The decision that allowed me to embark on my first commercial business venture!

By HK Lawyer AJ Halkes Barrister-at-Law

AJ Halkes
November 30, 2025
11:10 am

By 1974, I had my first business and almost got thrown out of A-level art by a difficult teacher named Mrs Jessup. She wanted me to focus on drawing bits of wood, cloth, and bottles, yet I could not see the point, so to save her the pain, I quit.

By then, a young art teacher named Andy Smith had arrived, and a student teacher on attachment named Clive Ramsbottom (with a passion for screen printing) had also joined. Loughborough College School had just become Burleigh Community College and, in the process, built an enormous new Art and Technology block. It even had a food science section for cookery. In 1974, the facilities were cutting-edge for their time.

I didn’t want to give up on my art and needed access to the new art block plus the darkroom that Andy Smith had built, which I had helped set up and another that I used as a mini photo studio.

So there I was, wanting access but technically banned from it. I decided to have a quiet chat with the headmaster, Mr Broad. He was a fan of my work and an incredible presence, and there will be more on him later. He worked out a solution: if I paid for my own A-level art examination fee, I would remain an art student at the school and therefore could not be denied use of the art facilities. Much to the annoyance of Mrs Jessup, the head of the art department, he informed her of his decision, and I wrote a cheque from part-time garage work earnings.

That decision allowed me to embark on my first commercial business venture.

I realised there was an obvious market for school photographs. Every year, a panoramic photo was taken using a mechanised camera that rotated to scan the entire school arranged in an arc. Everyone would buy a copy, and the economics of it were obvious. But there was no photographic record of everyday school life, no images of the boarding house community or even of our sports teams.

So I bought chemicals and photographic paper, set up shop in the darkroom, and started producing team photographs for sale. I even secured the boarding house photo contract.

So that was my first business venture, a mix of art, creativity and commerce that set the tone for what would come later.

In my next post: “I could have been Warhol” (or so I thought), as I launch my first art exhibition with a “kickstarter” campaign … in 1974/5!

If you need specific input regarding a strategic Hong Kong challenge or related legal matters in the HKSAR you can always DM me and check out my profile at https://www.ajhalkes.com

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The decision that allowed me to embark on my first commercial business venture!

By HK Lawyer AJ Halkes Barrister-at-Law

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