More from the student shows I used to love touring. Finding all these makes me realise how lucky London is for its wealth of graduating talent. If you’re based there, you really need to make attending graduate shows a habit for yourself.

The postcard format for graduates is an interesting one. Classically you’d go for business cards, that are pocketable, but lacking in ad space. Postcards give you more room then, but they’re a larger investment to take and carry.

Saying ‘investment’ sounds a bit grand, but I’ve always thought it’s important for students to think tactically when creating their promos, and considering the reality of their audience, and the scale of the marketplace they’re part of when they graduate.

No own attending a show can practically collect all the cards and take aways (though I did try one year as an experiment and bit of research into formats), so deciding which ones to take, and how you’ll carry them and reference them later, is the underlying consideration.

Would be interesting to do a bit of research with a graduating group one day. Randomly divide them into two groups. One makes business cards, the other postcard, and you see which format is most picked up at the shows.

Why did I pick this one then? I studied photography, worked with photographers and agents, and still hold a lot of love for the discipline. What I particularly enjoy though is finding images that I know I would never have taken.

It’s not an arrogant claim I think, to say that most images either look familiar to me, or like something I feel I’d have composed myself at the same point in time. I’ve just got a very busy visual and image laden brain (making up for the space that’s not so good at reading and spelling). So when I see an image that not flashed in my minds eye at some point, it’s exciting.

Like this one. It’s curiously beautiful and I would never have imagined or styled or set or composed it myself. Aesthetic surprises are great.