by Tim Gander

On My Hobby Horse

When a professional musician isn’t gigging or recording, they’ll be practicing; running up and down the scales, trying new techniques, working on pieces they may have to (or would like to) perform some time. When they do this, we don’t consider them to be indulging in a hobby, it’s just part of being a professional.

Professional photographers also need to practice between gigs. Of course we can’t sit in a room or studio and just run up and down the shutter speeds on the camera for an hour or two. We have to find pictures to take, pictures which stretch our abilities and keep our brains photographically sharp. That’s where the personal project comes in, at least for me.

I’m not very good at just going out with a camera and taking random photos. In particular I’m not very good at photographing pretty scenes just for the pleasure of it. I have to find a theme and work to that, but sometimes when I’m doing this I’m told “It’s nice you still have photography as a hobby.”

View of a drilling rig reflected in the water used to keep the drilling pipes lubricated.
From the personal essay Saxonvale: From The Waste Up

Ok, I’m not massively irked by this kind of reaction. It’s understandable when photography is such a hugely popular hobby. I’m even aware of people who think that being a professional photographer is simply a case of translating one’s hobby into paid work. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy meeting people and taking pictures for businesses, but I’m not sure I’d spend a day taking head shots against a white backdrop just for the giggles.

However, this mode of thinking ignores the possibility that a personal project has the potential to turn into something with a value beyond just being practice between gigs. Currently I have a number of projects on the go which pay nothing up-front, but about which I’m hugely excited and I hope will excite other people too, once they come to fruition.

The problem could be in the term “personal work” or “personal project” which implies I’m only taking the pictures for my personal photo album, but it’s the term most widely recognised by photographers and publishers to mean a project which is exploring an idea without having a defined end point or deadline, or a pre-determined place for publication.

For now at least we have to stick with the term, so perhaps I should just get off my hobby horse and await the day when the terms are more widely understood and photography between gigs is recognised as having a value.

It’s fair to say that over the last year or two, my actual hobbies (cycling, playing guitar) have been rather squeezed out of my life by my personal photo essay work. It’s up to me to re-adjust that balance, but photography is definitely not my hobby.

in Industry Comment / My News / Personal Work 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Analogue Dialogue

Yes, I’m back to talking about film. Except this time I’m talking about me talking about film, so it’s all getting a bit meta as people like to say these days.

Getting to the point, after I had an article posted on Petapixel back in January this year, I got an email from Bill Manning at Studio C-41 asking if I’d like to do an interview with him for their podcast. The opportunity for me to talk about myself? Well of course I didn’t say no!

A brown dog holds a large stick in its mouth at the Saxonvale site in Frome, Somerset, UK
From my Saxonvale project which is shot on expired film.

Studio C-41, based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, is a fun and informative regular podcast (available on iTunes and through the C-41 website) which discusses news, developments, ideas and artists mainly, though not exclusively, involved in analogue film photography. It’s worth having a listen if you want to know what’s going on, and more especially if you want to hear hep cats like myself spouting forth on the subject.

Well rather than me writing a load of words about me talking a load of words, head over to the podcast and hear my pearls of wisdom for yourself. It is 39 minutes long, so you might want to arm yourself with a cup of tea and a packet of digestive biscuits. Here’s the link for you.

 

in Industry Comment / My News / Personal Work 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

A Helpful Guide

A screen shot of Tim Gander's corporate photography fees guide.
A screen shot of my current rates guide

How many public relations and corporate communications photographers do you know who publish their rates online? I bet you often have to dig around on their websites, discover there is no fees information there, then have to email them and wait for a reply before you can even start to get a feel for their rates. And since you’re going to get a few estimates in, this process can really slow you down.

Several years ago I made the decision to simplify life for my clients and myself.

My fees guide is based on the fees I tend to charge for the services I tend to be asked to undertake. Before this I was often spending time putting estimates together only to discover that around 90% of the time they were the same as I’d quoted another client for a near-identical job. So why not save myself the trouble and save my clients’ time and just publish what I pretty much know I’ll charge for any given time frame for the work I typically do?

Of course not every client needs exactly the same thing, but the fees I set are a guide and as such are adaptable to most scenarios. It’s often not much more than a tweak here or there to get to a final fee. What this also means is that by having guide fees published online my clients are happier knowing that I’ve based my final fees on a foundation which they’ve already seen.

