This is what I am most commonly asked when I say I’m a photographer. “What do you do?” they ask. “I’m a photographer” I reply. “What kind of photographer?” is then the usual next place for the conversation to go.

The trouble is, I have no idea. Well, I’m a male photographer. A human photographer. A photographer who uses a camera to make images of scenes where light reflects off things in an attractive way.

There are things I photograph because I enjoy photography. There are other things I photograph because it’s my job, but there is a very large overlap between the two categories, and I tend to shy away from photographing things I don’t like photographing.

OK, so the things I like making images of… well, there’s my life as a wedding photographer. I love weddings because they’re special moments in the lives of people, and I get to photograph all the richness that’s carefully planned, purchased and set up, as well as the richness of emotion.

I do like working with people in the studio too which I mostly do at my photographic studio in Brighton. Some of those people are models (portfolio shoots or just art for art’s sake), and each collaboration with each creative model yields something very different – it’s like having children with someone. But mostly the people I photograph are ordinary people who need some photos of themselves for whatever reason (family portraits perhaps), and I take care of it.

Travel photography is my favourite sort, because I get to go places and see things with my own eyes, and them make photographic images that I can bring back to show others what I saw. Travel photography is the main subject of my “Jon Silver, Brighton freelance photographer” site.

I also hire my photographic studio to other photographers and even give photography tuition to both amateurs and professionals. I enjoy this immensely and I suppose it allows me to revisit the passion for the subject that first led me to ditch my previous careers and turn professional.

Ultimately I suppose the answer to the question we started out with is that I’m the sort of photographer who likes photography as an art-form, a documentary of the places, events and people who happen in front of my camera lens.