by Tim Gander

Fool On The Hill

In July this year I undertook a review of a tripod and part of the exercise required me to take photos of myself using it. I decided the best location for this would be Cley Hill near Frome (very close to Longleat) which would allow me to get dramatic skies in the background.

As anyone local knows, Cley Hill isn’t a huge mountain; it’s not even a huge hill, but it’s big enough and a very steep climb. Which is fine on an ordinary walk, but to get photos of myself using the tripod I had to take two cameras and an extra tripod so I could have a camera on the test tripod and one mounted and aimed at myself to get the self-portraits.

The plan was then to trigger the remote camera using my radio triggers. Which I forgot to take with me. This meant resorting to the self-timer function of the camera, which only gave me 10 seconds to get from the “taking” camera to the one on the test tripod. That’s not easy when you’re trying to line up a shot at the top of a very steep hill, the wind is blowing, and cows are starting to take a close interest in what you’re doing.

I wanted to use evening light to get the best drama from the sky, but what with having to get to the top of the hill and set up, time was ticking by and things weren’t helped by the fact that I had to keep changing my location due to one factor or another.

Once I’d finally found the spot that would work best I was able to get cracking, but 10 seconds isn’t that long when you have to dash up a last steep section to get to the location before the shutter clicked and as you can see from the photos below, I slightly mis-judged the timer…

Cley Hill cows on a path

Originally I’d wanted to use this hill crest, but the curious cows wouldn’t shift

View of Tim Gander's back as he fails to get into position before the camera fires

I didn’t quite get myself in place in time for this one

Photographer Tim Gander sits with his camera on a tripod on the side of a hill

Just made it, but if I look like I’m panting for breath, that’s because I am

Back view of Time Gander scrabbling into position for a photo on Cley Hill

The light worked better on this set up, but I missed the timer again!

silhouette of photographer Tim Gander atop Cley Hill in Somerset with his camera on a tripod.

Finally! I look like a heroic, adventurous travel photographer. Truth is, I can almost see my house from here

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 by Tim Gander

Storming Good Coverage

Newspapers love a good “bad weather” story, and the St Jude storm this week was a gift to editors who could fill their print and web pages with a broad mix of images from agencies, readers and possibly one or two “courtesy of the internet” accidentally-stolen shots too.

Thankfully, rumours that Sir Paul McCartney is to re-write Hey Jude and perform it live on the roof of Buckingham Palace to raise money for those who lost patio chairs in the storm have proved to be unfounded.

Unfortunately for you, the storm does give me the opportunity to regurgitate some crusty old newspaper cuttings from my early career when I was part of The Bath Chronicle’s Storm Watch team in 1990. Indeed, everyone talks about the 1987 storm, but the 1990 storm also brought down trees and caused umbrellas to be inverted. Looking at these old pics, I realise I wasn’t exactly lead photographer being sent to cover the full devastation, but it’s still fun seeing some odd little scraps of time again. Enjoy!

Shoppers in Bath city centre battle with wind and rain
Hold onto your hats, the storm's a-coming!
Geoffrey Hughes and Roy Hudd in Babes in the Wood, Theatre Royal, Bath
Geoffrey Hughes and Roy Hudd starring in Babes in the Wood bolster the stage door against the storm. The show was suspended during the storm, presumably due to the risk of falling trees. Or babes
Workmen deal with fallen trees after the storm
Workmen deal with fallen trees after the storm
A tree is uprooted at The Royal Crescent, Bath.
A tree is uprooted at The Royal Crescent in Bath
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 by Tim Gander

Image Security for Free

I’m kicking myself a little because I saw an interesting article a while ago about camera security, what measures can be taken to help prevent theft, some of the security options available to buy and all that kind of thing, but of course I neglected to bookmark the article and now it’s lost in the sea of pages trying to sell security kit or CCTV.

