Tim Gander’s photography blog.

 by Tim Gander

How Soon Is Now?

Well that’s got The Smiths fans reading. Hello, both of you.*

What that slightly odd headline is nodding towards, in a painfully contorted way like Morrissey performing William, It Was Really Nothing, is that while a photo might be taken for quick social media use, bear in mind you may wish to use it later for other things.

So, what difference does it make if you approach the task with only Twitter or Facebook in mind? You might want to ask yourself if it matters there’s only half a person in the frame, or the resolution is poor.

A female hand is pointing towards the twitter app icon on an iPad.
An ever-expanding universe of social media platforms.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but your photos and your brand should work hand in glove across many media. The quality shouldn’t oscillate wildly from one media to another otherwise your message is going nowhere fast.

The point of photography is to communicate your message; get it wrong and the world won’t listen.

I hope this post has per suedehead you that such a little thing makes such a big difference.

*The more astute amongst you will have spotted a few familiar references and one rather painful pun.

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 by Tim Gander

Two Decades and a World Away

Members of the Welsh Guards carry Princess Diana's coffin
Members of the Welsh Guards carry Princess Diana's coffin

Yes, I was there too. Another press photographer who covered Diana’s funeral and because my words will be lost in the blizzard of articles and analysis on this the 20th anniversary of her death, I’ll point you towards this excellent article by Fleet Street photographer Brian Harris before offering a few brief thoughts of my own.

For myself, I was a lowly local news photographer at the time and was astonished to be assigned an official pass to cover the funeral from a position directly opposite the main door of Westminster Abbey.

Like Brian, I remember being hissed at by the crowd as I made my way to the position. I remember the weird atmosphere as people cheered the stars of music, TV and film as they arrived for the service. I also remember seeing the shot of the card on the coffin which just read “Mummy” and yes it was a cracking shot, but Brian’s was more graceful.

As for my effort, well it wasn’t the strongest image of the day, but I found myself focusing on the expressions of the pallbearers, members of the Welsh Guards who were clearly struggling to hold their emotions together. The shot summed up the occasion and emotions of the day in a fairly tight frame.

So considering it’s not a shot I had never wanted to have to take, I’ll live with it and leave it here as part of a much larger record of a sad day which changed all who were involved at least a little and for ever.

 

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 by Tim Gander

Hot New Set of Wheels

I’ve no idea what mileage my camera bag has done, but its wheels have been showing signs of distress for quite some time. So rather than fork out £300+ for a new bag, the old one probably ending up in landfill, I decided to give it a new lease of life with fresh wheels.

Luckily, inline skate wheels are a perfect fit for the existing bearings. I’d wanted to replace the bearings too, but standard bearings have a different bore which doesn’t fit the axle shafts for my bag. It’s not a critical issue as the old bearings still run, and I think I’ll be able to source the correct bearings once I have time to do more research.

One slightly stomach-churning moment was when I realised how much human hair had become entangled in the axles (I must be running over a lot of human hair!), but with everything removed, cleaned and re-greased, I was able to fit the new wheels and get the ol’ bag rolling again.

New inline skate wheel fitted to a rolling camera bag with the old wheel standing adjacent for comparison.
Faster, smoother ride

It now runs smoother, quieter and more easily over rough ground. In fact this photo was taken after a rather punishing outing over stones, flint and slate pieces for a recent assignment, but I’ve included one of the old wheels to show how much they had worn down and their general state.

Plus I think the skate wheels look rather fancy. Hopefully I can now get to your jobs slightly faster than before!

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 by Tim Gander

Summer Light In Summary

With the weather we’ve been having this August you may not be feeling especially Summery, and it’s true to say I’ve had a challenging few weeks dodging downpours, thunder storms and gales, but it’s often assumed that Summer sunshine is perfect for photography.

Well it can be of course, but as a rule, when I’m taking pictures of people for their business website or press release, if we’re having to work outdoors and the sun is screaming down, it’s not always a great help. The subjects will either be squinting into the light, their eyes streaming, or if I put the sun behind them I’ll end up with silhouetted people unless I balance the daylight with flash – not always a simple task.

