Show Time!

If you knew, if you only knew, how many people I have inconvenienced with my camera and my height at gigs over the course of the last two years, you would appreciate the fact that the Rumsey Wells' Luke Emery and I have put together the exhibition of live music photographs that you can glimpse below. All those obstructed views, taps on the shoulder and whispers in the ear of people trying to enjoy a performance - none of them went to waste...

The opening night of the exhibition was successful beyond everyone's expectations. We'd have been chuffed to have welcomed twenty or thirty people into the room - welcoming seventy people left me pinching myself, frankly, and the presence of so many people, as well as musicians Michael Farrant and The Vagaband, created a wonderful party atmosphere that I shall never forget. Many, many thanks to everyone who came along.

The exhibition is open throughout October for all to view - at the Rumsey Wells, St. Andrews Street, Norwich.

I Don't Do Weddings...

It's true. Not going near them.

Try saying 'no' when a couple genuinely appreciate your style of photography, though.

Wedding photography can be so dull and drab. We all know. But it is only as dull and drab as the photographer allows it to become. It is a completely different affair when you know that you are welcome and specifically wanted at the event. This is the reason I enjoyed shooting at Andy and Claire, and Lynsey and Jodie's weddings in September. Thanks to their enthusiasm for working with me, I worked very, very hard - and yet the only part that actually felt like work was turning down offers of beer and whisky...







As for this group shot of thirty people, each with their eyes open, smiling? It serves as an example that photographing a wedding is fundamentally quite simple - you reap in your photographs all the energy you put in to doing a good job. I asked the usher who assisted me in rounding people up not to raise his voice at any point, but to walk over to each guest and usher them outside individually. I did the same. It took a while, but nobody minded. I only raised my voice once all day - as I barked at these people to look into the lens. The result? Not one guest was annoyed at having to pose for the big group photograph - and they actually found it funny that I'd shouted at them for the first time, after four hours on the job. There's a lot to be said for treating people like guests, rather than cattle.



When I graduated from UEA in 2008, my brother offered me a wonderful piece of advice: 'If you're not a tosser, you'll do fine.' Nowhere is that more true than in wedding photography.

Exhibition!

It’s finally coming around. Between January 2009 and September 2010, I have been consistently photographing live music at venues around Norwich and across the East. It’s been a quite indiscriminate little journey. From raucous local bands such as The Brownies and Violet Violet, to nationally renowned folk artists including Duke Special and Lau, to internationally known performers such as T-Model Ford and up-and-coming New York band the White Rabbits, I have intentionally photographed musicians with an array of different styles.

If one thing links the musicians to have made it into this exhibition, it is an outstanding ability to inject their music with raw emotion. In my live music photography, I have no interest to speak of in simply capturing well-known or attractive faces. Only the music matters. If a singer’s face is scrunched up, sweaty and exhausted, or a guitarist is making frantic movements at the climax of a song, it is a joy to watch. I can testify that it is also a joy to photograph.



Norwich can count itself fortunate indeed to have venues such as the Arts Centre, the Brickmakers and the Norfolk & Norwich Festival’s Spiegeltent, venues which offer expansive and varying programmes of music, actively seeking and inviting immensely talented performers from across the globe to showcase their abilities to responsive and gleefully open-minded East Anglian audiences. It is a testament to these venues that they should end up depicted in this exhibition, devoted as it is to the same love of well-crafted, fresh music that they share. Special mention, I think, should also be made of the Bassment in Chelmsford, which offers a great deal of support to Norwich-based bands on the road, and which consequently features prominently in the show. I’d like to thank them for all the sellotape…

The show opens on Wednesday 6th October at 8pm, at the Rumsey Wells pub in Norwich. With performing musicians, of course. A warm welcome is extended to all.

A little thought...

I believe I may have touched on this point once or twice before, in previous posts here and there. Earlier this week, as I served beer and chatted with an amateur photographer in the good old Alexandra Tavern, we touched upon the willingness of a great many photographers to fork out hundreds upon hundreds of pounds on bits and pieces of equipment for their kit.

Now. Let's say, before we start, that it is a fundamental necessity to shell out for the important things. I don't think anyone will reasonably dispute the necessity of the right camera bodies, lenses and lighting kits. Those things are pretty danged necessary. I wouldn't advise compromising when it comes to capturing and creating light. I have no wish to advise compromise anyway - only a little pragmatic thought.

Capturing and creating good light are the photographer's top priorities. Influencing light, though...?

Let's return to our friend in the pub. In the 1980s and 90s, he said, photography (in the main) began to move away from being the realm of people who thought with vigorous creativity, learning their craft the hard way. In came cameras designed to be used by absolutely anyone, and absolutely everyone bought cameras. What an impact this has had - many of today's amateur photographers boast of not having to learn what their cameras' settings do. Many cameras are even built without manual settings. Cameras are becoming smaller and smaller, and more fashionable. Image quality has taken its place on the back burner, in favour of image size and the colour of the camera's casing.

Nowadays, this is, of course, obvious for everyone to see. What had also become obvious in the 1980s and 90s, however, was the growth of the camera as a status symbol - particularly amongst men. Alongside your choice of shoes and car, your choice of camera began to define you. Never mind what you could do with a high-end camera, the fact that you owned the thing was enough to make other men in the street and the pub dribble and fawn.

The upshot of this has been that people who don't know very much about photography have been buying equipment they don't know very much about, for reasons they're not quite sure of. This has created a demand for simple things such as flashgun diffusers. Anyone with their own mind would play around with ways of diffusing light. Manufacturers know that many people don't think this way, however, and sell their own equipment at prices they think they can get away with. £45 for a piece of shaped vinyl. £26 for a carved up yoghurt pot (as a friend of mine recently discovered).

