He formed Steve Mayes Photography in 2002, a couple of years after moving to the North East from where he grew up in the Midlands. His interest in photographing places had been developing slowly, in the background, from trips around Europe and North America. When he moved to Newcastle the iconic architecture that he found himself surrounded by, old and new, seemed to be the final spark that turned photography into a real passion. The early years of his new career involved working with film and a darkroom, and even when he moved to digital in 2004 his output continued to be exclusively black and white for some years. he still often works in that medium as it lends itself so well to architectural work.
In 2004 he turned to digital, and by 2006 he’d left his job to pursue photography full-time, though by then his business had been going for a number of years. It was a big step, one that led him to expand from the purely ‘artistic’ side of print sales to the undertaking of architectural photography commissions, an important part of the business now, and in 2009 he was awarded an Associateship of the British Institute of Professional Photography for his architectural work.