‘What makes a photograph is the light – you’ve got to get everything else there, but if the light isn’t right it will never work.’
Freshfields senior partner Edward Braham has taken photographs all his life. The walls of his office are covered with photographs from his trips to South Africa, Paris, Kyoto and Tanzania. For this respected City corporate lawyer, photography is the hobby that ‘clears the brain’ when he takes time out.
I’ve always taken photographs. I took them as a child, then I stopped when I was in my twenties. I really picked it up again around ten years ago, which was the start of the time when digital became better than film. I had a sabbatical and started taking photographs. I got a new camera at that point. Digital is just fantastic.
I first started using one of those little digital cameras, then I got a Canon sports camera. I’ve had different iterations of it ever since, I’ve acquired three over time.
You might only have ten seconds to take a photo; it’s purely opportunistic.
I use natural light wherever possible. As cameras have got better, you can get good pictures with less light. Light is everything. To me, what makes a photograph is the light – you’ve got to get everything else there, but if the light isn’t right it will never work.
The best photographs are taken at dawn and dusk. Some people particularly talk about the evening’s golden hour. You can take good photos in the middle of the day but for some things, like plants, you want flatlight.
There are some fantastic photographers out there. Andy Rouse is an awesome wildlife photographer. He uses light and space, he also spends hours and hours sitting and waiting for things… I haven’t got hours and hours. He’s got great skill and great patience.
I prefer digital, by far. There was a crossover period around 2005-06, and it’s just got better. I’ve been shooting RAW from the beginning, simply because it felt like a bad idea to throw away the extra information which happens when you convert to JPEG. The mathematics and science behind that conversion has just got steadily better over the years. That’s why you can go back to an old picture, and convert it with today’s technology and it will be a better conversion.
It takes a long time to edit a photo from RAW. I use Photoshop. I find it a very difficult program to use, it’s a huge learning curve, but I’m getting better at it. It’s industry standard for a reason.
How many photos do I have at home on my walls? Not that many. I have more on my iPad. I’ve taken tens of thousands of photos.
I’m opportunistic. It’s something that I do round the edge. If I’ve got holiday time I’ll do more of it. I find it very absorbing. Whether it’s meditation or whatever, what is it that clears the brain? Very often it’s being absorbed in something else. It could be photography, it could be something else where you think: ‘I have to focus 100% on it.’