They're fine, for their different purposes. As I said - there is a demand, and they are fit for purpose. The creativity and, sometimes, the intricate control of light dissipates though. Why pay £45 for a diffuser that does the same job as, say, a piece of paper and a hairband?



Or a piece of polystyrene with some paper glued on it? (Photograph courtesy of Rod Penn)



Or a piece of bubble wrap?



Or, if you want to show a flash of brilliance in your thinking, why not go to a DIY shop and experiment with your control of light, like Andy Larkin's tremendous image of moving clouds in bright sunshine - using a welder's mask as a filter. Click here.

You don't need to spend vast amounts of money to set yourself apart in photography.

Norfolk Skies

Someone asked me a few days ago, why I so often burn in the skies of my landscape photographs from Norwich and around Norfolk. Allow me to explain.

I have no doubt that those of you living in Norfolk will, at some point, have spoken to someone who moved away from the area sometime in their life, but felt compelled to return because they missed the flat landscapes, or in a few cases loved the enormous expanses of sky that you get around the county. (Although these go hand in hand, it is crucial to note the difference, and I shall clarify it in this post.)

I’ve always been aware of this. In three years of photographing in Norfolk, I have created many, many landscape images designed to showcase those skies – I love them too. You can photograph the exact same location over and over again and get an entirely unique effect each time, with differences in light and cloud patterns. Tremendous stuff if you take every moment you can muster to traipse across Norfolk, as I do.

Such a great many photographers endeavour to convey the Norfolk skies effectively and realistically - only for the results to fall a little flat when served up after processing. There is a very basic reason for this, judging from my personal experience – most of the time, the photographs are in colour. This depicts the skies, but it doesn't necessarily draw attention to them. It is difficult not to notice the flatness of the landscape in Norfolk – that is a rarity anywhere in the United Kingdom – but I wouldn’t be surprised if fewer people truly recognised the big skies that go with it. Anyone, anywhere, can go outside and see the sky, which makes it far easier to take for granted. In the same way, wherever you go, you breathe air, but you don’t usually take any notice of the fact that you’re breathing. If you see a normal-looking sky in a photograph, you don’t usually stop to appreciate it.



Considering this, I began working in monochrome and playing with the tones of the Norfolk skies, often (though not always) burning them in to make them darker and more noticeable. I noticed that these skies became more than just expanses of blue – they took on different shades at different points in the image, and the clouds became more than just clouds – they became prominent points of contrast. It is the basic principle of monochrome photography, to draw attention to a subject’s form, and I think it really works well with Norfolk’s skies – the equivalent of making your outward breaths dark grey. You’d notice them then, wouldn’t you?

Facebook Image Rights...

In recent weeks, it has increasingly come to my attention that photographers are working themselves into a frenzy about the rights controversy concerned with uploading material to Facebook. Some refuse to upload images; others have turned away from Facebook altogether. I suppose this is responsible enough, as we shall see. What encouraged me to look into the matter, however, was hearing of an extreme case of a photographer emailing a client, threatening legal action if they uploaded an image to Facebook that the client had actually purchased. Let’s have a look and see how justified that actually is.

The issue with Facebook is – and do pause for a quick yawn here, I did - clause 2.1 in their Terms & Conditions:

‘For content that is covered by intellectual property rights… photos and videos ("IP content"), you… grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook. This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account…’

The howling turds, you cry. A sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use photographs? Pshaw! Well, I mean, fair’s fair, but that’s just silly…

No, it isn’t a fair agreement. Yes, there is a strong case for crying foul and being protective of one’s intellectual property. It would be ridiculous to so much as attempt to defend such a one-sided clause, even if I were an employee of Facebook, but especially as a photographer myself.

The thing that makes me wonder, though, is that I am not actually aware of a single case of Facebook using a photograph under this clause. I could have missed something, but from here it does look like a bit of a storm in a teacup. Mark Zuckerberg has explained that Facebook ‘need certain licenses in order to facilitate the sharing of content through our service’ – and in the absence of any evidence to suggest that the clause is any more nefarious than that, I for one am prepared to believe him. Photographers seem to be spending more time than can possibly be healthy, worrying about the clause. It turns up in conversations and blogs and has even featured on the radio recently. It’s good that attention is being brought to the issue, but surely there is no need to go overboard.

Which brings us back to our litigious photographer, my inspiration for this piece, whose failure to understand this matter appears to have cost him a client. Whatever may happen in the future with this clause, he appears to be more of a threat to his own business than Facebook is.

For what it’s worth, my message to any photographer would be as follows: Don’t avoid Facebook because of its rights policy. Avoid it because it reduces your images to a poor quality, pixellated mush.

Ho-hum...

I was in an imponderably baffling situation a couple of weeks ago. It was a situation I didn’t think too much about at the time, although the actual extent of the farce became clearer after a few days passed. Names will not be named. This post is being written with nothing more in mind than the hope that someone can explain the, erm, what shall we say – the opaque thinking of the person I spoke with.

I suppose this has happened to most photographers, and more than once as well, but here goes. An eminent figure within the hospitality industry offered me a photographic job, providing fresh images for their brochure. In exchange for the images, I would have been paid… well, let’s simply say I would have been credited in the brochure and given the opportunity to cover future events held at the venue. The unpaid opportunity, might I add. The benefit of this, you ask? I would be allowed to keep any money I generated, selling images from these events to the guests in attendance.

I know, I know…

I enquired as to why the venue in question, given its reputable standing throughout East Anglia, would fail to set aside even the faintest whiff of a budget for such an important task as renewing their brochure. My thoughts on the logic of being paid in further unpaid work, which might or might not eventually be remunerated by people with no connection to the venue whatsoever, remained private.

