Chris Rathbone interviews Mike Griffin.

What do you specialise in?

I like to think that I specialise in listening to the clients requests and needs and where say they are a little unsure of what exactly they need offering some suggestions.

Tell us who are your favourite photographer's? 

Oh that's a good question and I guess to be honest it's growing and evolving  with time, as I discovered new bodies of very talented work. However to name some that have been with me for a while would have to include such masters as Cecil Beaton, Eugene Smith, Ansel Adams,

What photograph do you regret not having taken.

It was a Sunday summer afternoon and I was returning to my digs. The year was 1980 and I been photographing a demonstration in London. No one seemed to be getting off at my stop. The doors to my carrage opened and imidiately infront of me framed by the stairs to the left and a waiting room to my right, was a womans shoe lying on the platform. The high heal was violently bent back off the sole. Behond this were two uniformed men who you could only see from above their wastes as they stood on the track, facing one another .One was leaning over, looking down, whist the other looked at me, his face had written on suicide. There was a strong smell of asbestos in the air, I'm guessing from when the train breaked suddenly. I had hired a Canon FTb with 28mm lens, from the stores of my college where I was a first year student. The mental picture I had was to place the camera on the ground close to the shoe positioning the two men in the view finder exactly on either side. I was going to shoot untill I ran out of film but thats where I stopped, no film. I had used all three rolls of thirty six exposre on the march. there was a lesson to be learned all be it a hard one.

picture I envisaged It was a decade that saw Londoners protest against apartheid in South Africa and cram into Wembley Stadium in support of Live Aid. A decade when the streets of London were scattered with punks and mods, with record shops and rock stars — and today's Canary Wharf skyscrapers were barely a gleam in a developer's eye.