My name is Claire Lewis-Baugh. I was born in the North East of England. I now live in North Wales with my husband and one cat.

My Dad gave me my first camera whilst I was still at school, a Pentax P30. It was a time when digital cameras were a thing of the future and developing your roll of film and photographs meant sliding doors, closing curtains, taping up holes, choosing the cassettes you were going to listen to for the next few hours and wrapping up warm as you mixed your chemicals and set up the enlarger in the back of the garage.

I discovered that I could take a good photograph whilst I was at art school and although my work at that time included some set pieces, the time I spent on my own ideas is where I can see how my style has developed and grown.

I love to get close to objects, to take a look at them from a different perspective. I like people on the street, with their dogs, looking in windows and waiting, just waiting. I see photographs in a worn out shop front or the peeling paint on a door. I look at everything and anything, always thinking about the final photograph.

I am inspired by other peoples’ work, famous or not, but here are my favourite photographers:

Sally Mann, Martin Parr, Cindy Sherman, Jane Bown and Linda McCartney.

Some of them I can relate to, others I just love because their work is so different from mine.

There are other things that play a part in my life when I’m not taking photographs:

• Reading - I’ve got to have a book on the go.
• Crafts - I need my needle and thread close to hand.
• 1960’s - I dedicate my home to you.
• Tallulah - My feral farm cat that won’t sit on my knee.

And lots of other little things that make my days happy.

I have had my work in a few small open exhibitions but this will be the first time my work has been accessible to a wider audience.

I hope you like what you see through my eyes.