This instils confidence that I’m not just plucking figures out of the air depending on what I think I can shake out of a client’s purse. Also, the client who doesn’t want to budget for the quality and service I offer can save themselves the time of contacting me when really they want someone who’ll do a much cheaper job (it’s true! such clients exist!)

So next time you’re scouting for a photographer to undertake some PR or corporate work for you, if you’re lucky enough to need someone in the Bristol/Bath/ area, at least you know of one photographer who’s open and up-front about their rates. I’ll be happy to hear from you!

in Advice / Industry Comment 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Allied Gs

 

A screen grab from a google search for 'business portraits by Tim Gander' which shows thumbnails of various business portraits.
Copyright protection for my work is as important for my clients as it is for me.

It may or may not be news to you that Google have come to an agreement with Getty Images which allows the search engine giant to use images from the Getty library across its products and services.

It may not even interest you to know this, but it would seem that behind the hand shake there are other movements which will have consequences for both image creators and users, and I’m cautiously optimistic that the changes will be positive.

Getty had issued a legal claim, an antitrust lawsuit, against Google because of the way the search engine returned high-resolution images in search results which allowed users to download Getty images without having to visit the Getty site. The same deal happens for individual photographers whenever someone searches for images. The result is, fewer visits to a site and greater ease for an unscrupulous organisation or individual to download and re-use images without payment, permission or acknowledgement for the photographer.

A couple of things seem to be happening here, though the full details are not especially clear, but on one level it would seem that Google have committed to making it harder for people to unknowingly or unwittingly download and publish images which are copyright-protected and at the same time put searchers back in touch with the creators of the material they find.

At the same time, the Google/Getty deal means Getty will be paid for Google to use images held by them (Getty) in their (Google) products and services. It strikes me that this licensing deal could amount to Google simply paying Getty a sweetener in return for being allowed to show Getty images in search results; a sort of retainer, if you will.

I very much hope that this move by Google means they’ll be working towards a more creative-friendly business model, one which is more sympathetic towards photographers and more understanding of how the way Google’s systems work has a direct impact on creators.

It’s unusual for me to write about Google and Getty in such positive terms, but credit (and bylines) where credit’s due, this does seem like a great opportunity for Getty to do something positive for the wider professional photographer community and for Google to reciprocate in a very constructive way.

For my part, this isn’t simply about protecting my own copyright, but also about protecting my clients’ images against unscrupulous exploitation, something which hasn’t always been easy to do. Let’s hope that task just got easier.

in Industry Comment 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Post Apocalyptic?

A toy car (a 2CV I think) lies rotting in garden soil.
No people, no explanation

Yesterday I was nominated by my friend and office colleague David to take part in a Facebook seven-day black and white photo posting challenge. A personal photo each day, no people, no caption or explanation and I’m meant to nominate someone else each day.

Now much as I love David, he knows I’m not a massive fan of this kind of thing, but he’s a big fan of my photography so couldn’t resist just to see how I’d handle it. He also likes to watch me squirm, so that’s two excellent reasons for him to nominate me.

You might wonder why I’m not a big fan of this kind of thing then. Well, since you’ve made the mistake of asking, I’ll tell you.

I’ve been on Facebook for, oh I dunno, many years. Twitter and Instagram too. Over the years I’ve posted pictures I’m very proud of and some junk I probably should have left on my hard drive or in my head. Of late I’ve been working to get my feeds looking more consistent in quality, more coherent in style and less scattered with random junk. This kind of posting challenge may not help.

Therefore I’ll have to be careful that what I post adheres to qualities I can be proud of. Tough to do every single day. But that isn’t the only reason – When I post pictures online I’m aware there is a trade-off happening; I’m exposing my work to a wider audience, getting more eyeballs on my pictures and helping my search engine optimisation, while the social media platforms are benefitting from a constant supply of free content and data they can mine, monetise and aggregate for future, as yet un-defined purposes.

Perhaps I’m being too conspiracy-theorist about this, but here’s a final point to consider; I’m meant to nominate one person every day of the challenge. That’s seven people over seven days (and even I remember from my school times tables terrors, that comes to 49). Each of those 49 people is meant to nominate 7 people, so that’s 343. 343 x 49 = 16,807. You get the idea, if nobody drops the chain we’re quickly into millions of people posting more millions of photos (I tried to work it out, my brain melted).

