by Tim Gander

Welcome Break

Welcome back after my holiday hiatus.

One of the wonderful things about doing what I do is that whenever I go on holiday, I always have a professional photographer with me. Not everyone is so fortunate and there is even a growing trend to hire a photographer to take your holiday snaps for you.

Don’t worry though, I’m only going to talk briefly about my Summer* holiday and show you just a couple of the photos I took during my week off. The point being, as much as this blog is for showcasing what I do for my clients (and hopefully for you if you become one of them), it’s sometimes good to share what I do outside of my paid work so you get to see how I think when I’m not tied to a photographic brief.

My trip this year involved a week’s camping in South Devon; Slapton, to be precise, and to be even more pedantic, during a week-long weather warning from the Met Office. Yes, it rained quite a lot and got so windy that my windbreak broke.

In spite of all that, I had a wonderful time relaxing with my lovely partner. Long walks (we clocked up in the region of 25 miles in the first 3 days) and some of the most incredible seafood I’ve ever eaten.

And when I’m on holiday, yet still carrying a camera, what do I look for in a photograph? Well I do occasionally find myself taking some of the same clichéd photos that any tourist takes, but mostly I look for something unusual to sum up an experience in a less obvious way than simply lifting my camera and recording what’s in front of me.

It’s always a balance between enjoying the holiday and its moments and using the camera to record them. I certainly resist taking photos until I see something I really want to capture, and rarely trouble myself with anything that thousands of people will already have captured ad-nauseam.

Hence the two images here. Both are simple and both lack any real context. Looking at them, you wouldn’t necessarily know where they were taken, but for me they form the kernel of much bigger memories. I hope though that in spite of that, you can see some beauty in them that doesn’t rely on you knowing the context in which they were taken, so they stand on their own as pictures worth looking at.

Enough artyfarty nonsense, here they are.

Three yachts in the far distance on flat, grey water with a moody, grey sky above. Taken from near Start Bay, South Devon.
Looking up from the base of a bamboo copse at Coleton Fishacre House, South Devon.

*I heard a lovely quote the other day, I’m only sorry I don’t know who originally came up with it, but it goes “I love the English Summer. It’s my favourite day of the year.”

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 by Tim Gander

Hot Off The Back Of My Camera

Between paid assignments I’m working to expand my portfolio with personal shoots, so having spent the entire morning editing and delivering a job for a client from a shoot in Surrey yesterday (more about that in a future post), I grabbed my gear and got down to H&B Tyres in Frome for a mini portrait session.

I’d popped into H&B previously to check that it would be ok/possible to do some photos as and when I was able, and was given the OK by the owner, Mike as well as a green light from a couple of the tyre fitters there.

I wanted to use the opportunity to take portraits of these guys because A) The staff area is a fascinating jumble of car parts and machinery and B) I wanted to take “formal” portraits in a setting I don’t typically find myself in. Most of what I shoot happens in nice, clean offices with predictable lighting against a plain or office backdrop. I wanted a bit more of a challenge to see what would come of it.

From the shoot, which finished just over an hour ago, I’ve pulled one image for this blog post. I think one or two more may well find their way into my portfolio galleries.

In the meantime, meet Donald who, as it happens, is a fan of Don McCullin’s work. I think Don the tyre fitter’s pose might well have been influenced by Don the photographer’s work.

Tyre fitter Donald Gwilyn looks straight to camera as he holds his tea mug with exhaust pipes arranged on racks behind him.
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 by Tim Gander

On The Mount

Tip: To see the image in full width, click the title of this post to lose the sidebar.

A bit of a change of direction this week; I recently started something which I hope will become a coherent series of photos journaling the real Frome town. I want to include the people and the places that get less of a look-in, which are often ignored for not being pretty enough, retro enough or chic enough for our attention. Like Standerwick, I want this series to inform the viewer without pushing an agenda. You see the pictures, you decide what they mean to you.

I don’t want this to be just another series of “petty observations” the like of which you see on Instagram or twitter every day. Certainly Frome gets its share of those with many snaps of Catherine Hill and Cheap Street, or the Independent Market. I’m looking for the slightly grittier side of Frome.

The image below is just the first instalment, a bit of a scene-setter if you like, and it shows The Mount, Keyford, Frome, which is just one of the areas I’ll be chronicling. This series will eventually get its own gallery on my website and perhaps become an exhibition somewhere in the town. Well, that would be super, but we’ll have to see about that.