That said, I didn’t find the article all that useful for myself. Ultimately if a thief wants your kit they’ll have it off you. If you’re walking through an unfamiliar backstreet of Palermo and get mugged, having your camera attached to your neck with a non-cuttable strap isn’t going to prevent you from being forced to release the gear. It might deter the grab-and-run thief, but only if they know your strap can’t be cut.  Personally I’d fear having someone grab my camera and start to run off with me permanently attached to it. I’d rather let it go than end up being throttled by my own strap.

Other options for security might involve tags, either overt ones which attach to camera cases, or covert trackable stickers which attach to cameras. These might help in certain situations, though tags on bags are a bit pointless unless your kit stays with the bags once it’s stolen. I’m not sure how likely that is.

Besides the obvious holes in the logic of some of these solutions, I don’t spend much time walking around places where mugging is a high probability. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but the larger risk for me is theft from the boot of my car while I’m having lunch at a motorway service station, so my own security measures are targeted at preventing that.

Firstly, I keep all my kit locked out of sight in the boot with no clues in the rest of the car about what I might be carrying. This fulfils my responsibility under my camera insurance policy, though of course a theft would still leave me without essential kit until I could purchase replacements. But ultimately kit is replaceable. Perhaps the biggest problem for me if someone lifted my cameras from my car would be if I suffered the theft just after I’d just shot a job. The thief would unknowingly be lifting all the day’s work as well as the tools.

So my routine if I need a comfort break on the way back from a job is to ensure I’ve removed all memory cards before I set off and put them in a pocket. Ideally I do this before leaving the site of the job so that I’m not opening the boot of my car in a service area car park, risking some nefarious character a view of the contents. This way if I am burgled, I might suffer the trauma and inconvenience of lost equipment while my client doesn’t have to suffer the inconvenience of lost images too.

A stack of 3 Compact Flash cards, another one is in a card reader.

Keeping cards safe until I can transfer images is critical

I would say the most valuable asset any photographer has is the images he or she takes. Equipment can be replaced, if it isn’t rare (none of my gear is rare), but the photos normally can’t be. I take good precautions over my cameras and lenses while I’m out and about, but a simple security measure which costs nothing helps protect the images a client is paying for.

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 by Tim Gander

Flash of Inspiration

It’s not often you’ll see me writing about kit because the main intention of this blog is to give an inside peek at my work, air issues surrounding the photographic industry and waffle on a bit about things which interest me. One thing this blog isn’t obsessed with is kit because I’m not obsessed with it.

If I invest in equipment it has to be for a particular, business-related reason. I choose kit carefully and with a sensible head because there is so much lovely gear out there I could squander my cash on with no real benefit either to my clients or myself.

Once in a while though I review what I have, and kit does eventually wear out naturally so I need to see what might need replacing or updating. I have no problem with using old kit provided it works and isn’t letting me down on assignments. Sometimes investment is required for a particular project and that’s another time I look to see if buying the kit will have benefits beyond the single project, or whether I can rent the kit I need without committing to buy.

A few months ago I was commissioned to shoot a couple of hundred portraits at various locations, and while I have portable studio lighting it is quite heavy and unwieldy to transport. At the same time I knew my Canon flashes were coming to the end of their natural lives, being several years old and a few models older than the current ones. I took the plunge and decided it was time to invest in new flashguns and, due to changes in the technology, adjust the way I worked.

What I hadn’t appreciated is just how much the investment would help when dealing with often very awkward situations. Such as having to shoot business portraits in a tiny hotel lounge, crowded with furniture and with limited scope for backdrops. Or helping me create more interesting light when covering a business studies workshop event where I was moving about a lot, in poor ambient light and didn’t want to use direct flash.

One reacent situation in which the new flash kit impressed a great deal was where I was in a very dark lecture theatre at a business seminar with not a lot of space to set up any kind of lighting and had to shoot both the lectern speakers and the audience. I had a single flash on a stand at the back of the auditorium to light the speakers, but it was also enough to bounce light off the projector screen and illuminate the audience (albeit with higher ISO). Taking photos of the audience at a talk where the house lights are turned right down generally results in images which are either grainy, weird colour balance or are downright unusable. I’ve included one here so you can see what my new setup got, and this is just one of several images I was pleased with.

