I don’t really get to take too many landscapes. I feel you really need to be out looking for them constantly and the reality is I will see a potential but the weather is either wrong or it is the wrong time of day. So I make a mental note and go about my business.
I have been eyeing up this location for a while, the leaves are turning and in the evening light these colours will simply pop.
On the way home today, I stopped…… and explored.
There is not much more I can say about that.
As I write this I have just discovered that another good friend of mine has been ‘ripped off’ by a so called professional photographer. Why am I pissed off? Simple, because every time this happens the effect is felt throughout the whole industry. I have been a professional photographer for over ten years now and I do not know all there is about photography. It has taken years to build a reputation, a style and a direction. There is no short cuts for this,
There have always been con men and women, that is nothing new, but the recent progress in photography has made this a breeding ground for minimum risk chancers. It is easy to set up a website, operate for a few weeks and then vanish.
Everyone is aware of the massive increase in photographers available and offering you their skills. This is both good and bad. Good because it has removed much of the elitist attitudes and competition is always good. Bad because most clients know little or nothing about the industry and how it should operate to be able to make an informed choice.
The papers are always telling stories of a bride and groom duped into giving away their hard earned money and being heart broken when the resulting images are not at all what they expected.
So how can I help?
I am going to give prospective clients 5 tips to reduce the risk.
1. Do your research. Visit the photographers website (no website should set alarms going), check their galleries. Is their work of a quality you would be happy with? Are the images of a similar style? Are they creative images? Visit their Blog (most have them now), do their blog entries match their website in quality and style? Look for endorsements but don’t trust them out of hand, anyone can write a few words. Be more trusting of personal recommendations although this is not always possible.
2. Speak to the photographer and meet them before any booking. Check the quality of their work on their walls, again, does it match the website for quality and style? Ask to see any other imagery that they have done that is not on their website or blog. Always ask to see a complete wedding if that is what you want to hire your photographer for. That could be either a digital display or a copy of the wedding album. Be cautious if they refuse, why would they?
3. Make sure the photographer has insurance. This should mean that you are protected to some degree. If your wedding photographs are ruined then this insurance will cover for this.
4. Get an contract. This should be an agreement like an email identifying what you should expect may suffice in many cases. I have had instances as a photographer where a client has said to me ‘but I thought I was going to get A, B and C’, the contract is there to protect the photographer as well as the client. Make sure you read and understand what is written.
5. Be cautious with up front payments. Most photographers will charge you some kind of sitting fee, this is to be expected. Make sure you know what you are getting for that. You should however expect to pay up front for a wedding (this is standard practice) so seeing as much evidence of the photographers work as possible is a must.
These simple suggestions will not remove the risk completely, but may minimise it. Photography is subjective and in any dispute, if the images are well composed and exposed correctly, you might find any judgement does not go in your favour. Make sure you actually like the work you have been shown.
A photographers web site should only contain images that they have taken themselves or within a larger company, although there have been instances where photographers put stock imagery on their page, so their website has professional imagery.
These points are not an exhaustive list but a mere five suggestions that will help minimise your risk.
Photography is as popular now as it has ever been, with many households in the west owning at least one reasonable SLR (or so it would seem). The instant viability of the image means that if you miss the first shot you can adjust your settings and have another go (in many cases). We take many more photographs than we used to and probably as a result this has actually devalued the image. We can simply take another shot, means that getting it right first time is not important…
The number of people I speak to who tell me that photography is actually not that easy, they went out and bought a really great camera that has all these buttons and hey, “why can’t I get the background to blur?”, or “my photo’s were too dark”, to name a couple.
Whilst it is true that the newer cameras are technologically advanced and will continue to be so, there is a skill, a skill that is totally reliant on knowing the principals and more importantly being able to and understanding how to manipulate them.
I have been toying with the idea of dabbling with film for some time now, and have recently bought an old large format ‘Speed Graphic’ or press camera from the 40’s and 50’s. It is a big beast (not the biggest), and I have yet to find the memory card slot, let alone the playback screen.