‘We do have an in-house team of creatives who would normally do it’, was the reply, ‘but they’re busy at the moment, and we’d like the photography done soon. Furthermore, there are a lot of photographers who are interested in doing it, so we don’t see the need to set aside money.’

Right. So. Apparently it’s perfectly acceptable for a company not just to drive down the cost of a professional photographer, on the grounds of the job having many possible candidates, but to completely eliminate it - and then attempt to save face by stating that other people might make the job worthwhile if the photographer continues working for them. Come on. Photographers aren’t that thick. It is the equivalent of buying a new television, and saying ‘well, I shan’t pay for this, but I will recommend you to a friend, and they might buy one.’

I have my own thoughts on the principle of this. If you implicitly attempt to choke an industry by refusing to pay a penny for a photographic project like that – not even peanuts – then you will without doubt end up with the quality you deserve.

I await the results of the venue’s blinkered thinking with quite some degree of anticipation. Unless can anyone elaborate on why people make such strange offers as these…?

Slowing down...

If you hadn’t noticed, I visited Norwich’s Rosary Cemetery yesterday for the first time. I am rather well accustomed to a good cemetery, having lived near the one on Earlham Road for a number of years. They are marvellous places to visit. Cemeteries – because I know, I just know that you are giving a withered, disappointed sort of look at the screen right this minute - are at once peaceful and teeming with life, they are sombre and wild, well-maintained and yet left to grow and flourish by themselves. You can never know what to expect in a cemetery. Photographically, they are absolutely wonderful places to visit. Photographing a cemetery is a far cry from photographing events, festivals and city life – the skills you need are almost exactly opposite.

Walking through a cemetery with a camera and a determination to come home with good photographs is a wonderful way to slow down your day. The longer and the slower you walk around, the more you notice small details, and the more interesting perspectives you find. The crucial thing, though, is that the slower you go, the more wildlife you find just in front of you – and if you’re nifty enough, you can really capture some terrific moments. Like this robin taking off:



The real challenge of photographing a cemetery, though, is in the thought process. There is a balance to be found between capturing the overgrown mess, and trying to make it look elegant (which, of course, it is). I didn’t grasp this idea at all when I first began photographing in Earlham Cemetery. If a grave looked messy, I would tend to walk right past it, in my naïve hurry to get a good shot from somewhere. Well, those good shots were right in front of me – if I’d learned to take the time to consider them. Slowing down around the Rosary Cemetery yesterday allowed me to appreciate the small details in these messy graves, encouraged me to take notice of their individual characters, and to use the mess to good effect.





The Rosary Cemetery will continue to be a place for me to slow down with my camera, and concentrate on capturing details; sometimes, capturing a moment just isn’t enough.

The rest of my Rosary Cemetery images can be found on my Flickr page - and you can expect to find plenty more in the coming weeks.

Wee Nugget of Advice...

Since agreeing to an exhibition of my band photography at the Rumsey Wells last week, I have set about putting together a collection of around fifty images, from the various gigs I have attended in Norwich (and beyond) over the course of the past eighteen months. Hugely enjoyable stuff – and out of it all, I'd like to pass on a tip that might be of benefit to one or two of you.

It’s little more than commonsense really, and you'll probably already know about it, but let us rewind to a little over a year ago, when I took on board the advice of that eminent old crocus Dave Guttridge, who suggested not to shoot images as JPGs, but as RAW files. At the time, I wasn’t really sure of the significance of this, but I figured that our aforementioned eminent old crocus probably knew a fair amount more about our profession than I did, so I duly changed the image settings to shoot in RAW format, and thought little more of it.

Let us return, then, to the present, where I sit here after a morning spent reprocessing some of the gig photographs. Guess what? A year on from the original shoots, I am able to completely overhaul every aspect of the photographs I shot as RAW images, starting completely from scratch with a year’s additional experience in processing, and – significantly – far more powerful editing software than I had at the time. The JPGs? They look just fine, but I have far, far fewer options in reprocessing them. As I saved them at the time, so they must remain. Thankfully only two of the fifty images were shot in this format.

This is a lesson I am fortunate to have learned, so many thanks to our eminent old crocus for the advice. I had no idea until last week that I’d ever have any further use for most of these photographs – so to be able to spend some quality time reprocessing them is a wonderful option to have.

Thanks, Dave – I owe you a pint.

Rumsey Wells Exhibition

Oh, very well, as you’re all asking…

I am fresh from a short meeting with Luke Emery, a local artistic talent and curator of Art in the Underbelly at Norwich’s Rumsey Wells pub. Over the course of this little chat, we discussed a few ideas for an exhibition, pencilled in for September/October 2010.

Just as I tweeted earlier, there are some exciting ideas in place. This will be more than a simple exhibition. Luke’s idea is for a musical exhibition, displaying prints of my photographs of bands and musicians, with a couple of lovely, quirky touches – a listening post at each image, at which tracks by the depicted artists, recorded live, will be played, complementing the atmospheres conveyed in the images.

Furthermore, Luke has asked me to make a selection of musicians, from bands that I have photographed in the past, and bands that I will work with in the near future, to perform live at the Rumsey over the course of the exhibition, bringing the photographs to life.

The idea is in its early stages – expect alterations and fresh ideas – but I must put on record that I am enormously excited at this prospect, delighted to have chosen the Rumsey for my first exhibition, and delighted also to be working with Luke. Over the course of this year, he has not been the only curator to invite me to exhibit my work – but he got an immediate ‘yes’, on account of his additional input of inventive ideas, and I think working in partnership with him will make for a tremendous exhibition.

See you in the Rumsey then! Mine’s an Explorer…

NNF10: Thank You!