 

Business people laughing in a lecture theatre setting

The flash is behind the audience, but the projector screen made a great reflector to light the faces.

business students working on a project

Catching unposed images can be difficult, and straight-on flash kills the atmosphere. I liked the “random light” look of this with the flash off to the side.

Portrait of a business man.

Adding softboxes to a flashgun setup allows me to work in much tighter spaces than before.

 

 

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 by Tim Gander

What no post?

Indeed, I must apologise to my regular readers that I was unable to post last week and already it’s Wednesday of this week and again I’ve not posted anything . Until now.

The reason for this interruption in service has been the sheer volume of work I’ve had on. This is indeed to be welcomed, but has left my fans somewhat neglected. Some possibly bewildered and upset. I suppose Justin Bieber fans must experience similar disappointment when the wunderkind of muzak stops tweeting for longer than 30 seconds, but since this has never happened I guess we’ll never know.

Which brings me not very neatly to the subject of this week’s post, which is the fulfilment of a promise I made to give the Frome Wessex Camera Club National Salon of Photography 2013 a plug as well as the camera fair on November 3rd. I reported on the April fair this year and I’m sure the November event will be another good chance to grab a bargain, drool over old Leicas and people watch.

Last year's Frome National Salon of Photography brought in a great variety of entries

Last year’s Frome National Salon of Photography brought in a great variety of entries

I must confess I’m less up to speed with the photo salon, but looking at last year’s entries there are some impressive results there from sports action, to portraiture and wildlife. I’m not a fan of the more processed images, but have a look around the various categories and judge for yourself. Maybe you’d like to enter this year? Best get your skates on because the closing date is October 31st 2013.

On that closing note, I hope I shall be back and publishing on time next Tuesday. You have to admit the uncertainty is pretty gripping.

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 by Tim Gander

A Welcome Comparison

The inspiration for this week’s blog comes courtesy of my good twitter friend Lau Merritt (@lau_merritt) who happened to mention she thought I looked rather like the late Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. I note two things in Lau’s comparison. Firstly that it is my looks and not my style which is reminiscent of the father of Mexican photography, and secondly that having been born in 1902 most portraits of the artist himself are of a much older man. I’ll not take it personally because if I have such an incredible face by the time I’m into my 80s I’ll be happy and when it comes to my work, I know I move in more prosaic circles. Besides which I know Lau well enough to know she only means it in the kindest sense.

I’m grateful that she mentioned this chap because I hadn’t come across Álvarez Bravo’s work before, and I’ve not had time to research it much beyond his official website, but I highly recommend a look and I’ll be seeking out more of his work in due course because it really is fascinating.

Álvarez Bravo’s archive stretches from the 1920s to as recently as the 1990s and what strikes me is how broad his themes are and yet how little they change over time. His work encompasses landscapes, still-life, portraits, nudes, photojournalism, portraiture, from the political to the fanciful, but always with a style which might remind you of Cartier-Bresson or Werner Bischof, but which is definitely his own voice.

I’m not much cop at talking artsy fartsy stuff about photography, but I’ll happily share some impressions here. Álvarez Bravo’s work is of a very particular type; some simple studies of light and shape, the use of lines, shapes and motion to draw attention to whatever it is we’re meant to take note of in a photo and expansive landscapes designed to make us realise our own insignificance and mortality.

Pub skittle score board hangs on the wall above a chair, music speaker above that

“Take Courage” The closest I get to Álvares Bravo’s style

Like Bresson, Álvarez Bravo’s archive includes photos we would find difficult to take and distasteful in today’s society (see Boy Urinating, 1927 in the 1920’s archive). He deals a lot with death through depictions of the dead and the paraphernalia of death, even symbolic representations of death in the shape of subjects unrelated to death itself. His nudes rarely show the model’s face, also suggesting the the body as separate from the being and therefore subject to ageing and decay.

I’m really glad Lau brought my attention to Álvarez Bravo, and I’ll take any comparison as a compliment. In the meantime I’m going to have to get cracking if I want to leave such a powerful photographic legacy as his.

