Paul Canning

Central Two Zero Seven Nine: Out Paul Canning

What sort of a life do you make for yourself when there is no focus? How does your life pan out as you ride the vicissitudes of a dog eat dog, cut throat employment market? How do you chase your dreams into adulthood to find love, happiness and success, when you carry inside yourself a childhood, dejected, insecure, unstable and with what tiny morsel of confidence you possess - in tatters, because you've been at the mercy of a bullying control freak - your own father?

I have survived so much mental anguish with confidence renewed following a difficult and painful education in Blackpool. After handwriting 100 letters, I landed my first job - cutting my teeth as a London-based portrait and wedding photographer in early summer 1986. A life on the ocean wave then beckoned, which turned me from nervous novice ship's photographer to expert smudger working aboard cruise liners worldwide.

In 1990 I settled down, met the girl of my dreams and landed a fabulous job - Metropolitan Police Service forensic photographer. In the late 1990s I qualified as a Hendon-based instructor, leaving the police in 2004 to set up a business. If that wasn't enough, I then retrained as a medical photographer in 2008 and I'm now a medical photography manager working for Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Both journey and path to success have been a miracle in the making.