Guest Lecturer- Lottie Davis

Lottie studied philosophy at St. Andrews and has no formal training in photography. After graduating, she assisted Mark Harris ( sport/ fishing photographer) to gain experience and used the studio to develop her portfolio.
Her work was mainly flower work and she sent her book to monsoon after seeing their window campaign, with the gut feeling that she could do better. She was commissioned and did four window campaigns for the womenswear store.

She later shot for a weekend food column for the telegraph for seven years, but she knew that she didn't want to be a food photographer, but she wanted to document the less privileged and the third world and be the person who makes the stories which evoke emotion to the viewer.

She approached Survival International in 2005 and asked what their current story was on and asked if she could go shoot there. She was told they had no money to give her and that the trip would have to be funded by herself, however she was determined that this is what she wanted to do and went to shoot the indigenous botswana bushman.

She later went on another self funded trip to morroco, which helped to build her portfolio.
Due to her building her portfolio with self funded trips and images she was commissioned to travel and photograph places such as greenland and the Arctic.

She described how her camera gave her access to places she wouldn't otherwise been able to go. This particularly stood out to me as it echoed something which I had read in our Solomon Godeau text, about the camera being a passport, and it was nice that this was justified by a professional photographer talking to us in a lecture rather than something I had read.

Every time she makes money she reinvests it in her practice which is something which I found very inspiring. Any money she makes doing commercial work she spends going travelling to take images which really mean something to her; things she wants to photograph.



Her images lights in the forest were a good example of where a client would see your shot in your book and want you to recreate it for them for advertising purposes. When this happens you are an expert in what you do because you have done it before. It is a very good idea to create images and be recognised for them and be asked to replicate them. For example she enjoyed using fake snow and built a working relationship with a snow company. She later used the same company on commissions of images of 10 downing street at christmas and for Fortnum and Masons christmas 2013 campaign.







Lottie was very down to earth which was a lovely quality to see in a photographer which has come so far.