Of course there are things I can do to minimise the problem, but sometimes the chosen location and time of day for the photo session mean it becomes a purely technical exercise in overcoming the sun.

In the two photos featured here you’ll see how placing the subjects in the shade has meant they’re not not made to squint into the sun or get hot and bothered, while I’m able to fill in their features with controlled use of flash.

The Bristol Pest Controller team outside in a park in Bristol with a railway viaduct behind.
The Bristol Pest Controller team.
The Bristol Pest Controller team outside in a park in Bristol with a railway viaduct behind.
The Bristol Pest Controller team nicely lit with flash.
Screenshot of the image on the finished website.

The client, the award-winning The Bristol Pest Controller, needed some images for their website, including a hero image, and they knew the location they wanted. My job was to make it all work for them and their website.

The session happened back in March of this year, but I don’t know if you remember, it was quite sunny back in the Spring! Sunshine in Spring is just as tricksy to work with as sun at any time of year, but finding the right location helps a lot to mitigate the issues.

And of course if it’s sunshine like we’ve had this August, ie not a lot, that can actually be quite helpful as it’s easier to balance overcast daylight and flash. The only problem this Summer seems to be how to avoid getting drenched or struck by lightning during your photo session.

 

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 by Tim Gander

Gimme Some Room!

Much of my business photography consists of taking portraits of, rather predictably, business people. So far so good.

This pretty much always happens at their place of work because that means less disruption to their busy schedule and I can create a set of portraits covering all the colleagues that happen to be in the building that day. Still so far so good.

Where “so far so good” becomes “ummm” is when I’m shown into a meeting room/stationery cupboard which is so crammed with immobile tables and heavy chairs/stationery that I have no space to actually take pictures.

I do make a point of requesting a space roughly 10 foot square, but sometimes the message gets lost or it’s assumed the boardroom table can be moved when I get there. More commonly now, tables are cabled to the floor with telephone and computer wires, which will only stretch so far before they go PING! and the IT department has to be called in.

So to say I was utterly delighted with the space I was given this week is an understatement – half a ballroom in a hotel. All to myself, with nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing taking up floor space. In fact I had to pull a small table into the room so I could check off peoples’ names as I went without having to squat on the floor.

A photographer's backdrop and studio flash equipment are set up in a large empty room in the Hilton, Walcot Street, Bath, UK

A great space for portraits

I thoroughly enjoyed setting up my backdrop and lights slap bang in the middle of the space. It gave the whole thing a slightly surreal air and the people who came in to have their photos taken were astonished that the room they’d been assigned for their meeting was so much smaller than the one reserved for me.

Of course the ballroom wouldn’t have worked for them because they needed AV and a projector for their presentations which the ballroom didn’t have, but it did make me feel very special and it also meant I had bags of room to control how the lights lit the backdrop and the sitters. It meant I could work towards a very particular look without too much difficulty.

Ok, not the most exciting tale in the world, and it’s not as if I’ll be dining out on that one ever, but it’s a fine illustration of how giving the photographer ample space to work will not only make their life easier, it’ll also mean they can work to achieve more accurate results in-camera and ensure that so far so good endures right through to “that’s a wrap”.

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 by Tim Gander

Expired Film Teaches Me A Lesson

I’m meant to use this blog to talk about nothing but corporate photography, hitting those all-important keywords, shoehorning them into sentences until Google says “I get it, you’re a corporate photographer shooting portraits and other corporate communications images for businesses who care about the quality of their image and the values it conveys, so we’ll put you at the top of the listings whenever we think you’re what the client is looking for.”

Thanks Google, you’re doing a grand job and I should apologise that I don’t always make it easy for you by writing instead about magazines I like, exhibitions I’ve launched (actually, singular exhibition, but hey I’ll keep working on that), or my return to shooting film as a way of working out new ideas and pursuing my passion for telling the stories of ordinary people.

And this week I’m not making it any easier as once again I’m on the subject of film.