The fact of the matter I plan to work on some portraiture and possibly the odd landscape, and the exposure needs to be spot on. So I decided to play around with some exposure techniques. The first I tried was a rather clunky and simple method, where I take a spot meter reading from the lightest part of the face and then for my daughter I over exposed the whole image by 1.3 stops. The exposure alteration will vary depending on the lightness of the skin. The reason for this is the light meter will try to make your selected area mid grey, but for my daughter that would make her look too dark. There is an element of trial and error to start with but as you look at your subject you will get to know what adjustment to make.
Any way back to the subject, I had decided not to view any of the images until I was finished and my daughter was eating her promised ice cream. Although not the same as film I wanted to add that little bit of pressure to the process as it was not that easy to re shoot if they had not come out. It’s all part of the mind set needed for film.
The images in this entry are those from the walk and as you can see I did not get too many. But the exposures were exactly what I wanted and apart from a little split toning or desaturating in Lightroom, they are as they came out of the camera.
These images were taken on a D800 with a prime 105mm f2 lens and manual focus.
SLOW DOWN AND GET IT RIGHT FIRST TIME!
Charging through the forests of Germany, being thrown about the back of one armoured vehicle or another, it would seem that there is not a flat driving surface anywhere here. This exercise seems to be calm anticipation with periodic madness, blink and you will miss it. No pressure…
This is a joint exercise with British and German units training along side each other. It is armoured, so there are Tanks and AFV’s (Armoured Fighting Vehicles) rolling all over the place. The safety staff are beginning to HATE me, as I dart around from one shot to the next, so what? If I get run over, I probably won’t even feel it… As a photographer it comes with the territory to have a good all round awareness. Gone are those early days when all I did was look through the viewfinder, now I feel like my photography is more about instinct and premonition. I am sure that is not entirely true but hey!
I have covered these type of exercises before and come away with very little as the action is not really easy to pinpoint. You can spend your day around a group of soldiers who may not actually be involved in much. Reality…
Photographically at least, this one worked perfectly, we ran around like seemingly headless chickens, knowing the kind of things we wanted to capture but not confident that they would present themselves. It is an instant that is at times one of the more frustrating parts of the job but also gives you some excitement. Will I or won’t I?
The great thing about these kind of days is they tend to be as much training for you as the others. Trying to interview (getting a few words) young guys who are as alert as they can be on their surroundings.
Yes it is fair to say that days like this make me happy as I search for the images.
I hope you like them…
What is my job about? Am I simply a photographer? No! I am an employed photographer. Is there a difference? Yes, of course. I shoot for a client, I shoot for what the client wants. I shoot for a certain perspective. I create the image, certainly and I shoot the best I can under the specific circumstances. I certainly don’t always shoot what I want, when I want.
I suppose like any photographer, I get precious about my work as there is a perception that as the photographer those images are representative of me. To a degree this is true but probably not the full story.
Photography is for me about meeting people and trying to help tell their story, although things will not often always go your own way.
Spending a 24 hour period with some Army reservists met with some interesting challengers, trying to represent them the best I could.
What is a reservist? For those that are not aware, a reservist is also known as a part time soldier. A soldier who has another job. I don’t really want to say they are not professional as I don’t believe really that earnings are relevant to the label. Some of these guys and girls have been regular soldiers and know what they are doing. Some are more operationally experienced than their regular counterparts.
I suppose the challenge is always to try and get some cool images that fit into the story.
With a blog comes great responsibility…….or does it?
I look here today and realise that it has been almost two weeks since my last post. Me bad! Wait though, there is a reason for it. I have been really busy trying to rush those last bits of work before I go on a break with my family on Friday. I know, I hate hearing myself say it. Busy just seems like a lame reason.
So what have I been doing? Well the fact of the matter is babies, or new born’s. A particular genre that really is a skill and there is no substitute for experience. Well photographically I have committed a cardinal sin, in my eyes out of necessity. These shots have to be done in a very small window of opportunity at a time when a new family scrambles to get used to the tremendous upheaval. So the plan was to offer a few (small number) new families the chance to get some portraits of their new baby at absolutely no charge. There will be photographers now swooning at this as the something for nothing situation is what has got this industry into it’s condition.