So mana for Facebook as it keeps people going back to their pages, interacting and laying rich soil for the advertisers who pay Facebook to display their wares in our feeds. We’re all working to feed it like we’re being paid, feeling guilty if we don’t, and so it goes on.

Thankfully we’re not all robot slaves. I was the only person David nominated during his 7 days. My wife got nominated, made it to day 4 and then forgot to continue. There is hope for the human race when we don’t follow the peer pressure and the made-up rules.

So my plan is to post a photo each day, only nominate if I can think of someone who would like to be nominated and I’ll state here that I won’t be accepting future nominations for this kind of thing. If it’s a nomination to be King of the World, I might accept that, but not another photo challenge please.

in Industry Comment / Personal Work 0 comments
 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.

in Industry Comment / My News / Reviews 0 comments
 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.

 

in Archive / Case Studies / Industry Comment / Older Work 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Keeping Photography Real

Recurrent controversies over the doctoring of photojournalistic images might seem of distant interest to businesses and organisations which only use commercial images, but there is an important crossover area wherein danger lies for every business.

Most businesses using photographs in their corporate communications are in the main either buying stock photos or commissioning them from a photographer like myself. As these pictures are being used to illustrate or promote a commercial venture in some sales capacity (website, brochure, catalogue etc), they don’t have to conform to the standards of photojournalism. Assuming they observe normal laws, their purpose is to illustrate a concept, or the values of the organisation, not some higher truth.

But occasionally businesses will engage a photographer to take press and PR pictures. These of course are destined for use in newspapers, magazines, trade journals perhaps and almost certainly online in social media and so on. The medium really doesn’t matter; such pictures are taken as a matter of record and should be treated as seriously as if they were showing history unfolding.

It doesn’t matter if the photos show a cheque being presented, a ribbon being cut or a visit by an MP or Royalty, the intention of these photos is to illustrate something which has happened in the life of the organisation and should be treated as historical records.

Where a photo is set up, such as for a presentation of an award, a prize, the launch of a new venture or whatever, it’s generally obvious from the way the participants are posed and often looking to camera that the scenario has been choreographed by the photographer, and this is fine because the viewer will understand they’re seeing a staged photo. However, this staging isn’t a licence for elements or people in the picture to be doctored in, out, moved or changed in any way. What happens in front of the camera should be shown in the final result.

Photo purports to show Kim Jong Un standing by a ship's rail at sea pointing to a missile launching from the water. A fake photo.

Some manipulation just draws ridicule, as this North Korean press shot did.

It’s not uncommon for a client to suggest that I can Photoshop something in or out when I’ve taken a photo for press release and often they look at me quizzically when I explain that I cannot do this for ethical reasons. No photographer can because it breaches the editorial code of ethics, and if caught could seriously harm the reputation of the photographer and their hopes of finding future work.

It also does the client no favours when the “internet” gets hold of a story of doctoring or manipulation. The business name may be spread far and wide, but it will be couched in negative terms and with a (possibly) permanent and negative connotation.

And so as tempting as it may be to say “it’s just a group photo,” or “only for the web,” don’t be tempted into breaking ethics for the sake of a “better” image. It could ruin your image.

in Industry Comment / Uncategorized 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Don’t Condemn the Photographer

I’d hoped to be writing about something else this week, but events…

Yesterday’s news will be written up as the worst terrorist attack to befall London since the July 7th bombings of 2005 and understandably it’s an event which is saturating our news channels and of course our social media feeds too. I learned of the attack on Twitter.

Twitter is also where Reuters published the incredible and upsetting photos taken by their photographer Toby Melville who just happened to be under Westminster bridge when the attacker ran his car into pedestrians before attacking and killing PC Keith Palmer.

I’m not going to re-publish the pictures here not because I believe they should be censored, but because I just don’t have the right to use them You can see some of them and read Toby’s account of what he witnessed here, though be warned they are stark.

What struck me as I started to see reaction to Toby’s photos on Twitter was how quickly people rushed to judge him for taking the photos, many believing he should have done more to help the victims. Well it’s easy to judge from the safety of a Twitter account, the comfort of a chair and without the chaos of a breaking news story physically surrounding you. As far as I can see, Toby did what he is professionally trained to do and once he’d called in the emergency services (as many others would have simultaneously done) he got to doing what he (professionally speaking) does best.