In the meantime, here goes nothing, as they say…

Feltham Drive looking towards Austin Close, The Mount, Frome, Somerset

Feltham Drive looking towards Austin Close, The Mount, Frome, Somerset

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 by Tim Gander

The News Itch

Sometimes I hanker after the good old days when I was rushing about covering news events. Of course most of it was pretty mundane stuff (community group cheque presentations, councillors on self-promoting visits to local Scout clubs and so on), but covering Magistrates or Crown Court, while often time-consuming was an interesting challenge. Or a stakeout waiting for some local scallywag to emerge from their last known address, house fires, road traffic accidents… these were not enjoyable, but you felt you were doing a useful job bringing the news to your readers.

Yes, I miss the rush of covering hard news and sometimes I ponder how difficult it would be to start covering local news without the backup of a recognised publication. The problem is, I often spot newsworthy things around my home town of Frome, but there isn’t a local newspaper that would pay for the photos and I’m not prepared to give them away for free to a commercial entity. Instead I occasionally post pictures on my photography Facebook page, and it’s interesting to see how many hits these posts get. It often results in a little spike in visits to the page, which makes me wonder if I shouldn’t be doing more.

Police cordon off an area outside The Cornerhouse pub in Frome, Somerset, after a fight.

It’s not art, but local incidents get little coverage in the papers

Naturally it always comes back to questions of whether I can afford to peel off from whatever task I’m on to go and take pictures of an incident just to share them on my Facebook page, as well as the question of whether, as an individual without the remit of a picture editor, I can really justify approaching police and fire officers to get the necessary details for the caption and gain the access required to get pictures which fully tell the story.

At least when I was a card-carrying press man I had something which said “within the constraints of the law and my professional codes of conduct, I have a right to be here taking photos.” I find it harder to do now that I’m just another bloke with a camera.

With the local publications increasingly ignoring the difficult-to-get or the stories breaking out of hours, I suspect I’ll find myself taking more pictures of the things which happen around my town. I’ll rely on experience and training to know what I can cover and how far I can push my access, because lord knows I have no interest in getting arrested or punched, but if you want to see how I get on and keep up with what I do, you can always Like my Facebook page or keep an eye on this blog.

If you’re like-minded and local, why not get in touch? It might come to nothing, but you never know, we might be the start of a new publishing empire!

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 by Tim Gander

The Five Day Black and White Challenge

I managed to miss being nominated for the ice bucket challenge when that was doing the rounds and it’s likely I would have refused to take part had anyone nominated me. It’s not that I don’t support charities (I make monthly donations to two and drop coins into the odd tin in between), I just don’t like being made to feel I have to give just because someone tells me to.

So, with that little pre-amble out of the way, when my photographer friend Graham Trott nominated me to take part in the Five Day Black & White Challenge on Facebook, since it isn’t tied to any kind of cause, I decided to take part because I didn’t feel I’d be letting anyone down if I didn’t. Which barely makes sense other than in a weird reverse psychology kind of a way.

Siegfried Sassoon's grave in St Andrews Church in Mells, Somerset.

Siegfried Sassoon’s grave in St Andrews Church in Mells, Somerset.

I’m only on Day 2 as I write this, and I’m just going to post today’s photo here. If you’d like to see the rest as and when they appear, please visit my Photography Facebook Page. If you click the Like button there you’ll see all future updates on that page, which I’m sure you’ll love.

Most of the photos I post during the challenge will be from my archive, but I wanted to take a photo today in connection with Armistice Day and post it on the challenge page. This was taken after I’d observed the two minute’s silence at Mells War Memorial. It shows the grave stone of Siegfried Sassoon, famous for his war poetry and prose writing and also for his mentoring of Wilfred Owen, who sadly didn’t survive the war.

I’ve been to Mells on Armistice Day a couple of times now, when work permitted, and it’s always a touching event because it’s very peaceful. School children are brought to the village memorial to observe the two minute’s silence and learn a little more about the “Great War,” but it’s perhaps a little sad that so few villagers make it down; modern life tends to get in the way for most people who end up observing the silence at their desks.

Sassoon survived the war, but he was decorated for bravery and it’s good to see someone still marks his involvement and contribution to the literature of the conflict. If you’re ever in Mells, see if you can find the grave. The church is worth a visit anyway, as is the village cafe.

 

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 by Tim Gander

The Camera Does Matter (it just depends…)

There are many photographic clichés and my least favourites one goes “the best camera is the one you have with you.”

You’ll see it on so many camera forums trotted out by those who like to make themselves look “expert” in some way. Now, while clearly you can’t take a photo without a camera, I have to challenge the thinking behind this particular cliché which is that you can take a prize-winning photo on a pinhole camera and you can take a dreadful snapshot on the most expensive camera money can buy.

