Why the new site?

You might remember a few years back I started this venture up with Helen Brabon (Helen Brabon Photography) and it stayed that way until…well like all things in the world at the minute…covid struck. Helen is still doing photography and is still great at it and nothing has changed apart from it became more difficult to work together. On top of covid, I signed for the Graz 99ers in Austria for the 2020/2021 season and then this year I’m in Trencin, Slovakia until I arrive home in April. Obviously my situation made it even more impossible to plan together with Helen, so if you want to work with her or enquire about her services then you can reach out to her through her social media pages and Helen Brabon Photography! I’m also pretty certain that at some point in the future we will work together again, or at least I hope we will.

I thought I’d use this as a fresh start for myself and rather than rebooting the old website, I thought, “why not start fresh” and that’s what I did.

Obviously you have to prepare for life in the future, I have a house in Barry and a mortgage to pay, my amazing wife (Jade) has a sports massage and rehabilitation business in Barry too that she selfishly shut down for the year to be with me here in Trencin and then I’ve had two serious injuries over my career so far. The first in 2016 was a torn ligament in my ankle, then in 2020 in Graz I tore my MCL and ruptured my ACL, somehow (probably through Jade’s magic treatment and rehab) I managed to avoid surgery and fully recover. Those injuries are probably the biggest wake up I’ve ever had (hopefully the last wake up calls too) to get my s*** together and build for life after hockey.

As a professional sportsmen you are kind of your own boss, it’s not your everyday office job and you’re getting paid to live your dream! Don’t get me wrong there is a tonne of hard work, a tonne of sacrifice, lots of stress and lots of tears along the way but I wouldn’t change it for anything! Unfortunately, a sports career comes to an end earlier than those office jobs and you need to be prepared for that day whether you want it to come or not and this right here is what I’m trying to do as one way to prepare for when that day arrives.

So in short, why the new website? Well…it’s because I want to build my photography business from the ground up again and give it a nice new, shiny fresh start!