Caroline Derrick Photographer

My career with the camera started in front of the lens not behind.

My career with the camera started in front of the lens not behind. At 15 a friend wanted me to go with her for moral support to a modelling agency, and somehow they took me on instead of my friend!! (We did stay friends). Although my favourite type of work was the catwalk, I did lots of photography work as well. On these shoots I found myself being more interested in how the shoot was set up, what camera was being used with which lens. I think I may have got on some photographers nerves as I was always asking questions about what he was doing instead of just sitting here looking down the lens. The modelling then led me into film and TV work on screen working on films like ‘Fifth element’ and ‘End of the affair’. I was also on TV regularly on the ‘The Bill’, ‘Grange Hill’ and live TV such as ‘Noel’s House Party’, and again I was more interested in how the filming was done, and would spend time with the crew getting in the way and asking again too many questions.
I really started to want to move from the front of the lens to behind on both photography and film, but how?

In 2004 I took some photographs along to my local college just to enquire about a basic course, when the head of photography offered me a place straight on to the HND course. That was daunting starting at a level that everyone else had worked up to, not only did I have the HND course work to do, I also had to quickly learn about photography to that level. I qualified two years later with a HND in Photography from the University of Greenwich.

I also wanted to learn about filming so in the same year I joined a filmmakers group in Tunbridge Wells and now with the founder Meena Chauhan we have started our own film production company ‘Camera Girls’ In the summer holiday of my first year at college we self taught ourselves everything to do with making a short film from casting, storyboarding, sorting out locations to working with a full professional crew and directing our first film ‘The Return’ which we also self funded. We currently freelance for ITV local for their new Broadband TV channel, as well as our own drama projects.