by Tim Gander

So… 2018

Having looked back at 2017 in my previous blog post, it’s time to gaze into the crystal ball, check the tea leaves and the alignment of the planets and hazard a guess at what this, my 20th year as a freelance photographer, will bring.

It’s always hard to predict. Each year brings surprises, both good and bad – mainly good thankfully, and if the last couple of years are anything to go by, I will continue to find new clients while work from others will go quieter. It’s the natural cycle of business and no longer terrifies me the way it used to.

I look forward to working with new people just as much as I enjoy undertaking repeat work for established clients and I know there will be a similar mix this year as ever.

2017 was incredibly busy, and it’ll be interesting to see if 2018 can match it, but even if the shape of the year is different I’m sure it’ll be just as much fun.

What will make 2018 quite different from previous years will be the level of personal work I hope to undertake. The Saxonvale project continues to grow and there’s a possibility it will come to fruition this year, though I have a funny feeling it will continue into next year. It partly depends on how much longer my stock of expired film will last.

A homeless man leans on the step of his caravan looking away from the camera and smiling as he smokes a cigarette.
Alby lives in a caravan on the Saxonvale site. Shot on expired B&W film.

In addition to Saxonvale I have ideas for other, possibly smaller, self-contained mini projects which I would like to pursue. One thing is certain, my personal projects will be shot on film. Getting back into shooting film has transformed my approach to personal work and I find it a great way to separate the personal from the commercial. It also informs my commercial work and keeps me fresh, so there’s no going back to digital-only now.

Whatever 2018 brings for me, I hope it brings my loyal readers, clients and friends every success in whatever they set out to achieve and I look forward to hearing from some of you over the coming months.

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 by Tim Gander

2017 In Review

In keeping with a tradition which stretches back oh, at least some years now, it’s time for me to review my year in pictures. I hope you enjoy the brief selection of photos in the gallery below.

Actually, what an incredible year it’s been! I’m not sure I’ve ever had such a busy year since I went freelance 19 years ago, so I’m looking forward to 2018 more in anticipation than trepidation.

January was a total whirlwind as the Faces of Routes project went from conception to launch in less than five weeks. The reaction from Frome people and beyond was stunning (and I don’t often use that word) and the Routes service was saved for another few years. In an ideal world, this service would be centrally funded, but for now it relies on donations and grants.

The Routes project largely came about because I was itching to do a personal project with a bigger purpose, but it also gave me the boot up the backside I needed to spur me on to undertake more personal projects generally. So it was good timing when a neighbour offered me his old medium format camera and lenses at a very reasonable price.

I’d been meddling with film again in a lighthearted way, but finding myself well-equipped with a solid film camera, and having dusted off my old 35mm film equipment, something was starting to take shape.

After a couple of false starts, out of some random whim that I can’t now remember having, I acquired a freezer drawer full of expired film of varying types and formats and the Saxonvale project was born. It doesn’t yet have its own gallery in my portfolio, but you can spot some examples in my Personal Favourites section.

So far Saxonvale has largely been an Instagram project, but I’ll add more to my website in time.

Through all this, the paid work has just kept coming; January turned out to be much busier than I would normally have expected. In fact that pattern repeated through the year, including August when my diary would normally have tumbleweed blowing across it.

Now it’s mid December and things are definitely winding down a bit for Christmas, but it’s been another good month. So I’ll leave you with some highlights from the year and take this opportunity to thank you all, clients and casual visitors alike, for all your support through 2017.

I wish everyone a merry Christmas, happy New Year and all the very best for 2018. Oh and this will be my last post this year, see you all in January!