With a mug of tea in one hand, wiping my brow with the other, I sit at my computer agog at the flurry of brilliance that has passed my eyes over the past fortnight. I have seen middle-aged men causing pandemonium using streams of paper and leaf blowers, and a lady performing acrobats inside a chandelier. I have seen a man playing a ukulele standing on a fellow man’s back, and the front and back of a van welded together on a golf buggy chassis, blurting out music. I have seen an enormous Red Ball jammed between my hairdresser and a city church, and I have seen ice cream vans dreamily calling and responding to each other around different Norwich neighbourhoods.



The past fortnight has been an eclectic frenzy of excitement, expertise and eccentricity. This year’s performers at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival have delighted and stunned their various audiences, bringing colour, verve and, significantly, the attention of the nation to the fine city. This year, no single act or performer stands out amongst the others – not even John Cale. The strength of this Festival was in the collective participation and the array of glittering acts that graced the Festival Gardens and Norwich’s other familiar stages.



I chatted to a man a few weeks ago who bemoaned the Festival, claiming that it was too ‘exclusive’ and had ‘ideas above its station’. I couldn’t disagree any more fervently. Ideas above its station, indeed. I repeat: I have seen middle-aged men causing pandemonium using streams of paper and leaf blowers at this Festival, and that was on the very first day. What could be more accessible? The world premiere of Dan Jones’ ‘Music for Seven Ice Cream Vans’ was held nowhere other than around the neighbourhood of Mile Cross, bringing smiling children, parents and elderly couples to their living room windows and front gardens in droves. No, no, sir, you’re right, how terribly exclusive…



At a Festival so well timed to coincide with Norwich’s bid for City of Culture 2013, it was tremendous and heartening to have been both amongst the audience and, as a photographer, at the forefront of so many vibrant performances. The events of the last two weeks will surely have helped the city’s bid – but more importantly, whether it was for fifteen minutes of dreamy music floating around people’s back gardens, or for night after night of fabulous enjoyment, the Festival brought beaming smiles to thousands of people.



Right-o. Time to look ahead. 6th – 21st May 2011 – I don’t know about you, but I can't wait to feel this exhaustion all over again...

Red Ball

It won’t have gone unnoticed to many of you that I have been following Kurt Perschke’s Red Ball as it has popped up in (so far) ten places around the city of Norwich, as part of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival. It has been at times inconvenient and at times tiring; I have sought it in pouring rain and in gleaming sunshine; I have photographed it from staircases and from the ground, amongst ants, but over the past fortnight (and for the next few days, indeed) I have followed its progress, interested to see how it transforms the appearance of the various areas of the city that it graces. Lord, how it has transformed them.

My thinking throughout the project has been predominantly focussed upon one aspect of the Red Ball’s presence – how it highlights certain aspects of the city’s features and architecture that would otherwise go unnoticed. There are other aspects of the Red Ball project too, of course – of which more later – but as a photographer, the altered cityscape (bet you never thought you’d hear that word in Norwich) has been a particular area of interest. In simple terms, the simple focal point of the Red Ball has transformed impressive, though perhaps less photogenic, buildings into photographic opportunities really worth thinking about.

The first location, Norwich rail station, represented a particularly good example. Myself included, many photographers appear to have struggled to make genuinely good use of the architecture of that building, for a striking and imaginative image. Cue the Red Ball:



Suddenly, there is a focal point, an object of interest for the eye to begin with as it moves around the photograph, beginning in the bottom right hand corner, and moving anti-clockwise. The lines of the building suddenly become significant, leading the eye first upwards, then on a slope to the right hand corner, capturing a host of details of the building along the way, before the eye returns to the Red Ball. The really interesting thing about it is that this effect does not necessitate the Ball being a massive presence in the image. In this, and in the other photographs, it has been enough simply to include it as an incidental detail. It's not the Ball, it's the work that it does.

This way of thinking applies to each of my Red Ball photographs, and hopefully encourages you to take more notice of the city around you, as it has done for me. Who would have thought that the railings of St. Peter Mancroft Church could play such a dynamic part in an image? Again - it's a photograph that wouldn't work half so well without the Red Ball to provide the initial point of interest.



This morning, I managed to collar Kurt Perschke for a short chat, outlining this one interpretation of the Red Ball project. Nodding in agreement, he was also keen to highlight the other effects that the project has wherever it goes. The Red Ball has the most significant element of a brilliant piece of public art: the ability to capture the imagination of all the public. I have seen children playing dead beneath it for comic effect; Kurt mentioned a pair of old ladies he observed discussing the Ball: 'It works better here than it did yesterday!' There is a wonderful humour in the thought that these ladies' attention could be captivated by something so simple, in a completely different way to young children who enjoy it in a more physical manner, bouncing off it and flying about. 'Its presence is like a Monty Python sketch', Kurt said, and he certainly wasn't the first person to say that to me.

Kurt seemed initially a trifle reticent in telling me his thoughts on the purpose of the project - with good reason. Clearly, my photographer's eyes created their own reason for the project's existence; the old ladies he mentioned had their own; the multitude of children will have had their own reasons too, as well as the parents, and all the people who have walked and driven past it over the fortnight. As these layers of meaning, individual to each different person, began to unravel during our conversation, Kurt returned to the point - the project inspires new visions, stirs the imagination, encourages thought, in more ways than any blog could hope to document. That, my dears, is good art.

Red Ball on Flickr

Red Ball Project

Just a wee suggestion...

This seems a timely time to make a little suggestion. At such an early stage of my career, I am fully aware that I am no voice of authority in any capacity on matters in photography, and I must add, and emphasise, that the suggestion doesn’t even need to be made to most photographers who may read this post, but I do feel justified in commenting on this one bugbear.