While it’s true there are many ghastly photos taken every day on cameras costing many thousands of Pounds, it’s incredibly unlikely you’ll get a prize-winning photo on a pinhole camera or cameraphone.

blurred, colourful photo of fairground waltzers ride

When I take personal photos like this the camera is less important

I’m sure someone somewhere has taken a photo with a cheap camera or on a smartphone which they’ve managed to sell to a newspaper or won a prize with somewhere, but this is to ignore the fact that the world is vast and the “infinite monkey” theory will disprove any sweeping statement. Except it doesn’t disprove anything, because I’m talking about likelihood. I’m also talking about context in which a photo is taken and the context in which it is to be published.

Of course if you get a nice colourful snap on your phone it’ll look lovely on the internet, which will prove you didn’t need a big fancy camera to take that photo. Try to sell that photo to a stock library and it’ll get rejected on the grounds that it won’t come up to client requirements for image size and quality.

Take a photo of Lord Lucan riding Shergar through the lost city of Atlantis, and no newspaper or magazine will give a stuff about the quality, they’ll be tearing your arm off at the elbow to get hold of the image. They might even offer some money to publish that snap. It wouldn’t even need to be particularly sharp.

Now if I turned up at a client’s job with nothing more than my iPhone I think the client would be rightly upset. Replying “but this is the camera I have with me, therefore it is the best camera” would go down like a lead balloon.

And so I’ve re-written this cliché. It goes “the best camera is the one you have with because it’s the best camera you own and because you’re being paid to use it.” There, that’s fixed now so I can go after my new least favourite cliché. Just as soon as I’ve worked out what it is.

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 by Tim Gander

What Kind of Photographer Am I? (or not)

Scene of a section of Cley Hill, Wiltshire, at dusk with blue sky and the sun just touching the edge of the hill.

Cley Hill is a favourite area for me to walk. I find detail shots work better than trying to capture the whole thing, which always ends up looking like a small pimple in the landscape.

It’s quite possible I’ve mentioned here and there that while my main photographic work concentrates on taking pictures for businesses and publications, I don’t try to fill diary gaps with weddings. I repeat I DON’T DO WEDDINGS.

I believe in concentrating on what I do best, marketing my strengths and leaving my weaknesses to those who can fulfil those tasks better than I.

But weddings aren’t the only discipline I don’t cover. I haven’t shot sport in several years. I used to do a fair bit of football for the Mail on Sunday when I lived in Portsmouth. I can’t say I enjoyed it especially, not helped by my general disdain for football, and I’d certainly never claim I got to be anything as good as any of the top sports photographers in the land, but I turned in good quality results on deadline and even got the occasional exclusive. I covered Wimbledon a couple of times, but really I think it’s best these things are left to people who have the experience and the passion to turn in stunning results time after time. Otherwise, I’m just another person with a camera clogging up the photographers’ pit.

If there is one area I wish I was better at, and which I really need to give myself a kick up the arse to do more of, it has to be nature and landscapes. Not because I expect these to be an important part of my business in the sense of making a living from them, but because on the odd occasion I get to take such images, I enjoy the challenge and sometimes the results.

One thing which is true of all good (or great) photography is that it’s not the camera or any of the other fancy equipment, but the eye, experience, foresight, passion and determination of the wetware behind the eyepiece (the photographer) which makes it great.

Now I’m setting myself a goal; I may never be a ground-breaking landscape photographer, but I’m going to try harder to get out there, shoot landscapes and find a style and an angle which pleases me, which might also inform my corporate work and which might actually please others too. You never know, it might become a respected body of work, but I appreciate that might have to happen posthumously.

I wonder if anyone fancies forward-dating a cheque for the first million-pound image I sell after I die?

 

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 by Tim Gander

Entering The Press Photography Dark Ages

Bizarrely, having written in my last blog post about the Pine Range fire which I covered for The Bath Chronicle in 1991, I was heading back to my flat from a family gathering on Sunday evening to discover the sheltered housing complex on the opposite side of my building from where Pine Range once stood was surrounded by fire crews, engines and hoses. A fire had broken out in one of the flats and 11 residents had to be evacuated, with one resident being taken to hospital suffering smoke inhalation.

Aside from the obvious concern that everyone had been evacuated safely I couldn’t help feeling I should take a few photos, in spite of the fact I had a fair number of other commitments that evening, limited time and no obvious client for any photos I would take.

But the news photographer blood which still courses through me was buzzing and telling me to get on with it and at least take a few frames to offer up to the local paper. More in hope than expectation; time was a paper would have torn my arm off at the elbow for a set of pictures from an event they couldn’t get to and would happily have paid for them. Times have changed so very much though.