Portrait of a young man, smiling to camera, wearing a hoodie.
The Faces of Routes project and exhibition helped save the service.
A young, black, male engineer works on a bus's electrical circuit for the IRTE Skills Challenge 2017.
2017 was the 3rd year I'd covered the IRTE Skills Challenge.
Toby Baudains-Bourne poses with his skateboard outside the Cheese and Grain in Frome, Somerset, UK.
Part of a series of portraits of young skateboarders shot on film.
A trailer tips a consignment of grapes into the juicer at a winery in West Germany.
I managed to get a brief holiday in Germany and saw grapes being squished.
Weed seed heads garland a locked mesh gate to the Saxonvale site.
From the Saxonvale Project.
A young couple sits amongst tall grass, looking across at a horse grazing illegally
From the Saxonvale Project.
The remains of a swivel chair base, one leg snapped off and missing.
From the Saxonvale Project.
A fire burns on the open Saxonvale site as a young man strides away, looking at his mobile phone
From the Saxonvale Project.

 

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 by Tim Gander

A Frightfully Good Adventure!

It’s pretty exciting when friends launch into a new adventure. Even more exciting when they ask you to get involved!

I’ve known Neil and Suzy Howlett for quite a few years now, but was totally unaware they were writing a book together until they got in touch to ask if I was interested in taking their author photos for Return to Kirrin, an affectionate pastiche of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books.

Return to Kirrin imagines the Five as adults in 1979, a period of punk and political turmoil, and brings them together for new adventures on Kirrin Island.

My brief for this project was to create a set of images which could be used for a range of promotional purposes. Neil and Suzy wanted a look which was neither too staid, nor too whacky. A fine line to tread indeed.

I decided their garden would be perfect, in particular the little covered bench structure which was a usefully muted colour and had some mystery and a certain wistful charm about it.

We needed to achieve shots of Neil and Suzy together as well as a couple of individual portraits so that whatever they needed, wherever they needed it, there would be an image to fit the use. They also needed to look good and legible at smaller sizes. Landscape and vertical formats had to be catered for too, so as well as the wide shots you see in the gallery, I also made sure there was a good selection of upright shots in the set.

You can already see one of the images in use on the book’s Amazon page, where of course you can also buy your own copy.

The morning of the photo session was blessedly dry – rain would have been pretty unhelpful, and there was some lovely soft sunlight filtering into the garden. I still used a supplementary portable studio light to lift the shadows and to create a slightly ‘hyper real’ look and feel.

For the individual portraits I continued with the portable light, but matched it more closely to the daylight so it became less noticeable, more natural, but the test shots without it left the colours a little flat.

Now the book is out and available to buy, it’ll be fascinating to see how the images get used. For Neil and Suzy, I sincerely hope the sales go wild and I hope my photos help achieve the coverage they so richly deserve. In the meantime, you can follow the book’s adventures on the Return to Kirrin Facebook page.

Suzy and Neil looking for mystery.
17/09/2017 Neil and Suzy Howlett, joint authors of their first book ''. This image is licensed for promotional use in connection with '' in all media from the 19th September 2017 to 19th September 2020. No third-party usage is permitted beyond the scope of promoting ''. Photo © Tim Gander. All rights reserved.
Suzy relaxes on the garden bench.
17/09/2017 Neil and Suzy Howlett, joint authors of their first book ''. This image is licensed for promotional use in connection with '' in all media from the 19th September 2017 to 19th September 2020. No third-party usage is permitted beyond the scope of promoting ''. Photo © Tim Gander. All rights reserved.
Neil looks every inch the author.
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 by Tim Gander

Impressions of London

The other week my son Joe and I took a day trip to London. We try to make it each year, normally in Summer, but this year was a little later than normal.

Apart from the tradition of the trip, Joe also had some pictures to take for his college photography course. So naturally I took a film camera to capture some of my own impressions and just to have a play with more film.

Joe’s work took precedence, so I did only get around to shooting one roll of Kodak Tri-X which, because it was a dismal day, I rated at 800iso.

Here are the results, with special thanks to Brick Lane’s finest leafleteer Charlie Kloos for posing while I messed about with a Pentax lens from the 1960s, which was a little tricky to focus as the evening light started to fail.