The launch of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival last Friday was a wondrous event, such enjoyment, excitement, enthusiasm amongst both the crowd and the performers. The Festival really did get off to a flying start (of which, plenty more later). Like tens of other photographers and hundreds of people, I was there, sometimes joining the crowd to sample that magnificent atmosphere, sometimes running ahead of the performers for action shots. It was cracking fun to be amongst the audience and amongst the other adrenaline-fuelled photographers, as it always is, although I was a trifle saddened to observe one or two children being shoved forcefully out of the way for a couple of shots. This is no reflection, you understand, on the jovial spirit on the part of almost every single photographer present, and I do sympathise entirely with the desire to get shots right – but surely attending an event such as Friday’s launch must carry with it a responsibility to allow other people to enjoy themselves, not to sully their experience, and especially not to cause actual upset to the young children that the performance was in no small part created for.

The three things I always say to budding new photographers are to learn the camera’s functions inside out, to get used to embarrassing themselves and, above all, to endeavour to be good company when photographing. Good photography is often intrusive, and often does involve a degree of self-centredness, of course, but I think I have good grounds to say that there is very, very rarely any need to behave like a churlish wet blanket - particularly to children.

I do hope that the rest of the Festival goes as swimmingly as it has so far – and I am very sorry to have magnified and scrutinised one or two small actions, when the attention should of course be on the hundreds of wonderful acts dotted around the fine city – it just seems a pertinent time to encourage people to enter the spirit of the most enjoyable two weeks of the whole year – or at the very least, not to prevent other people from entering that spirit.

...and the mystery photographer is...

Many of my favourite artists, writers and musicians tend to make eccentric choices. From the melancholic atmospheres of Caspar David Friedrich, to the tickling wordpsmithery of PG Wodehouse, via the outright gut laughter inspired by Jerome K Jerome and the veering imagination of Tom Waits, they are masters of their chosen arts. As far as photographers go, other people will know far more than I do but you would have to dig really rather deep to come up with a photographer whose work would captivate my attention, and have me poring over every minute detail, more than that of a comparatively little-known German called Hans Göhler.

Göhler – or John Gay, as he anglicised his name after fleeing to England with Jewish friends in the 1930s – showed a wonderful blend of technical mastery, flair, vision, empathy, humour, imagination, individuality and, above all, understanding in every image he captured. Judging from the tremendous book of photographs I have in front of me, whether adults, children, animals, rural scenes, railway stations or even cast iron were his subject, Göhler demonstrated that he could set up a scene with playfulness and skill, or disappear into the background with equal ease; his understanding of types of light allowed him to create atmospheric photographs in all conditions, while his ability to capture multiple significant details in the same image – a vision he demonstrated time and again – is something that all photographers, at all levels, could learn from. I could, of course, gush on all day about the output of this wonderful photographer, but to do so would a) do a massive injustice to his work and b) bore you to tears. Here, then, are some examples to set you on your way. Enjoy Hans Göhler in what would have been his 100th year.












I think you'll agree. Superb. He will influence my work for years and years to come.

(Photographs appear courtesy of English Heritage)

Vicki Johnson & Jo Stafford @ STEW

My pleasure yesterday to photograph an exhibition of prints and textiles by NUCA alumni Vicki Johnson and Jo Stafford, on throughout this week and intermittently for the next month. Talent in profusion (and they haven't asked me to write this, by the bye) - do head along to STEW gallery (not far from Norwich Cathedral) and have a look for yourself. Have provided a couple of taster images, if you're interested.

Creativity & Depression

Not sure how this entry will be received, it’s more than a little personal, will almost certainly be speckled with inclement language, and whether it actually has any place in this blog depends upon the conclusion I have yet to arrive at, to a question I’m not sure is worth asking. If that isn’t tantalising enough for you, I have absolutely no idea where to begin. Still interested? I’ll give it a go…

I am thinking about the link in mine and others’ character between creativity and depression. As a creative type, one or two people have spoken to me about where it all comes from; as a diagnosed depressive of more than half my life, one or two other people have spoken of whether my condition fuels my creativity. There are certainly reasons for believing that depression does fuel creativity: speaking simply from my own experience, the gradual recovery following an episode can lead me to appreciate some of the smallest gestures from people, or the smallest detail about something I see during a walk, for example. This isn’t directly connected to the actual state of depression, but I would certainly say that I observe more when my mood is on the way up again, if only as a reaction to the fact that during an episode, the degree to which I am observant to these things drops almost to zero. It may well be that the relief of no longer being numb and unresponsive to the things around me heightens my senses a little more than usual.

That would be my argument for making a connection between depression and creativity. There is evidence for it too: at the time, and certainly now, I thought that these photographs from a weekend in Southwold in November 2009 had more than a slight undertone of my mood at the time about them – on the day they were taken, I was beginning to lift out of a trough following some profoundly sad news. (Feel free to turn away if this becomes uncomfortably personal to read. Such a personal subject is bound to be as difficult to read as it is to write about, it’s only really aimed at people who are genuinely interested.) At the time of capturing the image of Southwold Pier, I was aware that I would darken the afternoon sky and make the most of that rushing seawater (clichéd as I’m sure those effects are), bringing through the dark tones for that moody effect. Gosh, writing about it like that makes it sound pants, doesn’t it? As for the image of Stacey, my girlfriend, I am quite certain that I would never have taken that melancholy shot if I’d been feeling more chipper.