In my defence, I had not shot babies this young before, my studio was not equipped for it and I really was not sure what to expect. All facts that I ensured the parents were made aware of before hand. You can’t exactly tell a ten day old baby what to do can you?
A chance to play with new ideas, new colours, new styles was amazing, a recent trip to the UK meant I could pick up some simple supplies like wooden flooring and some really amazing blankets.
The end results? Well after all they are subjective and I fully understand that not everyone will like them but the response from the parents has been amazing. I have another string to my bow and I do feel that my photography has made a step too.
I am sure I have mentioned before how time is our worst enemy, although as a photographer it is one of the most important factors we work with.
Creativity never comes with guarantees, but you have to keep trying and keep your options open
Time threw another curve ball yesterday with a gentle reminder of how quickly time had gone by.
You find shots you like but it is always great when a client sees your vision.
Being a photographer is a strange existence at times. Very few of us lead repetitive lives, you can’t take the same photographs day in day out, so you are always meeting with new people and looking for the next shot. Let’s be honest though how many of us re-create the wheel at all in their lives let along every day?
Some moments are longer than others and that is never more obvious than with photography.
With the general understanding of the term ‘professional’ (which actually has nothing to do with making money) skewed, my goal or ambition is to be as professional as I can be. Not always easy when we juggle so many different balls. But it is out there, my goal.
One thing that experience gives you is a grounding for capturing an image or at least working out the mechanics of capturing an image under most circumstances.
One of the key motivators for me is the learning process, I love to try out new things, new [for me] ideas, more opportunities to attract fresh clients. The best way to do this I have found is to keep up with what people want. There is still usually enough room for your individual flair though.
No photographer likes to sit still, there are always more challenges ahead. A new market place to enter, more clients to please.
One of the more important things to keep in mind also though is that not everything goes to plan but this should not worry you, but just keep you on your toes.
The technical aspects of a shot are not always clear to see, but this does not mean the shot was simple to capture.
These images on today’s blog include some military work and some personal work but shows some of the variety we are faced with on even a weekly basis.
Yesterday we had a sporting event here in Germany. Chances are few people heard about it, there was not too much advertising certainly outside of the field.
Every year there is an athletics competition, in the town stadium in Herford, near Bielefeld. The only people that probably get to know about it are those units that are invited to field a team. Many of the athletes are probably selected little more than a couple of days before it happens and in some cases, the athletes are actively taking part in their [chosen] event for the first time on the day.
As awful as that sounds, the reality is that for many of these competitors (although not all), their level of experience is largely irrelevant. The truth is that competitions like these are not really about the level of skill or the ability of the competitors. These contests are in plain terms military competitions rather than athletic.
They are about guts, determination, team work, effort and overcoming yourself. So the opportunity came up to photograph the event, not because we were tasked to but because we could. In the absence of a formal request I decided it would be a fantastic opportunity to use this as a training day. Try some new things free from the usual expectation that can lead you to the safest route.
Photography is subjective as I have said before, and this is not an excuse to show the crap and try to market it as art. I invited the other two photographers from over here to join me with a brief to submit only five images from the day. Their choice, but they should mean something to them.
Now five images is not a lot but it can be plenty. Once I had been through all the images choosing the final images was not all that easy. The ones I chose would probably not be the choices of others but that is the point. This day was about observation and thought.
My final choices are those in Sepia as when it came down to it I felt I wanted to unify them in some way. There is one colour image though. An image I liked for its use of focus but when converted to sepia, it lost some of its elements. It stays here though because it’s my blog and I can do what I want.
The truth of the matter is that when you push yourself, photography is never easy, after concentrating so long and hard, I went hope tired that day……..but content.
I have talked about Landscapes a few times on here and openly admit that to do them justice (for the vast majority) you have to invest time and effort. Sometimes you have to see an opportunity and try to find a way to make the most of it.
