Well... here we are.

Today the website officially goes live, which feels like a much bigger moment than pressing a button and hoping the links all work.

Darth Marty Media has actually been full-time for getting on for three weeks now, but today feels like the day it becomes real. A home for the work, the stories and, hopefully, the start of something that lasts.

People have asked me why now.

The honest answer is that this has been building for decades. I've been obsessed with photography for the best part of 30 years, qualified for nearly 20, and for most of that time it had to sit alongside "real life". Careers, mortgages, bills, commitments... life has a habit of putting passion on the back burner, even when it never really goes away.

I'm still juggling plenty of bills (and probably more commitments than is sensible ), but now that I'm 51 I've finally got something I didn't have in my twenties or thirties: a little flexibility. Enough to give this a proper shot.

I've given myself 8–12 months to find out whether this self-employed thing can work, and so far... so good.

It's been wonderfully busy, the enquiries have kept coming and, thankfully, every client so far has trusted me with something important to them. Weddings, football, businesses, community events, charity evenings, portraits... the variety has been incredible, and the feedback has genuinely blown me away.

I'm under no illusion that it'll always be plain sailing, though, at some point there'll be a dropped camera, a failed memory card, terrible weather, or a job where I simply get something wrong. Not if, when.

I've worked hard to reduce the risks. I carry good insurance, I shoot to dual memory cards, I back everything up obsessively and I prepare far more than anyone probably realises, but no business is judged when everything goes perfectly.

It's judged when something doesn't. There's an old saying that you only discover how good a company is when things go wrong and I completely believe that. If that day ever comes, you won't get excuses, you'll get a sincere apology, someone who genuinely cares, and a photographer who'll do everything possible to put it right.

Hopefully that day never arrives,  and until then, I'll keep doing what I love: meeting brilliant people, telling authentic stories and creating photographs that mean something long after the moment has passed.

Life is a journey, not a destination, it's just a much better journey when you've got photographs of it.

Thank you to everyone who's encouraged me, trusted me, recommended me or simply followed along so far. It means more than you'll ever know.

Here's to whatever comes next.

Mart