THE numbers simply didn't add up when it came to Janet Broughton's financial career - so she swapped jobs to picture life instead.

Now, she is chronicling portraits of other people who have switched careers in a special online project.

The 49 year-old married mum of one from Harwood had worked as a part-qualified accountant for various local companies, mostly as a financial controller. "But for many years I had the feeling that I was meant to be doing something else," she recalled.

"I discovered an interest in photography in 2009, initially just taking pictures whilst I was out walking, but soon started taking it more seriously. Towards the end of that year I signed up with The Open College of The Arts to improve my skills and knowledge even though before this I had no creative skills, hobbies or interests. By early 2010, I was dreaming of somehow making a living in photography but wasn't sure how."

Then, Janet had to shoot some portraits for her course "and from then on my passion for photographing people and animals just grew.". By the end of 2011, she found herself without a job and, because she didn't have the enthusiasm to go for financial controller work, she decided to launch her own business. "I started in April, 2012, and initially concentrated on photographing newborn babies and then expanded into location portraits," she explained.

"I found that I loved to work outdoors mostly and around the middle of 2013 I also started to offer equine lifestyle photography, which allowed me to indulge both my love of outdoors and love of horses. Whilst I still photograph newborns, I have a growing reputation as an equine photographer and most of my work is now equine lifestyle and children, families and couples' location portraits. I also offer lifestyle commercial photography for businesses of all sizes."

Her hard work paid off when, at the beginning of last year, Janet beat almost 10,000 entries to win the Image of the Year Award organised by the Guild of Photographers for one of her children's portraits. She also started a project called Fifty Portraits,to run until 2016, involving meeting and creating lifestyle portraits of 50 people who had a hobby they were so passionate about they made a business from it.

"The project was inspired by going on social media when I was just planning my own business and discovering there were so many people doing really interesting things online," she stated. "There's a blog to accompany it at www.fifty portraits.co.uk It's been very inspirational meeting these amazing people and I would love to exhibit the project when it's finished."

* For more information about Janet Broughton's work go to www.jbroughton.co.uk