On my way home today the weather rapidly changed. My cameras were sat on the front seat and I spent the next few minutes looking more at the sky than the road. I had already decided that I was going to stop, but I just needed to find the right place.
Surrounded by fields with varying crops, I settled on a strawberry field where locals were busy picking and eating the crop. The sudden darkness did not seem to bother anyone.
Enjoying the fresh breeze that you have craved all day on a day like these, I rushed to select lens, ISO, shutter, Graduated filter, tripod, I had to work fast as the clouds moved so quickly. I managed to make a few exposures before I had to move on.
This one is my personal favourite.
We make potentially life changing decisions on a regular basis, we react to our surroundings our experiences and try to make the best choices we can.
When I joined the British Army all that time ago, I joined as the Royal Military Police (there goes half my readers), I had an amazing introduction to Army life and the life has changed me so much in a positive way I no longer remember the shy timid person I was. Anyone still with me?
I am now a photographer with the Royal Logistic Corps (there goes the other half), and the job I do has an essential need for this confidence. I don’t think I am an overbearing person, well not until a couple too many sociables… er hello?
I look back on my RMP days with pride, I still have many friends in their ranks, although ever being replaced with young people who are obviously too young to even be in the Army. I have nothing but great memories even patrolling in the Arctic circle in -40. It is fair to say I even miss it from time to time. It’s all gone very quiet in here.
Do I have any regrets? Well the really honest answer is no, why would I. I can put my hand on my heart now and tell you I quite possibly have the best job in the Army, in fact if Heineken……..
As you can see from these images I covered a recent parade in Germany as part of the withdrawal from Germany. A sad day because after such a long time, ties with the local community are inevitable and once we depart they will need to much more work to try and keep them alive.
Now I do try to keep in contact with quite a few of my old mates, so this does mean I have on occasion socialised with RMP, although I am now talking to myself now. I accept I miss being with a bunch of guys that do a great job and yet receive little recognition (nor do they crave it). That said, I now have new skills that enable me to show them off a little now, although not often. I enjoy working with them and I hope I do them justice.
I guess all I am trying to say is this. Life is too short to have regrets, look back and smile, look forward and focus on whatever you see ahead. Oh and don’t live in fear of the unknown.
For those of you that have been following this blog for some time, you may remember that a little over a year ago, I returned from a tour of Afghanistan. An interesting time and an opportunity to capture some amazing pictures. Well they mean a lot to me.
On my return an artist saw one of the portraits I had made and asked if they could interpret it with pastels. This morning I got an email with the end result. I just wanted to share it as I think a lot of the character has been captured here. It is perhaps a little unfair to see both media side by side but I wanted to show that it is not a direct copy, there is definitely an artists interpretation which I think is so important.
Let me know what you think.
The Artist is my Dad and he only began doing this after he retired.
How many of us drive around, see something interesting and stop to take a photograph?
In these days of being so busy, it is not always that easy, is it?
I carry my camera around with me most of the time, and after a recent visit to a Peter Lik gallery, I have been invigorated by the landscape around me.
The reality is that we are mostly rushing around towards the next deadline that is simply to close. What is the answer? Leave plenty of time to allow for opportunity or change your mind set so that time is really not all that important.
Now the German landscape in my immediate vicinity is not the most dramatic and certainly not the kind that Peter Lik visits for his landscapes (sounds like excuses I know and perhaps they are).
The reality is that to do landscapes justice, you have to dedicate time and effort, more than most people (myself included perhaps) are willing or simply able to give. It is sad and a little depressing to admit but like most photographers time is our enemy and quite profound as it is one of the primary parameters we work with on a daily basis. We are always either fighting it or trying our best to manipulate it.
Now I am by no means a landscape guru by any stretch of the imagination but sometimes it is fun to get out on your own with a camera and a 4 x 4 and simply look for the opportunities. There is a convention that says decent landscapes should be taken at sunrise or sunset and really most of the time these are the best times as you can get some amazing light but quite often these times can give you a pretty cliche’d image. That is not to say a bad image, but for me they can lose impact if you feel you have seen them before.