While others were already attending the victims and paramedics were starting to arrive, Toby recorded, as any professional newsgatherer should, what he witnessed. That he kept calm enough to compose and take photos that far surpassed any fuzzy phone photos taken by the public is testament to the difference between a trained news gatherer and a member of the public armed with a phone. If anyone had the required legitimacy to use a camera at this terrible scene, it was Toby. And if nobody had taken any images at all, well that would be incredibly peculiar and a failure to record a historical, if tragic, event.

But gathering the images is just the first part. Having filed them the next step was up to Reuters staff to edit and disseminate the images and one in particular raised strong criticism on social media. It showed the bleeding face of a woman who was clearly badly injured while a fellow pedestrian attended her. I notice in their write-up of Toby’s account they’ve omitted that particular photo.

The Editors’ Codebook suggests this particular image, by which I mean the publishing of it rather than the taking of it, could be in breach of the code of practice, but I italicise that because the code doesn’t exclude the coverage of such scenes and it would require some thoughtful consideration (not hot-headed social media condemnation) to decide if it was in breach of the code.

Going back to Toby’s part in this, we have to decide as a society what we’re willing to censor and we have to be cautious of condemning the professional photographer for being witness on our behalf. It is not the job of the photographer to decide what is too unpleasant to be photographed, but it is the job of the editor to only publish what is publishable.

We must also avoid hypocrisy; we might not like seeing pictures of dead people from conflicts and tragedies in other countries, or even in other times, but I see nothing like the same level of criticism when they’re posted online as when similar photos are shot and published showing tragedies so much closer to home.

My advice to Toby’s critics would be that they should do more to understand the role of the professional photojournalist and to take pause before jumping in to condemn those who bear witness on behalf of us all. If an incident such as this happens when a properly trained photojournalist happens to be on the spot, we should be grateful that bad news is covered properly and neither outlawed or suppressed by a mis-guided belief that our sensibilities should trump the truth except when the victims are on another continent.

 

in Industry Comment 2 comments
 by Tim Gander

Marketing Smarter

While my lovely Pentax S1a is off for a rebuild, I’ll return my attention to things more corporate photography related.

With doom and gloom headlines about the state and future prospects of the UK economy all over our news channels it might be tempting to think it’s time to tighten belts and hunker down for the long haul.

Often the first casualty of financial difficulty is marketing, and perhaps more specifically photography, but if that’s your plan you might want to hold fire because done right, good marketing and good photography, even on a reduced annual budget, can keep your company name in the frame and help you survive the economic Winter.

Chief economist of the Bank of England Andy Haldane speaks at a CBI dinner in Bath in 2014.
Chief economist for the Bank of England Andy Haldane

This week’s message is simple: If you’re going to market less, you’d better market smarter. What does this mean in practice?

Of course I speak from the perspective of a photographer in this corporate world and what I occasionally see is businesses devoting a lot of resource to cutting corners. Not only is this a waste of their valuable time, it also leads to results which don’t hold the client in the best light, or images which have little real impact. It might look like the cheaper option, but at what cost to the business?

I know I’m not the cheapest photographer in my market, but then I wouldn’t want to be. Because quite apart from the quality I strive for in my photography, when a client approaches me I’m there for them from the word go until well after the project has been delivered.

The difference I offer starts with the helping hand and sounding board at the concept stage. Even corporate portraits or the “humble” press release require a level of creative input and the right photographer will be able to guide the project from the earliest stages, ensuring the end-result has maximum impact.

The other aspect you’ll want to consider when hiring a photographer on the sole parameter of cost is, will they help, guide and assist during and after the photo session?

All this help and input, from concept stage to post-delivery assistance, requires time, knowledge and experience, all of which have a value which should be factored into the cost of hiring. Of course this means a cost above and beyond simply that of producing photographs, but since you’re spending the money anyway (and almost certainly taking up your and your colleagues’ time doing so) you may as well get the best results possible.

And when the job is over, the photos delivered, is your photographer still there to help if you need it? I’m not just talking about up to the point they’ve sent the invoice. I’m often helping clients with follow-up assistance months, even years after the job was shot, delivered and paid for.

So, who’s the smart marketer now?

 

in Industry Comment / Uncategorized 0 comments