We started our discussion with a question about how he got started in the business:
Kevin Murray: My background is art direction and I spent about thirty years working in agencies in London and Sussex. It was during that time that I started working as the Art Director on the Callaway Golf account, which I did for around six years.
From there, I set up my own agency, Bandit Design, to continue working in the golf market. I was constantly on the lookout for good images of golf courses and went out to photograph my home course one evening just to see what I could achieve. As a direct result of that single photoshoot, I landed my first photography commission, with the St Andrews Links Trust in 2006.
How much of your time now is spent on the art direction business and how much on the photography side of things?
Almost all of my time is spent on photography now. I still do some art direction, and marketing, for select clients, but my art direction background heavily influences my photography – when I am on a shoot, I am thinking about how the images might be used: cover images need to be shot in a different orientation to double page spreads; have I left space within the image for copy? So, I’m trying to give my clients as many options as possible so that they can use my images in as many different ways as possible.