'The best decision I ever made'

Documentary photographer Nik Roche talks to Jonathon Hill poignantly about first picking up a camera very late in life and why he is drawn to the margins of life

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IK Roche is a landscape gardenerturned-documentary photographer from south Wales. The 54-year-old hadn't picked up a camera until he was 47. He has told of falling in love with photography, why he likes to photograph people who are a bit different, and how he hopes to tell stories and have conversations through his pictures....

I was 47 when I bought my first camera. To then I'd been a landscape gardener all my adult life and I'd never even thought about photography. My phone still had buttons on it. I still don't know whether I know how to take a 'good' picture as such. Photography is subjective - especially when it's of people.

Some photos speak to some people and some don't. What makes us stop on one certain image, especially in the image-led world in which we all now live? Maybe it's something about our own background.

I met Tony, a rugged sort of chap I'd come across on the streets of Swansea a few years ago, by chance. He'd been told he didn't have enough money to buy the pint he'd ordered at a nearby pub and he was clearly quite annoyed that he couldn't find his way back to the pub from the cashpoint.