When Nick Silk started street photography he never hesitated to take the pictures of passers-by.

“Some people feel nervous when they first start, but I find it quite natural to approach people,” the Bermudian artist said. “Almost everyone likes having their picture taken so it is not a difficult thing to do.”

Last summer, this natural extroversion led him to approach a family on the beach in Southsea, a seaside resort in Portsmouth, England. It was a nice day and they were clearly enjoying themselves.

“There was a boy in the group playing with a football,” Mr Silk said.

When they got closer, Mr Silk asked an elderly man with them, if he could take their photo. He assumed the man was the grandfather in the family. The man agreed and said they were Ukrainian. Mr Silk could not find out more about them, because they did not speak much English.

“They were Ukrainian refugees from the conflict,” Mr Silk said.

He was able to position the boy with the soccer ball, so that a sheltered bench was to the left of the family.

“I knew where my frame was,” Mr Silk said. “The rest was the beauty of the moment. When I reviewed the image later I was so excited by it.”

He loved how the boy seemed to levitate as he kicked the slightly deflated soccer ball.

“It had everything including smiles, but there were also other layers to the photo,” Mr Silk said.

The photograph, that he titled UKrainians, was chosen for the 2022 ING Discerning Eye Exhibition which opened at the Mall Galleries in London on November 11. It was one of 527 works chosen from 7,300 entries.

“And out of that, only a handful of photographs were selected,” Mr Silk said. “Most of the pieces in the exhibition were paintings and sculptures. It was so exciting to be chosen.”

The works were selected by six jurors who were curators, artists themselves, gallery directors and film directors. They divided the entries into pieces that interested them. Mr Silk’s photo was picked by Gurinder Chadha, who directed the hit 2003 film Bend it Like Beckham.

He was thrilled to meet Ms Chadha at the exhibition opening.

“She has a great twinkle in her eye,” Mr Silk said. “That night she spoke to every single artist she had chosen and took time to have pictures taken with them. She was particularly interested in why the photographers chose to frame their work in such a way.”

He is hoping that the London exhibition will lead to more interest in his photography, and a commercial career. He is now selling prints and taking on commissions, through a website and Instagram page.

“I have come late to Instagram,” he said. “But I went from zero followers in March to 1,900 now. I have really built it up, but it took nine months. I have not gone into Instagram reels or TikTok though. I found Instagram to be very useful to establish a presence and get some interaction.”

Mr Silk was born and raised in England, but moved to Bermuda 25 years ago after experiencing health challenges.

“My mother, Gillian Silk, is Bermudian, but moved to the UK at a young age,” he said.

It was in Bermuda that he really established himself as a painter. He also taught art classes and workshops at the Masterworks Museum of Art in Paget, and did art show reviews for The Royal Gazette.

The pandemic hit him hard.

“With the art I was doing, I lost a lot of customers when the visitor market fell off a cliff,” he said. “It made me recalibrate and rethink. I just needed a change.”

He moved back to Portsmouth a year and a half ago.

“I still have family here,” he said.

He particularly loves to shoot in Southsea, known for its long beach and funfair rides at South Parade Pier.

“I did not initially intend to stay permanently,” he said. “But that is how it turned out.”

It was a major change for him in more ways than one.

He had always been a painter in Bermuda, but after the move, he bought himself a Nikon Z mirrorless camera and started snapping pictures.

“I still paint, but not as much,” he said. “I did photography before, but not a great deal.”

One thing that has surprised him is the amount of filing involved in photography.

“I have such a bank of images that there is a lot of grunt work to sort them and put them away into the right files,” he said. “I did not realise how much time that would take up.“

Mr Silk likes the challenge of photography, and the way it offers him a new form of storytelling.

“I think a lot of artists migrate through different art forms as their career evolves,” he said. “I wanted to engage with a much wider audience and be much more relevant. I have found photography to be a very liberating thing. I like the versatility and immediacy of it.”

He also enjoys the engagement with people.

One day he took candid photographs of two punk rockers walking by.

“I bumped into one of them again and started talking,” Mr Silk said. “He was a former Vera Wang bridal model.”

After being accepted into the London exhibition, one thing bothered Mr Silk; he did not know the identity of the Ukrainians on the beach. Through an article in the Portsmouth website The News he appealed for the family to come forward, but they never did.

“I still don’t know who they were,” Mr Silk said. “I don’t know if they moved around the country. Portsmouth was designated a city of refuge for Ukrainians.”

But he has not noticed a lot of refugees in Southsea.

“So this was unusual,” he said.

The ING Discerning Eye Exhibition is now closed, but Mr Silk’s work can be seen and purchased on his website www.nicksilkphotography.com.