views away from the lens

Here’s a neat presentation on the benefits and methodologies of blogging and Tweeting.

That’s right I’m now a presenter on BBC Radio Manchester’s ‘Jewish Hour’.

Surprisingly there are a lot of similarities between the creative skills for radio and those for photography… preparation, tight schedules, capturing enough material that you can later edit, conveying the right mood and telling the story succinctly. One paints a picture with light, the other paints it with sound.

So far I’ve courted controversy, with one interview creating headlines widely in the Jewish press; and I’ve brought my audience to tears, with one listener contacting the programme to let us know he had to stop the car and cry when I featured the story of a Holocaust survivor.

Jewish Hour
Monday’s 7.00 – 8.00pm
95.1 FM
DAB digital
Online – bbc.co.uk/manchester
available for 7 days from broadcast on the BBC iPlayer

Its not just frontline photojournalists, suffering at the hands of the Metropolitan police, who are being picked on just because of the job they are doing. Regular photographers working on commission or self motivated projects are the subject of deep suspicion by everybody. And especially so by those who think they are in some position of “authority”. There is no logic, let alone evidence, to cast a person with a camera in the role of terrorist or child molester. Yet that is what happens… every day, by otherwise sane rational people… when they see a photographer, logic and rationality go out the window. The lunacy  of this can be evidenced when on a recent job I filmed an interviewed a coastguard. At the end of our chat I mentioned that I wanted to grab some shots of the flotsam and jetsam on the shoreline. ‘Oh I’d better get one of our guys to go with you, or you might get stopped.’ … to steal a quote from photographer Geert van Kesteren (about the occupation in Iraq) …. Why Mister, Why?

Campaigns against the demonisation and criminalisation of photographers are being spearheaded by both the British Journal of Photography and Amateur Photographer magazines.
link: www.not-a-crime.com
link: photographernotaterrorist.org

Well, Redeye’s conference in Manchester is over and I’m home… to the greenhouse and editing videos. Quite an intense time Friday to Sunday. Lots of people to meet, some completely new, others I’d only chatted to in email or that I know from Prodig… and even then couldn’t meet them all. And venue in the heart of the city, Chethams Library (pronounced Cheethams), is steeped in history and is where Marx and Engles spent some time pursuing their writings.

For the most part I spent the weekend keeping a Twitter stream going on the hashtag #NPS1. John Perivolaris and Julian from L Star were doing the same, plus a few more sporadic contributions from others, and if we were in different sessions it meant you could keep up with more than one room at a time. I hope those who were following remotely on Twitter could make sense of that. Certainly we seemed to have a following, with one bit of feedback coming from as far away as Singapore.

I was toying with the idea of doing some Tweets whilst chairing the session I was in charge of with Yasmina Reggad and David Hoffman. Decided against it in the end but now I’m not so sure. I think it would have been a more concise way of keeping notes… I scrawled far too many by hand… 140 characters really does concentrate the mind very effectively.

Anyway, my other self-imposed job was to grab as many off the cuff interviews as I could. Looking back I would have liked to have got more, but you really do have to be on your toes to do that and keep tweeting.

So here they are… 7 interviews with 8 people, plus Ian McMillan’s very funny conference address on the opening evening.

link: NPS1 Video Interviews

A first edition of John Dunne’s verse from the Library, with some graffitti that had been scrawled in it in 1630 “Thomas Brown is a clown” (a year before Dunne’s death), which Ian McMillan refers to at the end of his address.

Why on earth would a sane person put their work at the mercy of a seasoned reviewer?

Portfolio reviews are becoming increasingly popular for photographers.
So what can you expect if you go to one?
Is it a case of jumping for joy, or crawling out a disheartened character?

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been asked to chair one of the discussions at the forthcoming National Photography Symposium in Manchester. The session I’m looking after is…

“The Collective and the Library” – How are photographers organising themselves and getting their work distributed? Linda Royles gives an overview of the state of stock and library photography. How are they adapting to the seismic shifts in the market? Yasmina Reggad looks at the rise of photographers’ collectives in Europe – what can they achieve and what are the different models?

