trotted to the local one in Colchester & was promptly shown into a room with a couple of small metal filing boxes. It turns out these were full of paper cards detailing all the jobs that were available. So I sat down & as one would do started at the letter ‘A’. I’d always been artistic & in an ideal world I would have become an Architect or something similar. As luck would have it, there were a couple of vacancies for Architects & I grabbed both cards from the tray & intently read the job description. I can tell you that these cards went straight back into the box as soon as I saw the 6 year training requirement! Needless to say nothing else peaked my interest in the ‘A’ section. However, ‘B’ looked far more interesting, particularly when I got to ‘Banking’ - lots & lots of cards from a variety of different banks, most of which I hadn’t heard of. By far & away, the most appealing thing to me was the starting salary £3,860 per annum + £1,450 London Weighting Allowance. At the tender age of 17 that was far more money that I could have imagined - I was still doing my paper round & earning £4.50 per week, which managed to keep me in Lois Cords & Sergio Tacchini Tracksuit tops (with a little help from my parents). Those gold Diadora Bjorn Borgs were regrettably well beyond my financial reach.
At this point, I grabbed all the cards & handed them to the Careers Officer & said I’d like to apply for these! Needless to say, I didn’t bother going through any more of the cards, so a lot of other industry sectors missed out on the opportunity to have me work for them! A few days later application forms started to arrive through the post which I dutifully filled in & sent back. Over the course of the next few weeks letters started being delivered inviting me to interviews. I accepted the first one that arrived which was working for an Information Department of one of the main UK Banks. The day of the interview duly arrived & I travelled into London & as I had plenty of time before the scheduled 2.00pm interview I’d arranged to meet my good mate Paul who had already started working for an International Bank. This turned into a lunch of the liquid variety & all I can say is I must have really impressed the interviewing lady with my wit banter & repartee as a couple of days later I’d been offered the job (can’t have been anything to do with the drink!).
Over the course of the next 38 years I did a variety of roles within the bank before moving into Corporate Banking for the last 20 or so years. There’s a lot to be said about the skills developed over that time & these have always stood me in good stead with whatever I am doing, whether it was sport. trustee work or photography. As I said at the start, I have always been artistic & took up photography again around 10 years ago as a ‘stress reliever’ however, as the days passed by I was becoming more & more frustrated with driving off the Island on the way to work with a sublime sunrise in my rear view mirror. At this point, I realised that Banking was just getting in the way of what I really wanted to do - photography.
Turn the clock forward to the present day, I have to admit Banking has been good to me & allowed me to make the decision to call it a day. But there is no turning back now, my photographic journey commences here & lets see where it takes me.
