Why I Stopped, and What I'm Making Next
By John Ferguson, documentary and portrait photographer, Ipswich, Suffolk. May 2026.
Morning. As most of you know, I've been making photographic portraits for a living for 35 years, in nearly 60 countries, from my base in Ipswich. One of my images sits in the National Portrait Gallery in London. Most of the rest sits in people's homes, on national magazine and newspaper pages, and in the heads of the people I photographed, which is honestly where I think portraits belong anyway.
I've been quiet for about a month. Reflecting on a few things that changed my outlook slightly.
Why I went quiet
My younger sister died earlier in May. She was only 58.
I'm not going to write a thousand words about grief because the internet has plenty, and most of them are useless. But what I will say is this. When somebody who shared your childhood disappears, time goes strange. Some days collapse into nothing. Others stretch to twice their length. You forget what you were doing on Tuesday, then remember at three in the morning with terrible clarity.
But the hardest part was the guilt. Not even knowing why I felt it. Guilty for not doing the usual stuff when she was still around. Guilty for getting on with my life. Guilty because she was my kid sister, and I was supposed to be the older one.
In the three weeks since, I've been to a wedding for two old friends, both in their sixties, happy together like they'd won something, which was lovely. I've been on holiday with the family; spending time with my grown-up children was a blessing. I also managed to deliver a major pitch to Ipswich Chamber of Commerce that I'd been preparing for months and almost couldn't face. I've sat down properly with friends I hadn't seen in years, which really reaffirmed that life's what you make it, and that it isn't a rehearsal. Oh, and I've spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at clouds.
35 years in, I've stopped pretending the camera matters as much as it once did. What matters is who I choose to photograph, and why I'm bothering. This month answered both.
Still Calling
The biggest thing on my desk is a long-form documentary portrait project called Still Calling. It's about people who haven't stopped doing the thing they love, even as the years have piled up around them.
I can't share much more about it yet. The work is still being made, the partnerships are still being shaped, and the project deserves a proper unveiling rather than a casual mention in a blog post. What I can tell you is that it's the most ambitious personal work I've taken on, and it's the project I'll be measured by for the rest of my career.
I thought I was making a project about one thing. I'm not. I'm making a project about people who refused to stop. Everything else is just the evidence.
More when there's more to tell.
My Favourite Book
I'm currently working on a portrait exhibition for October in Ipswich called My Favourite Book. Twenty subjects, each photographed holding the single book that shaped them, with a written piece beside the picture explaining why that book and not another one.
The brief sounds simple. The sittings are not. People cry, more often than you'd think. A book they read at 14 turns out to be about a parent, or a marriage, or a version of themselves they thought they'd put down years ago.
It'll be free, open to the public, in central Ipswich, and the subject list is still being finalised. If you live locally and you've got a book like that, drop me a line. I'd like to hear about it.
The longboat on the Deben
I've been quietly working on something with the Sutton Hoo Ship's Company. They're the team rebuilding the Anglo-Saxon ship by hand, on the River Deben, with adzes and oak and the kind of patience the rest of us have completely forgotten how to summon.
The original burial was 1,400 years ago. The people doing this work today are using tools their great-great-grandfathers would have recognised. I'm pitching the resulting portrait essay to Guardian Weekend and Sunday Times Magazine.
Slow work, made properly, will outlast everything fast we're all panicking about this week.
Steve and the Alfa
A new and exciting cycling project I hope to be working on this year, featuring Steve, who runs a cycle shop in Ipswich, and his 1968 Salvarani-liveried Alfa Romeo Giulia, which he uses as a support car. It's a beautiful, slightly ridiculous, completely sincere piece of work, and I'm hoping it will go out to Rouleur, Cyclist Magazine, Octane, Rapha and Le Col in June or July.
Everything else, briefly
52° North East Anglia Photo Festival, which I'm co-founding with Laura Hall here in Ipswich, is still in negotiations for 2027.
The Visibility Architect, my premium personal branding service for executives and founders, is taking new partnership clients this quarter at visibilityarchitect.co.
Humans of Ipswich Business, the programme I pitched to the Chamber on 6 May, is now in early discussions with The Suffolk Chamber of Commerce.
Mobile team headshot days cost £650 all-in, for up to 8 people who want a fresh set of business pictures without committing to a full shoot. 72-hour delivery, running across Colchester, Bury St Edmunds, Woodbridge and the surrounding towns this summer.
And there are one or two more interesting projects still in their planning stages. Very exciting. More on those soon.
A few questions I get asked a lot
Where are you based? Ipswich, Suffolk. I work across East Anglia, regularly in London, and internationally when the work calls for it.
What do you actually shoot? Documentary portraits, editorial portraits, executive personal branding, corporate headshots, and commercial portrait commissions for brands, magazines and institutions.
How long have you been doing this? 35 years, give or take. My work has been published widely and held in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Do you take on personal projects alongside the commercial work? Yes. Still Calling, My Favourite Book, and the Sutton Hoo project all run alongside the day job. They're not a side hustle. They're the reason for the day job.
How do I get in touch? Email john@johnfergusonphotography.uk, call me on 07710 613 934, or have a wander around johnfergusonphotography.uk.
What this month has taught me
The work is the thing.
Not the planning of the work. Not the talking about the work. Not the website rebuild or the polish of the bio. The work itself. The portrait made. The book printed. The exhibition hung. The story sent to the editor before you've had a chance to talk yourself out of it.
I've spent 35 years making portraits in nearly 60 countries, and I have never been more certain that the only honest answer to losing somebody you love is to make more, share more, and ask better questions of the people who are still here.
If you've been waiting to start something, this is your sign.
Let's go.
John Ferguson - Documentary and portrait photographer, Ipswich- Website: johnfergusonphotography.uk |Website: visibilityarchitect.co Email: john@johnfergusonphotography.uk