Of course, during a full-blown episode of depression, creativity, like all other thinking and even movement, shuts down, overtaken by a foul manner of thought that rears its ugly head, eating away at its victim. If you will, please understand that I am writing this in an effort to be helpful to other sufferers, and to help non-sufferers to understand the condition a little better. For the sake of openness, I am going to quote from my diary, to which I forced myself to contribute during my last episode, and as I pointed out before, it is going to be excruciating to read, just as it was excruciating to write:

‘Black, black mood came over me this afternoon. Numb feeling of nothing…’
‘Such a massive twat, a big, responsibility-shirking, spineless, selfish twat. Cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt. Got your own fucking way, didn’t you. Cunt. Doesn’t fucking matter whether anyone else is happy or not, does it? Cunt…’
‘Mood has picked up just a smidgen – I now have the light on (the act of which had taken me over two hours)…’

Oh deary Lord. In my present state of mind, which, by the way is very much improved, none of this makes any sense. I cannot explain to you what caused the mood, nor can I justify those Tourette’s-like comments about myself. I don’t recognise those comments as coming from my pencil, and curiously, I barely even recognise the actual handwriting as my own, scrawled and messy as it is. I spent almost all of two days in my bed. That is my approximation of what depression is – as I mentioned earlier, depression itself has nothing to do with creativity, and everything to do with its polar opposite – a total poleaxeing of the mind. If there is a link between depression and creativity, it is in the recovery from it, and in the motivation to move away from that dank, stagnant, harrowing cycle of self-blame and irrationality.

Having said that, though, given that I was very creative before my depression actually set in (at the age of, ahem, twelve), who is to say that I wouldn’t have been creative anyway? Is it really so necessary for pleasure to disappear completely, for someone such as myself to notice it when it’s there? Of course not. I point you towards the millions of people who live relatively happy lives without ever experiencing this condition. What about the millions of depressives out there who wouldn’t consider themselves to be especially creative? No. Perhaps it’s supposed to be a comforting thought, that depression will at least encourage creative output in the long run, but if you ask me, it’s the recovery, the return of the rational and normal state of mind that should be encouraged for its creativity, not depression itself.

Dedicated to Stacey & Robin for their kindness, and to your good self for following this post through…

Entering Photography

Someone just asked if I could recommend an entry-level digital SLR to them. After a little ruminating, I suggested a model not dissimilar to the one I cut my own teeth on, but I have to say that I didn’t think about it an awful lot. I meant no disrespect in not giving it a great deal of thought – I just don’t think it’s quite as interesting, useful or helpful for a budding photographer to ask as people seem to think.

Let me explain. My first SLR camera was a graduation present two years ago. After looking through the specifications of dozens of models, I was left bewildered and no better placed to make a decision. I knew about most of the features and functions that were described, so my bewilderment wasn’t borne out of ignorance – all the cameras just seemed much of a muchness, each of them would have been good enough. Eventually, I whittled my choices down to two and picked the one that felt most comfortable in my hands.

How very professional, you might snort. Well, be my guest and snort away, if you wouldn’t mind just going away over there while you do so. Simply put, a good photograph needs the right camera (or does it?) – but an interesting photograph needs the right photographer. That photographer will understand f/numbers, film and shutter speeds and light metering, and everything else that comes with, *ahem*, any SLR camera. Sure. They will also understand light, shadow, tones, colours, composition. They will understand details, they will understand when to step in, and when to blend into the background. They will risk all manner of embarrassment in the name of getting that image. Above all, they will understand emotion in their work, whether their subject is a child or a brick wall.

Observant readers will have noticed that not one whit of this is specific to any particular brand of camera. All this is a way of saying, of course, that the best thing you can do is keep your decision simple, make it as quickly as possible and spend your time learning to use your camera. The Nikon/Canon debate that rages amongst dullards is so often (not always, of course, but often) a sign of a person who talks more about photography than they’ve actually learned; next time I shall introduce you to the best photographer I’ve ever come across, who used neither a Nikon nor a Canon, and indeed didn’t even use an SLR at all. He used his eyes.

Look Before You Leap...

Almighty Lord, somebody got my back up the other day. Introducing myself as a professional photographer, I was greeted with a comment that I’d imagine many other photographers get levelled at them. ‘What was wrong with a proper job then?’

I wonder if anyone else gets as peeved about remarks like that as I do. Among some people lurks a preconceived idea about my profession being some manner of airy dreamland for bored and divorced city workers. They’re out there, of course – oh, they’re out there – but what I would genuinely like to know is:
a) for those who did it, what is actually wrong with deciding you’ve got enough out of working in the city, and moving on to something new;
b) what their impression of the photographic profession is actually based on.

Deciding on photography for a living is quite some commitment. Whether or not you decide to take a lengthy course for a qualification, there is networking to do, there is marketing to do, you have to fork out an inordinate amount on equipment you can depend upon, you spend hours and hours (and hours) processing images to the last detail before handing them over, you manage and maintain an ever-growing library of images, you get asked to do a great many jobs that are anything but glamorous (I was once commissioned to photograph a BIN), you do those jobs under intense pressure and, to top it all, the person hiring you occasionally regards you, a trifle disrespectfully, as a dreamy, bored former city worker.

Let me tell you, if you are under any illusion that the photographer’s profession is somehow an easier one than yours, you are wrong. I chose to pursue photography not because I dreamed of being there on the Norfolk coast every morning, capturing boats at sunrise and then selling prints on a daily basis for £250, but because it is something that I am good at, in the same way that anyone does a job based on the skills that they have. Would you accuse a lorry driver, a librarian or a graphic designer of not having a proper job? Of course you wouldn’t.

There is a world of difference between taking a camera to the countryside of a weekend and doing photography for a living. Of course it’s a great pleasure, but it’s also a very difficult pleasure, just like many less 'glamorous' professions. Please understand that, and bear it in mind next time you ask one of us what was wrong with what we did beforehand. If, after that, you still have to ask, there is no hope for you.

Digital Economy Bollocks

Well, all in all, this has been an infuriating evening for me, following as I was the mindless passing of the Digital Economy Bill by the small minority of blithering idiots who actually turned up to the Commons to deal with the matter. As if the evening couldn’t get any worse, I was following the whole palaver on the Grauniad website, which, being the Grauniad, was as lucid about the whole thing as my grandma’s tights.