My return to film has been a bit stop/start but it continues. More recently I’ve been working with expired film, that is stock which is well past its use-by date. Yes, film has a use-by date because the light-sensitive chemicals which react to light start to break down.

However, I managed to source a large, mixed bag of film; 35mm, medium format, colour and black and white and I’ve been working my way through it with various trial projects and one project which has been fairly fruitful, that of a series of photos documenting the derelict site in Frome known as Saxonvale.

Saxonvale is an area of the town which has been left partially cleared for many years now while the various landowners and interested parties take their time working out how to make the most money from its redevelopment. You might say I’ve used derelict film to record a derelict site, recording not just the waste discarded there, but also sometimes the people who pass through or visit for their own reasons.

Some of the film stock I’ve used has been in such a poor state it barely rendered an image. One trip was wasted because the film was so utterly degraded it was blank when I processed it. All part of the project and a useful reminder to me that the film is the boss on this one.

In due course I’ll be updating my main website with some of these images, but in the meantime here’s a mini gallery to give you a flavour of the Saxonvale project. If you want to see more of it and some of the other film images I’ve shot lately, head over to my Instagram account where you’ll find me as @takeagander.

Ground-level view of a discarded book fans its pages in the wind as it lies on the ground.
From the Saxonvale Project
A family, mother, father, son and daughter walk through the derelict site.
From the Saxonvale Project
Weed seed heads garland a locked mesh gate to the Saxonvale site.
From the Saxonvale Project.
Dark, grainy portrait of a young man who visits the site to explore and make youtube videos.
© Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
A towel is hung from a chickenwire fence.
© Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
A small discarded plastic doll lies naked amongst scattered stones and other rubbish, her hair awry.
© Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
A man and his dog leave the site after exploring the rubbish for any valuable materials such as copper.
© Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
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 by Tim Gander

Get With The Union

A couple of years ago I mentioned Union magazine in a blog post about how I need to feed my creative soul with things like magazines, Huck being another good example.

Union was started by a small group of individuals including photographer James Cheadle who I first met way back in the early 1990s when he was a darkroom technician at The Bath Chronicle and I was a freelance photographer in the throes of training for my certificate in newspaper photography.

In the intervening years James and I have met on very occasional jobs, but we only kept vaguely in touch. But when I saw he’d launched a magazine, I had to take a look.

I’ve supported the magazine from the start and am the proud owner of all four copies so far published. If I’m not careful I’ll have to build a glass-fronted teak display case with internal illumination to store my burgeoning library, but for now the copies I have will reside in my MFI bedside cabinet.

Union magazine cover with Union stickers and a cash bill arranged on top.
Stickers, cash and a stonking good read. What's not to love?

The magazine is a good read and very much photography led, touching on the quirkier corners of society; girl bikers, religious cult members, gang members and a few more bikers. James’ interest in motorbikes and those who ride them certainly shines through, and while I’m not a particular fan of bikes I really enjoy reading the stories and seeing the biker culture represented insightful, engaging photography.

Always a pleasure too is the added bonus of receiving some Union stickers and even occasionally some defunct, but weirdly fresh, foreign currency.

Union magazine won’t be to everyones’ tastes, and since its first edition some design and typology issues have needed to be worked out, but issue 4 is looking fantastic and I’m really looking forward to reading it. I wish James and the team the absolute best of luck with a magazine which deserves success in a market dominated by the big publishers churning out cookie-cutter, vanilla publications.

Up with the UNION!

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 by Tim Gander

Don’t forget the GV!

The GV, or General View, is one of the easiest images to overlook when putting a photographic brief together, but it can be one of the most useful images on the list.

It’s easy to focus on all the meaty stuff – the people, the event, the presentations and so on, but it’s always worth listing the general view if it adds to the narrative of what you’re trying to convey. It can be a really useful image in the PR pack too, giving print and online publications another option when putting their articles together.

The GV might show the location of a project, the exterior of a building, an overview of project progress, or just add context to a story which can’t necessarily be told entirely in a single photo.

