What exactly does cosmopolitan mean? I'm not sure, but I'm pretty certain I am. My father was Prince Eugene Lubomirski de Vaux - he was a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, because an ancestor had used his private army to defend Vienna against the Turks. He was a Pole born in Vienna in 1896 - Poland was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - and his family owned estates of half a million hectares across Poland, Lithuania and Byelorussia. My mother, Erika von Wolff, was Austrian - she was born near Trieste in Jesenice Yugoslavia, when it was part of the Sud-Tirol; her parents lived most of their lives in Merano, Northern Italy. My sister was born in Italy. I'm married to a Portuguese who grew up in Mozambique. As you might imagine, our family covers a lot of languages, and the route to my being born in London wasn't straightforward. But I was, just after World War Two, in Hendon, a suburb to the north-west. I'm a photographer, and the route to that wasn't straightforward either - I started as a bridge designer.

People's careers often seem to leapfrog years - they move forward by going back to what they first fell in love with. I took my first pictures aged 8 with a Kodak Brownie. I went through prep school and then on to my senior school, Ampleforth - a catholic boarding school in Yorkshire - where I ran the photography club. That's where I started to print pictures. I went to Surrey University to do civil engineering and a Masters in bridge design, and ran the photography club there too.

When the internet was beginning to become central to people's daily lives, I set up a company with a colleague who'd worked in the financial sector. We developed internet strategies, websites, domain name services and hosting for financial institutions, law firms and property companies. It was great fun and very successful, but sadly my business partner suddenly died, and we sold the company. It could have been the trigger to take the plunge. All along I'd kept taking photos of people and places - street photography, landscapes - had several exhibitions, done a series of photos of celebrities and their homes. I realised what I liked most was setting people in the context of where they were - home, work, street - in terms of scale, location and activity. But it wasn't the moment. I got a call out of the blue to work on a set of projects in a mega-scale private healthcare group and did it. It was exactly the right thing to do because I realised I hated big company politics, saw the light, took the plunge - and many other clichés - and became a photographer.

It's intriguing how photographers - and painters - idolise the equipment they use to make images. I can remember every camera and lens I've used - they're cherished, almost part of you. My first proper camera at school was a French Sem Orec twin lens reflex, which had large negatives and a square screen for carefully composing of the picture. Then - what luck - I managed to buy an old Leica IIIG kit in a beautiful leather case with three lenses and - still used - a hand-held Weston Master IV light meter. Next was a Nikkormat, then a Nikkormat EL, and later lots of accessories while working in Oman. Coming back to England this all seemed superfluous. I swapped it all for a Leica M6 and one lens which has now grown to four. Using this camera taught me more about photography than anything. Everything is controlled by you, and there is less between you and the subject. When I went professional, and digital, I bought a Fuji Finepix Pro 3 and later the 5. At the time they were, and are still, unique in having effectively two chips set at different exposures. This gives a wider dynamic range than other cameras, making them especially suitable for subtle portraits. I completed the photography kit bag with a Leica M8, which allowed me to use those amazing Leica lenses and work in a more intimate way.

Work as a photographer evolved in a natural way into a lot of different areas, some of them with their background in my earlier career. There are classic family portraits at home and in the studio; interiors for architects, designers and contractors; corporate shoots of multinational boards; book launch events; product launches (including one for some delicious chocolates!); the official portrait of HRH the Duke of Kent; and spending a week in the Kalahari Desert with the !gubi Family of Bushmen in Namibia.

Shoots vary a lot in what's involved. A doctor got in touch to shoot images for the practice website. We shot them in a Fulham studio and outdoors, and added some poses for family photographs. I'd done the front cover for the British Quality Foundation's magazine and was asked to photograph their Lean Six Sigma awards at the Renault F1 Centre. A Brazilian client asked for a family fashion shoot to be used for a Christmas card, with the slideshow reviewed from New York and the selected files sent to Sao Paulo. A couple of flats redecorated by an interior designer in Kensington were photographed for her website. Fourteen directors of a multinational IT company flying in from four continents were photographed in a studio which I set up temporarily in a Mayfair hotel suite. They'd come for a board meeting and I had five minutes each of their time - during which I had to disentangle them from their Blackberrys, straighten their ties (and send one off for a shave). Office refurbishment photographs for a fit-out company. A fashion shoot as a birthday present for a 14-year-old girl with six of her friends in a studio. That was great fun - lots of changes of clothes, backgrounds, props, poses, lots of music, fun, energy - resulting in a set of happy, stylish, colourful images which all of them loved. I'm working on a project about artisans, for a book and exhibition. The first shoot for this was taking photographs of Keith Platt, a cabinet maker in the Cotswolds. The series is about world-class craftsmen who work with their hands.

Where you live can be a huge stimulus for work, a real boost for creativity. I live in Parsons Green, in West London - it's a lively, cosmopolitan community with a great variety of shops, parks, restaurants and pubs. There's Bodeans on Fulham Broadway which has barbequed pulled pork and lots of hot sauces; the Harwood Arms pub in Farm Lane which does gastropub food; the Aziz Restaurant in Fulham Broadway for Turkish food; El Blason for weekend lunches; the Blue Elephant for Thai. It's great to be able to walk in beautiful surroundings, just to relax and think sometimes. We're near the Thames, 10 minutes from Putney Bridge and there are paths along the river which lead through parks to all sorts of surprising places like Richmond, spending all the time amongst greenery.

The arts really do work together, and photographers like armies march on their stomachs. I adore cooking, and if you like cooking you tend to like shopping. I love browsing through places like the Ginger Pig in Marylebone, the Parson's Nose in Fulham, all sorts of exotic ingredients in the stalls and shops in North End Road - it has a strong Middle Eastern and North African accent; Al Baydr store is a great favourite - with occasional trips to Borough market. And there's a Thai supermarket in Farm Lane. And how can you compartmentalise shopping? It blends quickly across the genres, eg from food to photography. I buy photogrear locally at Calumet in Fulham, alongside the Worx Studios (which I use for photoshoots with generous budgets), and online. I get books online at Amazon, but I go for photography books to live bookshops like Koenig's Bookshop at the Serpentine Gallery, and at the Photographers Gallery in Ramillies Street near Oxford Circus.

I often wonder what an ideal commission would be. I'd love to do all the photography of a FTSE 100 or Fortune 500 company's annual report. This may sound dry as dust - it's anything but. It takes in the offices, the company's people - individuals and together - its board, its staff at work, the producers, the salespeople - in factories, in outlets, following up supply chains wherever they may be in the world. Then weaving this agglomeration of images into a coherent story. And I'd love to take at least one photograph that becomes iconic for that subject or genre, and to continue to meet and work with fascinating people. It's the people that make photography such a great way of making a living. That and the joy of creating things of beauty.

END

(c) Stefan Lubomirski De Vaux 9 April 2009

More about Lubo: Website http://www.stefanlubo.com. Blog http://www.lubomirski.co.uk/clients.htm. Twitter http://twitter.com/stefanlubo. Facebook http://tiny.cc/mtWXp. Ecademy http://www.ecademy.com/account.php?id=234278

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