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 by Tim Gander

Missing My Baby

Slim, petite, cute and so nice to touch… but I miss my Fuji X20. She’s in New York as I write this, being shown the sights by another man and I’m jealous as hell.

In fact I miss her so much I was compelled to go back to the review I wrote in July for Wex Photographic just to have a look at photos of her pretty, sleek lines and see the pictures I’d taken with her back then. I’m glad I did because there was a new comment on the article I hadn’t seen before, and I do enjoy responding to the comments and helping where I can. That’s just the kind of guy I am.

It’s also interesting to see the different view statistics between the various articles I write; a camera review will get lots of views in a short time. Write a review about pretty much anything else and the numbers climb much more slowly.

Fuji X20 review photo

I enjoy using the X20 in black and white as a street camera

With the X20 in particular I have noticed that in addition to healthy numbers of clicks on the article, it’s probably had more comments than just about any other review I’ve written for Wex. People really engage with this camera, which is after all just a camera, but then people engage with cars, coffee machines, just about anything shiny really.

The difference with some of the things I’ve reviewed is that, unlike the X20, they are not usable in isolation. Let me explain that better; when I reviewed the Canon 16-35mm zoom lens, that’s a bit of a niche lens, very expensive, and requires a camera to make it do what it does. Design-wise it’s hard to make a lens beautiful because it has to perform certain functions well and within fairly standard design constraints.

When I reviewed the LowePro Transit Sling 250 camera bag, that was also destined not to get thousands of views because bags are a bit dull. They aren’t what takes the pictures, they’re not at the glamorous end of photographic kit, and like lenses they’re functional rather than aesthetic.

I think what the X20 has achieved though is something extra. Fuji have tapped into the retro trend in the design of this camera, but as I think I’ve said elsewhere it’s not retro for the sake of it. The design works as well as it is attractive. Design and function coming together in a dinky package that’s easy to engage with and love. I do miss her…

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 by Tim Gander

When you’ve nothing else to do

Occasionally I’m asked to work for a fee the client sets, a fee far below what it costs me to do the work and certainly far less than the benefit the client would get from the images I would make for them.

The client will try to justify this by arguing that the work is flexible and I can do it “when you’ve nothing else on” as if when I’m not shooting pictures I must be sitting around, twiddling my thumbs waiting for the phone to ring or desperately wishing I was working for less than it costs me to do the job.

Tim Gander sits before a strobe softbox looking into the lit panel

Spare time to take selfies? No, testing a new lightbox before a big assignment.

In practice, the work isn’t always that flexible either. It might be weather dependent, or rely on the availability of other people, or it might even be on a set date. This kind of “opportunity” also ignores the after-shoot processing and administration which is attendant to doing any assignment at all, regardless of the fee involved.

In any event, if a client requires photography, booking a date when I haven’t anything else on is kind of how my business works. There isn’t a single assignment I do that gets booked into a slot when I’m already working, being that I am not omnipresent or master of quantum physics and thereby able to occupy two dimensions at once.

If I happen to have assignments which will clash I let the client know and offer to take on the administration of the job but pass the work to one of a network of trusted colleagues. That way the client gets to deal with me, the job gets covered by a trusted photographer and everyone is happy.

Conversely to being double-booked, what happens on days when I’m not shooting? Surely that’s a day off isn’t it? No. Anyone who runs a proper, grown-up business will know the astounding amount of administration which is attendant with keeping things running smoothly, or in my case just keeping them running.

I’ve spent much of August doing my end-of-year accounts. When I’m not keeping on top of the books, I’m backing up work, archiving it to my searchable database, updating my website, improving my SEO, making contact with clients to keep in touch, setting up meetings, shooting test images to try out new techniques, writing blog articles… I’m just scratching the surface here, and all this happens around assignments which are booked by clients willing to pay my fees.

Every day of every week I’m putting in the hours. Sometimes I’ll scale back the time I work in order to remain sane; I might even take a day off, but this year I haven’t managed a proper holiday. I haven’t been away anywhere, because so far it’s been my busiest year since I left the Portsmouth News to go freelance 15 years ago. And after the struggles I experienced at the start of the credit crunch (one day I’m going to invent a biscuit with that name) I’m determined to make the most of the resurrection I’ve experienced over the last two years.