Of course even if you don’t list any specific GVs in the brief, any decent photographer should be on the lookout for opportunities for a good GV.

View of the old PO sorting office at Bristol Temple Meads as seen from the offices of Burgess Salmon in One Glass Wharf.
GV of proposed new University of Bristol campus.

This is a discipline I learned during my newspaper days and certainly during my training period I was pretty good at earning an ear-bending for forgetting to include a GV in the picture set. Happily that lesson remains with me today.

So now when I go to a job I’m often on the lookout for a GV even when it’s not listed because you just never know when it might come in handy. It might even become the most important shot of the day.

 

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 by Tim Gander

Listen Up!

In April I had the absolute pleasure of working with a group of young people in Wiltshire to help promote the Healthwatch Wiltshire “Young Listeners” project.

This project involves young volunteers canvassing the thoughts and views of their peers and reporting their findings back to Wiltshire’s Health and Wellbeing Board.The findings are then used to help improve health provision for young people in the county.

My job was to generate a set of images for use across Healthwatch Wiltshire’s Youthwatch web pages and literature as well as for use in press releases and case studies for social media.

They were a lively bunch, full of character and great fun to work with. Two of them stoically posed outside for a press photo in spite of the rain which was coming in sideways, but they were utterly professional about it.

Zoe Tonks (left), aged 17, and Elley-May Timmins (18) will be presenting the results of the Young Listeners research into health issues and concerns amongst young people to the Wiltshire Health and Wellbeing Board.
Zoe and Elley-May pose for a press release photo.
24.04.2017 Image for the promotion of Youthwatch, a Wiltshire-based initiative involving young people, "Young Listeners", volunteering to speak to people of their own age about health and mental health issues in their area and reporting their findings back to the local clinical commissioning groups. © Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
Young Listener Scott Kane
24.04.2017 Image for the promotion of Youthwatch, a Wiltshire-based initiative involving young people, "Young Listeners", volunteering to speak to people of their own age about health and mental health issues in their area and reporting their findings back to the local clinical commissioning groups. © Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
Young Listener Zoë Radford
24.04.2017 Image for the promotion of Youthwatch, a Wiltshire-based initiative involving young people, "Young Listeners", volunteering to speak to people of their own age about health and mental health issues in their area and reporting their findings back to the local clinical commissioning groups. © Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
Young listener listens.
24.04.2017 Image for the promotion of Youthwatch, a Wiltshire-based initiative involving young people, "Young Listeners", volunteering to speak to people of their own age about health and mental health issues in their area and reporting their findings back to the local clinical commissioning groups. © Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
An unplanned moment makes a perfect banner photo for the client site.
24.04.2017 Image for the promotion of Youthwatch, a Wiltshire-based initiative involving young people, "Young Listeners", volunteering to speak to people of their own age about health and mental health issues in their area and reporting their findings back to the local clinical commissioning groups. © Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
Young listeners working together.

I also shot a short series of portraits, two of which you can see here, to accompany case studies (luckily it wasn’t raining at this point). The client, citing my recent skateboarders project, wanted a similarly gritty and dramatic feel to the photos. I couldn’t reproduce exactly what I’d done with that project so I chose the side of an industrial unit as an out-of-focus backdrop and lit the faces in a dramatic and eye-catching way.

The results have appeared multiple times in local media and have given the client material for their Facebook page and website. It’s a great start to their photo library which they can draw on and build up over time.

 

 

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 by Tim Gander

Get Some Gander and Pig In Your Ears

That’s probably the skinniest picture I’ve ever posted on my blog, but if you dare to click the play button you’ll get to hear my voice via the miracle of the internet.

Artist David Chandler interviews local artists and creative people for his Seeing Things programme on Frome FM, but he decided to interview me during the Faces of Routes exhibition. Sadly, due to a backlog of interviews, it couldn’t go up before the exhibition closed, but it’s an interesting interview in any event. Especially during the bits where I’m not talking.

Do listen to the end or you’ll miss the interview with printmaker Chris Pig. That’s two farmyard animals for the price of one!

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