The Symposium takes place at Chethams Library, Manchester, over the weekend of 19-21 June 2009.

link: National Photography Symposium

photo: Courtyard of Chetham’s Library by flufzilla22

Does a photographer need to bother with social networking – Blogs, Twitter,  Flickr, YouTube, yada yada yada – ?…
Don’t we have enough to do with sourcing work, keeping up with cameras, software, client relationships, tax returns and the whole schlemiel? Read the rest of this entry »

Straight after the Get AmbITion workshop I had to attend and photograph the Liverpool Art Prize awards ceremony (which as previously noted, I am sponsoring by doing the snaps!). Fortunately they were both in the Novas Contemporary Urban Centre building.

Ian Jackson and his wife Minako do a fabulous job. The art prize and all the other arts promotion they do for the sheer joy of it… but its something that Liverpool sorely needs.

Video installation partnership AL & AL won the juried  Art Prize, whilst Elizabeth Willow won the People’s Prize.

Yes – I’ve been flying!

Over the last couple of months I’ve been working with Photomobile, teaching kids and adults. Photomobile is, as the name suggests, a mobile wet and digital darkroom which works with schools, communities and anywhere there’s an interest in photography. I worked on projects with four schools and two community festivals. The photos show me (centre) and the other guys in action, with some of the students and their work.

I was chuffed to be asked to take part in one of the Format Festival’s events in Derby a few weeks ago.
It consisted of a Panel Discussion in the evening followed by Portfolio Reviews the following day.
Quite strange to be back in Derby again after so many years. The Déda dance centre where the panel session was held is a great venue. And exciting things look like they’re in store when the new arts centre Derby Quad opens in 2008.

http://www.creative-cin.co.uk/event.php?eventid=69

http://www.formatfestival.com/november/panel.html

The panel consisted of Brian Griffin (http://briangriffin.co.uk/), Paul Herrmann (http://www.redeye.org.uk/), and myself.
As I often do I took along my field recorder and managed to capture the main part of the discussion. Its available to listen to here http://derbyquad.jellycast.com/audio/play/5

Here’s a list of the full review panel…

Read the rest of this entry »

Well that’s it. I’ve completed 3 years as a Director and Board member of the AOP (Association of Photographers) and as of tonight, the AGM, I am standing down and letting other people carry the baton. (Those observant ones amongst you may have noted that I was elected to the Board in 2005… ah but, I had already served a year on the Board as northern chairman, so there!). It marks not only the end of this three year stint but also 12 or so years serving the AOP’s northern committee. The Northern committee got knocked on the head back in 2004, but then of course is when the whole SUN Awards thing kicked off. So no rest for the wicked I guess!

LOOK07 and Redeye kindly invited me to their symposium The Democratic Image last weekend.

With speakers flown in from around the world, and an audience coming from similarly widespread destinations, it was a thought provoking, fascinating and inspiring couple of days.

I managed to record many of the presentations. They are available as podcasts from the link below.

Pedro Meyer gave the opening keynote speech. His web site Zone Zero, one of the most visited photo web sites in the world. He was one of the earliest adopters of digital media and has been a life-long educator.

RSS podcast feed |  Zone Zero | LOOK07 |  Redeye

I was on another panel discussion the other night at the Circle Club in Manchester. It was about all the post production stuff that as a photographer has to go after you’ve actually taken the photographs. I have to say there was a quite a diversity between each of us three panelists – Antony Cook, Rob McClese and myself. But the feedback we’ve received since has all been very encouraging… we obviously made some points that rang true with the audience.

Ten and a half years ago on 15 May 1996 a group of anoraks, known as the Digital Imaging Group,  met in a damp dark cellar (better known as Ian McKinnell’s, brightly lit and not damp at all, second floor studio in London) to plot the digital overthrow of the photographic industry… well not exactly, but a lot of people did shudder in their boots.

Ten years on, 18 January 2007, we got together again in Ian McKinnell’s studio… we had some beers, recorded a podcast, pondered on the fact that most of what we had thought would come true has come true… and then we buggered off to an excellent local restaurant.