My interest in the Digital Economy Bill began, really, out of curiosity for the fate of fellow photographers, some of whom rely upon selling stock photographs for publications. If the 43rd clause had been passed, publishers would have effectively been granted free licence to print photographs without credit or payment to the photographer, so long as they could reasonably prove that they’d made an effort to contact them first. The clause was not passed, I am delighted to say, and cameras were tossed gleefully into the air across the United Kingdom.

It’s the rest of the Bill that concerns me, though. It appears that some slippery laws have just been passed. Legislation over copyright infringement could lead to many, many people’s internet connections being limited and even disconnected. All right, all right fair enough. You can get a lot of things on DVD now, piracy costs billions, why should musicians bother making music if you’re not going to pay for it, chunter chunter chunter…

I’m quite sure you don’t need me to cough all those hackneyed, unimaginative, frigid arguments at you. They have become as familiar and irritating as the Kaiser Chiefs over the last decade. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll err on the side of logic, and think about the implications of what has just been passed.

One: Cutting off an internet connection is one thing, but you would, surely, need proof that the concerned property’s wi-fi connection hadn’t been hacked, a phenomenon which I fully expect to increase as, erm, as a direct result of this legislation. Additionally, what of shared houses such as student accommodation? If one tenant gets caught, is it right that everyone should suffer?

Two: Is this Government not a part of the same UN organization which has previously argued that internet access should be regarded as a basic human right?

Three: The inevitable legal fragility of public access to online material is bound to have a profound negative effect on wi-fi connections in city and town centres, universities, airports, trains, hotels, bars, cafés and even, it delights me to say, the Houses of Parliament. Come on, MPs. Which one of those were you in this evening, when the votes were being cast? Wasn’t Parliament, was it? Choads.

Blogs will doubtlessly crop up frantically over the next two or three days, on this subject. I’ll have a keen eye open for anybody who can logically justify this legislation, as I’m sure you will too. I shall sign off to torrent an informative television documentary, mercifully available online, that has never been released on DVD - while I still can. Thanks to politicians who couldn’t be bothered to turn up to the debate, the United Kingdom has just became an altogether muggier place to live.

'Too Many Tweets Make a...'

A great many people chunter on at me about how drably, navel-gazingly dire the world of Twitter is. ‘Who cares’, they bleat, ‘what colour socks you’re wearing, or when you’re putting the kettle on, or which street you’re on at 2.14 on a Thursday afternoon?’ Mmm. I suspect they’re right about the lattermost type of tweet, guilty as I doubtlessly am of it, but the whole argument is, as you will soon see, as dire as these people are. It is an unimaginative straw man of a waste of effort. The drawback they see in Twitter also happens to be its overwhelming wonder. Depending on the individual, the only limit is the imagination. You can use Twitter for anything, from real-time news to football and cricket scores; you can discover new music, gauge opinions on new products; you can get jokes and you can find jobs. It is a matter of knowing what you want and building up a personalised, relevant community of like-minded people. It’s really quite simple.

‘Oh, but people should get out and live their lives, rather than live a false life of microblogging.’ This is an easy line of thinking to blast out of the water. A little further along the spectrum of that argument, we might as well cease imagining. No point in films, no point in music. Twitter isn’t necessary to a fulfilled life, of course it isn’t, but it is entertainment, like television. It is fully customised and interactive entertainment as well.

The line of thought that really renders these critics dreary and unnecessary, though, comes from experience. Over the last week, Twitter has certainly not replaced my daily life, but actually enhanced it. I was babysitting yesterday evening, and quite fancied getting a pizza delivered to quell some tummy rumblings. I had one fundamental setback in this plan, though: I am so familiar with the walk to the family’s house that I had long forgotten which road they live on. Racking my brains, then, to at least arrive at a guess, Twitter friends @paulsaxton, @chrisbardell, @ignisphoto and @womaninblack all kindly confirmed that I was correct, leaving me only to look at the house number on the door and order away. Without Twitter, I might have become really rather hungry yesterday evening. Is that useless fart-arsing on the internet, ladies and gents?

The second exhibit is nothing short of wonderful. In celebration of my sad little Twitter community reaching 300 nerdy, arse-picking followers, I threw open a competition – free print for the person who most imaginatively insulted my profile picture. It garnered immediate responses from across Norfolk, from friends and colleagues to a whole plethora of people who had never even met me. The insults were hilarious and biting, affectionate and perceptive, and each one was delivered in a spirit of good humour that even some friendships and family relationships never arrive at. It was brilliant. That alone attests to the worth of Twitter, but there was a further benefit to the competition, that will send each of its critics creeping back into their closed-minded, beige little hovels: someone contacted me via Twitter to offer me some photography work – and where was I when I discussed it? Not in an office, but in a beautiful park on the north Norfolk coast. Bear that in mind next time anyone whines about social networking, and enjoy these insults from the competition.



‘Nothing I can think of is as much of an insult as having to look at your face for 5 minutes whilst I try to think of something insulting...’ – Eddie Warren

‘Finally, Ryan understands the difference between him and the rest of the male population…’ - Adrienne Jolly, my very own careers adviser

‘Ryan was disappointed by the tame nature of the 'Gay photo book' he bought on eBay.’ - @chrisbardell

‘Gnomes could read books well before colour pictures were invented...’ - @stuartflatt

‘Get a fucking haircut you art-school cock!’ - @mattjware

‘John Gay's observation that Ryan was “a fey twankhole wearing his granddad's wig back to front” was wholly unexpected.’ - @womaninblack

‘You look like Sacha Baron Cohen in "Bruno". Only gayer.’ @johnkahun

Drab and dire, is it? Mmm. Yeah.

Dullards.

