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

The Film Thing

It’s official, I have got the film bug quite seriously. I’ve always loved film and I find I’m more drawn to shooting personal projects on film than on digital. In fact with digital I found it hard to get started on personal projects because the process always ended up feeling very much like all my other work. For personal work I needed some kind of demarcation from my corporate communications photography, and I’ve realised film gives me that distinction.

It also makes a difference to those I’m photographing. People seem to engage more with the idea that I’m producing an image of them using a tradition they thought had died. On a subconscious level I wonder if they feel more comfortable knowing they’re not being instantly “digitised”, albeit at some point I have to scan the images in order to be able to print or display them.

Shooting film the way I do with the subjects I tend to be drawn to is often a slower process than digital and I’ve realised people now expect photography to happen much more quickly than perhaps it used to. With film I will take a more considered approach. I’ve never been one to shoot thousands of pictures in the hope of getting one good one, but with film I find I’m taking this further and taking more time to consider the picture I’m taking. Accordingly I find I have to manage my subjects’ expectations and explain things won’t happen as quickly as they may be used to. That seems to relax them too.

A pile of assorted out of date photographic film

Out of date film is on my list of projects

The benefit I’m getting from shooting film is that I’m going back to basics again, re-remembering my core strengths, abilities and values as a photographer and this is feeding back into my corporate communications work. I’m also having more fun sharing the results on Instagram where you can see my feed has become more focussed on my film work.

I have new projects in planning, including a whole series to be shot on out-of-date film which presents a whole new set of challenges.

If you’d like to follow my foray back into film, check out my Instagram account, I’ll be delighted to see you there and even more so if you decide to click the Follow button.

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 by Tim Gander

This Hamster Needs Feeding

Perhaps one of the toughest aspects of making a profession out of photography is that of maintaining inspiration. I love what I do, and I love working with businesses to create the images they need for their projects. Sometimes it can seem a little formulaic and routine, such as when I’m shooting 30 executive headshots in a board room, but even then I enjoy meeting all the different people, having a chat and laugh with them, relaxing them into their photo session while simultaneously ensuring the results are top notch. I never tire of this.

Other times I get to work on projects with which I can get more creative – just look back through my recent posts and case studies to get a flavour of the kinds of jobs I’m talking about, but inspiration for everything I do has to come from somewhere and I’ve become increasingly aware that over the last few years I’ve been neglecting to feed my creative soul.

Back when I worked on newspapers I would take inspiration from colleagues and competitors. I would see their work every day, and it would spur me on. Now that I tend to work in isolation, this source is a little dry.

My personal projects help feed into, inform and inspire me for my paid assignments, but even these require some kind of external input or I’ll find myself running like a hamster in a wheel, feet going like crazy, but not actually getting anywhere new in a creative sense.

I’ve started to address this issue. I’ve realised that while I do spend time looking at images online, following favoured Instagram accounts and the twitter feeds of some really incredible photographers, I also need to see printed photography, which forces you to sit and consider rather than just flicking to the next image as one tends to do online. Plus it’s an edited source, rather than the constant rush of throwaway pics in which the good stuff tends to get buried.

Front cover of Huck magazine, taken on an angle against a multi-coloured striped rug.
huck magazine special edition
Cover of #1 of UNION magazine.
UNION #1 out now

So when I saw that Huck magazine (whose twitter feed I follow and enjoy) were bringing out a special edition, I bought it. Packed with inspirational people in all kinds of fields, all photographed differently by a wide variety of photographers, as much as anything it was the pleasure of seeing photographs in print again (and sniffing the printed page… you know what I mean) which has helped wake my creative soul again.

Likewise when I saw that an old photographer friend of mine, James Cheadle, was working on a new magazine, I had to get my hands on a copy.

Like Huck, James’ magazine, Union, is a stylish, high-quality publication beautifully printed (mmmm smell the print!). Where the Huck Special Edition profiles different creative people and entrepreneurs, Union consists of fascinating photojournalistic articles about gangs, drugs, tribes, religions, bikers… the list goes on. It’s a hell of an undertaking and I really hope it thrives because there seem to be so few outlets for this style of photojournalism in mainstream newspapers and magazines.

So now to the next step. I have to take the inspiration I get from the likes of Huck and Union and start applying it to my own work again and stop being the hamster in the wheel. I’m taking the time to get off the wheel, and fill my cheeks with yummy inspiration.

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