Attending were (top – left to right) Bob Marchant, Ian McKinnell, Mike Russell, Ed Horwich (me), Martin Evening, Adam Woolfitt, Colin Thomas, Carl Lyttle, Mike Laye, Douglas Fisher, Paul Webster.
(photo: Rod Wynne-Powell)

Listen to the Podcast (recording by Colin Thomas)

Anthony Gormley’s statues on the shoreline at Crosby are just a few miles down the road from me. Initially set to be a temporary installation it was supposed to move later on to New York, now it looks at though its here to stay.
photo: Steve Thompson
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Since I bought my Powerbook, somewhat reluctantly and before I wanted to embark on that purchase last September, its been a regular pain. Within four weeks, just long enough for it not to be declared “dead on arrival”, the screen died. Apple said take it to a local certified repair centre as that would be quicker, so I did. It took six weeks to get a replacement. But even before they phoned me to collect it, that too died. A few days later and it was replaced, but not before the motherboard died. On collecting it I found there was some damage to the bevel around the screen, so they said they would order another and I could take it home in the meantime. As I was using it I noticed the sound only seemed to be coming out of one speaker. Read the rest of this entry »

Well it was bound to happen one day. After I finish my routine in the gym (shock horror… yes I’ve been going about three to four times a week since the beginning of August) I generally go for a swim. Now my gym shorts serve also as my swimming shorts… convenient eh! And whilst I’m in the gym my iPod Shuffle is in the pocket of my shorts.
Yep you guessed it… in the shower I suddenly discovered something solid that shouldn’t have been there. My first thought was that it was a sign that I should buy the Nano I had promised myself. But hang on, I pressed the battery check button and wuhey that looked ok. But I thought I’d better not try anything further till it’d had a chance to dry out a bit. A few hours later the body of the iPod seemed dry enough and I tested it with a spare set of earbuds. It sounded fine. But the original earbuds needed overnight on top of the central heating. Low and behold the next day everything was working perfectly.
It had survived ten minutes in the steam room, ten minutes in the hot tub and ten minutes swimming in the pool.

Together with Redeye I’ve been organising this essential seminar on colour and asset  management.

The first of our two key speakers was Jack Lowe, who specialises in scanning, retouching and printing,  workflow management, and in particular offers advice on supplying CMYK files.

He was followed by Bob Marchant. Bob is at the centre of industry moves to standardise cross industry approaches to digital workflow. He also spoke about practical steps you can easily take to ensure your digital files conform with standards.

Both myself and Paul Herrmann of  Redeye also gave presentations. Paul revealed new survey information illustrating the current true position of digital imaging in today’s photography. Whilst I contributed with some information on taking the headaches out of captioning/metadata and file transfer.

I’m really pleased we were able to secure the Bradford Museum for this event. The day went really well, with a very widely drawn audience.

It was the AGM of the Association of Photographers last night. I had planned to be there. But I’ve had the flu for the last ten days or more and I still have a load of stuff to do with launching the sun awards. So there I am, sitting on the couch waiting to listen in to the AGM in London via an audio link up on Skype. But its not to be. A few perilous moments saying hi to Anthony and then the whole thing at his end crashes and I’m left watching the TV instead. As I understand it all the members standing for election to the Board are supposed to have stood up and said their piece before the votes are recorded. Well of course they have my words on paper, as does everyone. But I’m not there so maybe they won’t vote for me. I’m sure someone will take on the ‘regional’ agenda if I don’t get on, and maybe it will be a relief not to have these honourary duties, which are actually quite a serious undertaking.
But here I am next day and lo and behold in comes an email listing me as one of the successfully elected Board members. So here I am for another year…ok let’s get this thing into gear!

Paul Herrmann of RedEye asked me to speak at their annual symposium at the Manchester Art Gallery…. “oh and by the way, you’re first on as the warm-up act!” …so no pressure then. The line up was, myself, Paul Wombell – was director of the Photographers Gallery, Hugh Hamilton – lecturer from Trent University, Pippa Walkley – Skillset a govt/industry group charged with setting the agenda for training in various industry sectors, and Rod Varely – who was on the course at Derby at the same time as me and more recently was MD of the AOP. Read the rest of this entry »

To Glasgow this Friday. Doing a bit more to help with the rise and rise of Hannah Frank (96). The BBC were filming an interview with her and one with Alma Wolfson and in turn I videoed them.
Alma Wolfson is the president of the society of Glasgow Women Artists whose show Hannah is included this weekend. In the evening she and her husband Leslie invited Fiona (Frank) and myself for Shabbos dinner. Hannah Frank herself was on good form at the private view of her exhibition at the RGI. This is the latest in a series of trips here I’ve made with Fiona on this project.

top – filming Alma Wolfson being interviewed :: above – Hannah Frank at the RGI Gallery

Martin Evening asked me to contribute to his book Adobe Photoshop for Photographers.