We get so bombarded with imagery these days as there are so many cameras clicking away all the time, there ends up being some fantastic stuff out there but sadly often they are hidden among the mundane. A quick look on flickr searching for landscapes and you will see what I mean.
Germany is a stunning country in so many ways and I plan to try to capture more of this, I will of course share with you too.
There are some more examples of my Landscape work on our website http://www.LIMEfotographic.com Please feel free to visit.
Landscape photography is I think in many ways one of the hardest genre’s of photography and certainly one of the more difficult to make a living from. The search for a photograph is demanding and very time consuming and nothing beats experience.
Whilst in Las Vegas we have the opportunity to visit the gallery of Peter Lik, arguably one of the most prolific landscape photographers of our time. Now there are some amazing landscapes out there to see if you look hard enough, digital photography has certainly made the skill more accessible.
To see inspirational imagery in the flesh is always very inspiring for me, the internet and books mostly sell the real stuff short but to see these images as the photographer intended can be great fun. I have to say that the way Peters’ images are displayed is nothing short of amazing and has given me ideas for presenting some of my own work.
Inspired I decided to make some landscapes of my own. These are not in the same league as his dedication to capturing the greatest of images is overwhelming and shows you what it takes to succeed in this, at times, fickle industry.
I don’t really do many landscapes but I would seriously like to rectify this if I can. Maybe 2013 will be a year for landscapes after all.
Traveling can be a lot of fun, it can be stressful and it can be tiring. How many times have you heard people say that they need a holiday to recover from the one they just returned to? Loads yes? A trip to Las Vegas though, what limits would you put on your activities? Now there is a question (although the thoughts going through your head now are yours).
We on the other hand had a few things we wanted to do, but not too much as we felt we wanted to keep calm and leave opportunity for spontaneity.
Things to do:
1. Meet old friends
2. Go to the wedding
3. Relax by the pool
4. See a show
5. Experience Vegas
6. Hire a convertible Mustang
7. Visit Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon
8. Have a good time
We planned to kill two birds with one stone and hire the Mustang and visit the Canyon and the Dam. Now the Dam is really only a 40 minute drive away but the Grand Canyon turned out to be a huge five our jaunt each way. We worked it out, that is like us driving all the way to Calais from Hannover for a sunset. Now in those terms it seems bonkers but it was all part of the experience and even after 16 hours on the road we had no regrets.
Ask any photographer, well nearly every one and they will tell you they are always tinkering. New ideas, new shots, new cameras or lenses, different venues. There is simply no shortage of things you can adjust.
Now before I go too far here, I was not the official photographer, and the chapel did not want any other photographs taken, so I was simply a guest (which was lovely). So this time I left the camera in the hotel room and took my iPad instead. I have been shooting a bit with the iPad this week anyway.
I have to say, these shots are a bit of fun and the iPad is not the best for taking photographs but with some snapseed action some of them came out quite well. So here is a selection.
Las Vegas is quite simply a strange place. I can’t work out if it has an identity or if its identity is based on other places. Our hotel overlooks or is overlooked by a New York skyline, a fairy tale castle and hundreds of other guests. The strip has an Eiffel Tower amongst other world famous land marks. The customer service here is very polite, most of the time, but at times can seem fake and scripted. You can feel anonymous here with the sheer numbers but still feel special. This place does feel like one huge amusement park which is the point I guess.
Here in the land of the large, coffee is king. Starbucks are quite literally on every corner.
Never been to the United States before, wow this place is big. Travel from Europe is long but this is what we were greeted by from our hotel.
In this last week a friend on Facebook……. wait, a friend on Facebook or a friend who is on Facebook? Good question. How many real friends do you have in a lifetime anyway?
Social media confuses me. At first it seemed quite exciting catching up with people whom I had had no contact with since leaving school. What were they doing now? It appeals to our natural voyeuristic appetite, and yet it feels somehow detached, like you are doing nothing wrong, effectively spying on them (even though by putting their information up there for all to see if their choice).
