It's a wonderful thing to be given a chance to produce something where only your imagination is the limit.

I look at this artwork and I ache to be able to draw. Not only that, to be able to create through drawing - an amazing and rewarding gift. One can only imagine the visceral excitement of the concept artists at Industrial Light & Magic when they pitched-up for work every day, tasked with creating the world on which JJ Abrams could base The Force Awakens, episode VII of a movie series which moulded my life.

About 15 years ago I purchased a selection of concept art prints from the early 1970's, showing the original scenes and vistas on which George Lucas would base A New Hope, the first Star Wars movie. As you watch the film the prints pop up again and again, barely changed in their framework, just refined for the screen.

Time without number I have looked at those prints and been inspired. I often think that if anybody could be just half as impressed with anything I'd ever photographed then it would a job very well done. Maybe I'm better off not knowing - and just wondering with fingers firmly crossed.

For me, these concept artists are the heroes of cinema. They give birth to that latent image on which hundreds, possibly thousands, of other professionals base their own skills in the pursuit of the result which inspires and stands a test of time. Windows into other worlds.

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