Fire crews attend a fire at Gorehedge residential home for the elderly in Keyford, Frome.

A general view gives some idea of the scale of the operation

I don’t often find myself covering this kind of story any more. Most of what I do for publications is press release work, which of course doesn’t include things like un-planned fires. I had to pause and ask myself if it was still valid for me to take pictures at an incident if I don’t have an immediate client for the shots. I don’t even carry a National Union of Journalists card any more, having let my membership lapse some years ago.

I honestly don’t think any of that matters though. Whether or not a newspaper wants to use my photos is entirely their call. As a trained, experienced news photographer I still feel I have a duty to record events if I am able. I can’t know at the time of taking a photo whether I will have captured something banal, tragic or incredibly newsworthy. All I can do is call on all my training and experience and get on with taking pictures.

Now that local newspapers no longer cover local stories and events with anything approaching enthusiasm perhaps it’s more important than ever that photographers with the right training and skills create quality visual records of what they witness.

Firefighters work through the building to ensure there are no pockets of fire left

Firefighters work through the building to ensure there are no pockets of fire left

Looking at the paltry photographic coverage the Bath Chronicle gave the Tour of Britain last week, and The Frome Standard’s belated attempt at photographing a major news event on their own doorstep (their photos were taken over three hours after the event), it’s possible that historians of the future will look back on the stories of our time and wonder why the photos from the early 2000s are worse than the ones taken a century before on far more primitive equipment.

Crews start to wind-down as the incident de-escalates

Crews start to wind-down as the incident de-escalates

 

 

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 by Tim Gander

Holiday Schnapps

Even though I’m on holiday with my son Joe this week, I thought I’d drop you all a line and share some photographic impressions of my time in the Tyrol, Austria. I’ve banged on before about how I enjoy taking photos for myself and how even though photography is my job, I enjoy the freedom of taking photos just to please myself.

The funny thing is though, when I’m in such a pretty part of the world as this, I’m not so keen on the “chocolate box” images which can be so hard to avoid. I want to take photos you wouldn’t find on Google Images – during a trip to Paris earlier this year, it struck me how many people walk up to The Eiffel Tower, take some snaps, then walk away. Shooting as if all they wanted was a frame or two to prove they were there, when they could always see much better photos on the internet any time they wanted.

Of course I have taken some of the bog-standard kitsch photos, which will have been taken by countless others and many probably better than my efforts, but I salve my conscience by not spending too much time on those, but looking for the unusual too. Images which while not literal, will also remind me of moments in my holiday without entirely overwriting my inner memories of it. I’m sure some people spend so much time peering at a camera screen and have so many stills and videos of their excursions, they must struggle to remember anything fun about where they went and what they did. My photos are meant to be those impressions which sit at the edge of the experience. I’m not photographing the main experience, but the little moments around it, leaving me to relax and enjoy the bulk of my trip without a camera glued to my face.

And so here, half-way through my trip, are a few of those peripheral moments. Don’t worry, I promise not to post every last photo I take. Some might pop up in future blogs and others will remain private. A couple have already surfaced on my personal Facebook page, but I wanted these to illustrate this weeks point. I hope you enjoy them.

Looking up at a passenger jet against a blue sky with a building roof coming into the bottom of the frame with gable windows at left and right extremes of the photos
Innsbruck and its airport are nestled in a deep valley, meaning flights pass very low over the city.
Innsbruck Nordkettenbahn station at the Congress area of Innsbruck.
The Innsbruck Congress Nordkettenbahn station is a splash of modern architecture against its natural backdrop.
View from the Nordkettespitze looking over Innsbruck
Faced with this view, you'd have to be pretty hard-hearted not to take at least one frame
A cyclist is silhouetted in one of Innsbruck's historic alley ways (Gasse)
Evening light in Innsbruck's Gasse, or alleys, offer more impressionistic opportunities
An alleyway in Hall, Tyrol, at dusk
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 by Tim Gander

fotograf in Deutschland

This week’s post will be a little self-indulgent as I’m going to share some photos taken during my weekend trip to Hamburg, Germany. To make up for this self-indulgence I’m going to keep the words brief and let you skip through the photos and get a taste of my experience there. Besides which, I’m still a little jaded from the journey.

My only observation is this; even when I’m having a break, I still can’t help looking out for photos that don’t exactly fit the “holiday snap” genre. I always feel some responsibility to take photos which aren’t just for myself. Enjoy the weird mix!

Fluffy wheat fields
The Beatles played here, 1960
Beatles-Platz, Hamburg
Pretty warehouses, Hamburg
Hamburg Airport

 

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