It's not the size of your lens, it's what you do with it...

I had the pleasure of having a sit-down, a couple of pints and a chat with the multitalented Dave Guttridge a couple of nights ago. If you’ve ever thumbed through a UEA or Center Parcs brochure, you’ll have seen plenty of his photographs; if you’ve ever looked around the Norwich Playhouse bar or the Arts Centre, or wandered through a music festival, and seen a sideburned oddball in a coat and tails playing music from generations even before his own (hello Dave), you’ll have encountered his work too. It was lovely to chat with him. The part of the conversation I really wanted to mention was the point at which we spoke of our favourite work. It would have been so easy for Dave to point to his best photographs and gas on about why they were so good – instead, we chatted about creative, authentic ways around problems we’ve had, from lighting children posing in woodland, to setting up models in windows, in different rooms of a building, to my incident with Norwich-based lawyer Tessa Shepperson, who needed to be photographed against a white background in her own tiny living room. With everything planned, there was a heavy storm, and I had no safe way of taking my lighting over to her house – so I eventually used two desk lamps taken from her living room to light the background, and a flashgun attached to my camera to light Tessa – who was more than pleased with the result:



By no means can I claim perfection here, but our chat was heartening, for the conclusion that often it really is a case of what you do with your camera equipment, not how much you've spent on it!

The Window Coffee

Had the pleasure and challenge of doing the photography for (probably) the smallest café in the world this week. Amongst the key ideas for the shoot on a sunny Monday morning was a sense of surprising spaciousness, which required me to draw upon all the experience I have in not feeling embarrassed. Shooting in a room that is taller than it is wide, in front of strangers, lying on the floor, cramming my lengthy frame into a corner to get the shot right – that’s where I earned my crust!


I hope you’ll agree that I got it right:




Slightly easier work was making the homemade cakes look appetising...




And the place looks delightful and cosy on a bright day:





Keep your eyes on @TheWindowCoffee for details of the launch of their website - coming up soon...

Humble, my FOOT!

Oh, you could’ve told me. Really, you could have.

Since I discovered it, people have told me that they saw a photograph of mine in a BBC website snow gallery, assuming that by not mentioning it myself, and leaving other people to find it themselves, I was being humble and classy.

Not a bit of it. I entered the photograph by means of Twitter, but nobody told me it had been included. Just setting the record straight. You ought to know that I remain the same classless tart, as ever.

Have a look, everybody - last photograph in the gallery:

BBC Gallery

Thought I’d bring you up to speed with things a little…

As some of you will know, over the last two or three weeks I have been doing my fair share of traipsing, across the towns and countryside of Norfolk. Acts of idiocy this winter, I fear. I made the trip to Cromer first of all, looking out of my skylight and seeing glistening ice and snow on a cloudless, bright morning. The idea was to try out one or two new photographic techniques around Cromer pier, making the most of the morning light, then to spend the afternoon sipping tea and writing letters to a few friends, before returning to my work in the early evening, to capture some more scenes with the additional glow of street lights.

You’d think that a plan so simple wouldn’t fail. Not a bit of it.

Even with a pair of thermal gloves over the fingerless gloves that are so necessary to outdoor winter photography, my hands began to freeze the moment I stepped off the bus. As I walked, a chilling wind froze the blood in my cheeks, and the sunshine that had convinced me to get out and enjoy the day had not, shall we say, travelled well. All in all, I found myself battling frostbite and Arctic winds, and my immediate thought upon my arrival was that if I really wanted to photograph Cromer on a cloudy day, there would be plenty of opportunities in the summer, when the temperatures wouldn’t be so – I’m going to say it - dangerous.

I walked straight to a café, reminding myself as I did so that even in this biting coastal cold, eleven o’clock on a Monday morning would be no time for whisky, however medicinal. I walked to a café and I stayed in it. Letters were written, tea intake was profuse, and, at length, I managed to pluck up some courage to venture outside for some tentative shooting. So much for the morning sunshine, although I was eventually happy to get some work done!



Things were a trifle more pleasant in and around Horsey Mere, the following Sunday afternoon – though, mind, only a trifle. To say nothing of the temperature in the wintry Norfolk Broads, the footpath leading to the derelict 18th century Brograve Mill was… well, it was, er, not a footpath at all, but a messy hodge-podge of grass, mud, reeds, puddles and marshland. Not such an easy afternoon as Cromer was, clearly. Stomping around with a good friend, I spent two hours testing our friendship with a barrage of half-humorous moans and groans, about things like the water entering my walking boots, the cold, the wrong turns we took. At the end of the afternoon I began to realise precisely why nobody likes me – although we did find tremendous solace in a nearby pub, decorated throughout with paraphernalia from the British Empire. Amongst scythes, knives and guns galore, on one wall hung a shrunken, preserved crocodile skin, just at the size and level you might expect of a timetable in a bus stop. Surreal as you like. Robin and I repaired our friendship over a Wherry, and pootled back to Norwich.



My most recent expedition took me to Thetford Forest late last month. The previous day had been gleamingly sunny; the day following the trip was only a trifle more cloudy. What came in between was nothing short of cruel. The bus journey took us out of a rather foggy Norwich, and into a thickly foggy Norfolk countryside, which lifted by around midday, giving way to heavy sleet and, eventually, snow. Utterly miserable, though, I do agree, the foulest of days spent in the countryside is often better than a good day in the office, and in spite of the blasted weather, my cohort John and I managed to make a fun walk of it, getting gloriously lost in the forest, before finding our way up to the village of Brandon, where, we discovered, you can have your hair restyled and get a tattoo, but you cannot get a cup of tea on a miserable, wet, freezing cold February afternoon. Glad to return home – although, of course, I’ll be even more glad to get back out there IN BETTER WEATHER!