London door mat
London communal garden
London Grafitti and my son
London's finest leafleteer Charlie Kloos

 

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 by Tim Gander

The Film Fad

When I started shooting film again I thought it might just be an itch that needed to be scratched, but Im enjoying it so much that the current project on the Saxonvale area of Frome really is building into something interesting.

If you’d like to see all the images so far you’ll need an Instagram account where you’ll find me as @takeagander, but in the meantime here’s a selection of recent posts. All shot on expired film, all the flaws and colour-shifts are a result of the age of the film used.

And no, this isn’t just a hipster fad for me; I love shooting film and the way it makes me slow down and think. Wherever possible it’ll be my medium of choice for all my personal projects from now on, so sorry if I keep banging on about it.

A cat strolls through the disused Saxonvale site towards the camera. A green cast is the result of being out-of-date film.
The remains of a swivel chair base, one leg snapped off and missing.
From the Saxonvale Project.
The hand of a graffiti artist casts its own shadow on a wall.
Discarded spray pint cans on a wall, highly degraded film results in black blobs and lines on the film.
A wrecked push chair resembles a broken robot.
A smashed bicycle wheel hangs on a metal fence.
A colour photo of a blue plastic toy tractor and a blue bleach bottle on a pile of twigs.
Three young men sit on a concrete platform, their backs to the camera.
Youngsters walk through the Saxonvale site with bikes, skateboards or just on foot. Dumped wood and litter fill the foreground.
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 by Tim Gander

Inspired By Inertia

Having no scheduled shoots this morning I decided to process the two films I shot yesterday evening for my Saxonvale project (it’s a long term project which I’ve been posting on Instagram as @takeagander).

So there I was, up to my elbows in my dark bag, wrestling (circa 30-year-old East German black and white) ORWO 120 films onto processing reels when I heard a knock at the front door. I knew exactly who and what it was, but couldn’t risk fogging my film to go and answer the door.

Thankfully our post lady didn’t just push a “we tried to deliver” card through the door, instead she found a safe place to stow the package and told me on the card where it was.

I was also grateful that the films loaded remarkably easily (very old 120 film tends to resist being unfurled), so as soon as they were safely in the developing tank I retrieved the package.

A black and white photo of a copy of Small Town Inertia by J.A Mortam rests on the bubblewrap it arrived in on a coffee table.
Small Town Inertia by J.A Mortam

It was a book I’d been looking forward to receiving for some months, J.A (Jim) Mortram’s Small Town Inertia.

The book is a searingly poignant collection of black and white images and testimonies detailing the daily struggles of people in the small Norfolk town where Jim lives.

Unapologetically political, very anti-Tory, anti-globalisation and definitely anti-austerity, Jim’s book documents his subjects in a way which brings home in the starkest possible terms the effects of unemployment, mental and physical illness and addiction under successive governments which have sought to sideline these issues in favour of a market economy unfettered by the constraints of conscience.

It is to some extent due to my awareness of Jim’s work that I have sought to spend more of my time on documentary and working in traditional film. The Faces of Routes project, though shot digitally, would almost certainly not have happened if I hadn’t had my social conscience re-awakened by seeing images from the Small Town Inertia project a year or two ago.

Of course my work is very different to Jim’s and nowhere near as comprehensive (or, of course, as good). Jim has been deeply involved in the lives of his subjects, often helping them with bureaucratic paperwork or just daily tasks, and this shows in the photos.

However, even though my projects tend to be more random, less overtly political and involve being less embedded with my subjects, I will continue to be inspired by the work of J.A Mortram and others like him.

To which end, I’d better get this morning’s negatives scanned and added to my own personal project. It’s all very well to be moved and inspired, but if I’m to genuinely honour the work of others, there is no better way than to keep on pursuing my own.

If you would like your own copy of Small Town Inertia you can buy it here. Visit Jim Mortram’s website here.

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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

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

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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