That has been and will continue to be a lot of hard work; work I’ll be doing when I’ve nothing else to do.

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 by Tim Gander

A few tips for Michael Middleton

Maybe this is my silly season, but I can’t help thinking there must be something more important for me to write about than the first official photographs of Prince George. If there is, it’ll have to wait because for some reason I can’t let these images pass without comment.

Of course I’m not alone. There has been quite a bit of justifiable criticism of the photos which were taken by Kate’s father.

I’m not a fan of the stagey Royal shots which are often presented to us, all glitz and kitsch,  and I can understand why the Royals are trying to be more “of the people”, but I can’t help feeling Michael Middleton isn’t familiar enough with his camera or photography in general to pull this off convincingly. It takes a reasonable amount of skill to make an un-staged photo still look like a good photo.

In a spirit of generosity, I’ll give Mr Middleton a few pointers for the next time he has to take a family group, or George’s sibling is born and official photos are required again (apart from finding a decent photographer, for which I’d charge only a reasonable fee and expenses).

kate and william official baby photo

  1. The sun being behind the group, the lawn and other landscape features in the background have become washed out. Not always a problem, but it doesn’t work in this context. Bleached-out skies aren’t attractive.
  2. Tied in with 1, the camera sensor can’t cope with the deep shadow in Kate and William’s faces. They too look washy and lack detail, this time by being too dark. The problem is probably made worse by using a cheap lens. It would take a fair bit of Photoshop fiddling to rescue the details. A better option would have been a reflector or flash. Nothing fancy, just a small flash would have helped balance up the contrast between faces and background and brought out more detail.
  3. An ugly splash of light on William’s head. Moving the couple into a shadier area, or turning them would have helped 1 and 2 and avoided ugly highlights like this one.
  4. I only know that’s a dog because I’ve read the caption. It looks like an abandoned rug and adds nothing to the photo.
  5. The baby, perhaps the most critical element of the photo, takes up less of the photo than 6, a dog. The main purpose of the photo is the baby, but he’s lost here in a sea of distractions.
  6. A black dog, unlit, with its tongue lolling out. Just another distraction.
  7. I could have put this number in so many places on the photo – there is so much wasted space. Take out the dogs, turn the camera vertical and focus in on parents and baby. A bit of garden in the background to give some context and location and the job’s a good un.

Well even if Michael Middleton ignores my advice, you’re welcome to use it next time you need to take an “official” photo of your family.

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 by Tim Gander

Did you miss me?

I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit quiet of late, the truth is the last few weeks have been unbelievably busy. For one project I’ve driven 1,300 miles, visiting Bristol, Reading, London, Ipswich, Manchester and Edinburgh with my mobile studio kit to shoot corporate portraits for a new client. Over 160 people photographed within a week and a half and more than 6,800 images shot. These then had to be edited down and processed before delivery to the client within a couple of days. An absolutely mammoth tusk task, on top of which I already had work booked in for other clients upon my return.

Granted this project had some gruelling aspects to it, for example getting stuck on the M25 coming back from Ipswich on a Friday afternoon, in sweltering heat and the air conditioning in my car being kaput. I should probably get that fixed (which will guarantee we don’t have another warm day this year). Or the long drive from Edinburgh to home – broken by a brief visit to my brother in Co Durham, but all the same a long old haul.

Thumbnail portraits displayed in Lightroom's working window

Dealing with several thousand images is no small task

On the other hand, highlights include meeting and photographing about 160 really friendly people. Staying two nights in London in an amazing room at a photographer’s studio with lovely hosts and having some lovely meals when I got time to stop long enough to eat something other than fast food, in particular Hector’s in Stockbridge, Edinburgh where the food and the service were just brilliant. These factors become even more important to the lone traveler.

For a while, at least until the next big project comes along, I should be able to return to something more like my regular routine of corporate communications work, press release photography and business portraits. And you’ll have to get used to me being around again. Thank you for your patience!

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