I know that everyone out there in non-photographer land have complicated lives, just like me. It would be easy to define a person by a title like "Wedding Photographer", or even "Bridesmaid", and think that's what they are: a two-dimensional archetype with all the expectations and baggage that goes with it.

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In my other job I'm a project worker, working with young volunteers in the community. We discuss transferable skills a lot, the way that doing one thing gives you abilities in another.

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Some of these are reasonably obvious, like being able to "deal with people", to get your thoughts across in order to lead or contribute. And the flip side of that is being able to listen to another, to empathise and understand the situation they are in so that you can take the right kind of action to help.

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The most transferable skill is probably self-confidence. I'm sure we all know a young person who we think could do with being more self-confident, just to be able to say what their own preferences are and to speak up for themselves in a group, among their own peers.

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Once a young person has enough self-belief they can take that with them into every situation. It's transferable like nothing else.

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The rub is that something so easily transferred cannot be given by one person to another. It takes careful nurturing to create situations where a person can gain confidence through achieving outcomes they own. It's the lesser-known work of teaching, perhaps. Teachers know that once there's self-belief there's everything.

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I've been talking about young people's confidence, but there's a child in all of us — we all need a bit of careful nurturing.