It started by looking through the friends list of a new contact looking for other lost connections and then moves on to looking through photographs of them and their lives.
Have we always had this fascination?
A few years down the line and I find I have been questioning the validity of social media. Of course from a business perspective it works like a dream, I can post and tag my images and all their friends can see them. More work comes my way. Perfection.
But this can only happen if the public as a whole use the site. Numbers on Facebook are dropping in the western world now, but is this because the realisation has hit that time spend on these sites is a waste of time or are there other better sites available now?
I hope not. Most of the crap on Facebook seems to be more and more like a cry for help than anything else. The motivational and relationship status banners that are popping up all the time simply cannot be a healthy process. At the end of it all, who cares? I worry that many people who read these statuses are emotional vampires who get a kick out of the fact you are feeling low. There are so many people that enjoy watching the misery of others, do they not have anything better to do?
I decided long ago to keep personal details as far away from social media as I could. Most of your friends are really unknown, even if you did know them as a kid.
One of the other really big problems with social media is the faux bravery it nurtures. In the safety of your living room, you can spout all the vile poison in your head (we all have some), and yet feel safe from physical reprisals. You can say things to people that you just would not in a face to face encounter and feel safe that there is unlikely to be any consequences. This is a very worrying development for me, but also because mostly people try to believe all they read, in fact I am convinced that people in general are happy to believe what they are told because it is too difficult, sometimes, to question it. OK possibly not the case but…..
So going back to my friend, then from the beginning. A professional photographer who has decided to turn his back on the social media revolution. Wow, I thought to myself, that is brave (or stupid). Where are his clients going to come from? I thought. How strange to think that, although it does seem like it at times, social media is not everything. There is a life beyond it. My friend (maybe I will start to believe that this is the case), made some other very valid points with regards to the devaluing of the photographic image too. I don’t know though, maybe the digitising of photography has sealed its own coffin. Maybe the image will now be consigned to the disposable and temporary scrap heap. The next amazing image on Facebook is only a couple of status updates away, after all.
Except it is not, you find some of the good image based pages and you will find that many of the fantastic images being displayed are old, some very old. You see with all of this technology, I think we have started to miss the point about photography. Great off camera flash is wonderful for the wedding client or those portraits in the hay field, and it is such a skill (no doubting that), but they are still gimmicky. A great image is still a great image, even if it was taken 100 years ago. Digital means we can (and do) take more photographs, but we have always known that quality is better than quantity any day. So by taking more images what are we missing?
I think that perhaps we are missing the connection, that is what it is all about. A real connection and not a cyber one.
This week saw me attending another Homecoming and medal parade here in Germany. I have lost track of how many of these I have covered over the years. They are always great opportunities to capture some great images although this time for some reason, it got me thinking.
With the imminent return home of British troops from Afghanistan in 2014, these may well be a thing of the past for a little while. Of course this is great news when you consider how many soldiers we have lost during the conflict, but I can’t help feel a tinge of sadness.
These parades are always great events supported by the soldiers and their families. They are a show, a celebration, in many cases an opportunity to reflect and for some a way of closure. But more than that these signify the end of a job well done.
The British Armed forces are there to do these jobs, love them or hate them, these roles seem to come up all too often, usually when you least expect them. These parades are significant as they mean the members of the Armed Forces have been doing a job they have trained hard for.
I do not mean to be disrespectful as the conflict in Afghanistan goes on and there will in all likelihood be more injured or even killed, so we cannot afford to look at the end with too much comfort.
One thing I am glad of is how this operation seems to have brought the Armed Forces closer together. In the past the fierce rivalry used to alienate certain cap badges or trades, but such is the nature of this conflict that every job out there has risk and danger, it is not just the infantry who are risking their lives on the front. I think this conflict has shown the strengths of our armed forces as a whole and that should be commended.
The opinions stated here are simply the opinions of the author and do not in any way necessarily reflect the stance of the Ministry of Defence.
The mastery of life, work and Photography 