by Tim Gander

Clamour over Klamar Pics

Casting around for ideas for today’s article I turned to twitter and asked what people might be interested in reading about.

Twitterer @drinckx alerted me to this little internet storm surrounding AFP photographer Joe Klamar’s photos of the US Olympic team.

From what I can gather, and for reasons not entirely clear to me, it was decided there should be a three-day photo session during which all the US athletes would be photographed on a tight rota by a selection of photographers representing different agencies, all working in mini studio booths at a location in Dallas, each photographer photographing every athlete in turn. Take a look at Vernon Bryant’s blog on the Dallas News and you’ll get the picture.

Now I’m no expert on the reasons behind the set-up. I would have thought it more sensible to have one or two top-end photographers shoot a set of well-crafted images suitable for pool use (one agency required to share images with all the others). Perhaps it was a way to save money, but the set-up sounds like a nightmare to me, with each photographer having approximately 4 minutes with each Olympian. With over 100 athletes to photograph, a Herculean task you might say.

The general consensus is that for Klamer at least, something went a bit pear-shaped. The results look rushed and un-professional, and yet if you find other examples of Klamar’s work he’s a good news and sports photographer. Maybe nothing spectacular, but what is known in the industry as a ‘good operator’. The problem is, now you’ll have to search hard for anything other than criticism of him such has been the rush by those who know nothing of these things to jump in and take pot-shots at him. Armchair photographers thinking they could have done better with their iPhone have comprehensively clogged the search results.

Looking at other examples of Klamar’s work it seems AFP may be at fault here in putting him forward for a task for which he was ill-equipped. News and sport appear to be his areas of expertise, and yet he was put in a studio that even studio photographers might have struggled with – very little room for lights or expansive and expressive poses. Other photographers did manage, but that would suggest they were more suited to the task.

I’ve seen comments suggesting Klamar’s images are meant to be ironic, stripped of slickness and cliché. Well I’m not convinced. If there is a message at all, the images could represent Klamar’s anger at the ridiculous set-up of the summit photo sessions. The tiny booths, the speed with which shots had to be rattled off. His background becoming torn, his lighting rarely being right, background edges in plain view. If he was being brave (rather than just out of his depth) he may have been saying “this set-up is rubbish and I will not pander to the idiots that organised it.”

One thing I am convinced of, this photo-me booth, conveyor belt arrangement cannot have been conceived by a photographer. This is the work of someone with a clipboard and lots of pens thinking they understand what a photographer needs. Yes, other photographers did a better job, but I bet they weren’t delighted by the reduction of the task to a series of snatch images. But if you take a good photo in rubbish circumstances you cant complain because the client will always say “but the photos look great, what are you complaining about?” Which rather misses the point.

For now Klamar’s reputation is somewhat tarnished, but I think he’ll recover once the interest moves onto something else. Maybe a cat playing the piano will distract people back to what the internet was made for.

in Industry Comment 11 comments
 by Tim Gander

Reputation Gone in an Instagram

This week’s massive news is that I finally succumbed and upgraded to an iPhone 4s. I know the iPhone 5 is on the horizon and it’ll probably have interchangeable lenses, hover mode and a function for printing money, but I don’t need those things.

However, anyone who thinks I’m behind the times in mobile phonery should consider I got my first mobile in 1990, a barely-pocketable Phillips for which I paid about £500 up-front just so I could make calls at a cost per minute that would make a lawyer envious. I made very few outgoing calls.

You wouldn’t believe the similarities between the iPhone and the Phillips of yore. Both mess up the shape of your smoking jacket when carried in the pocket, and both have a battery life shorter than Jimmie Krankie’s inside leg measurement, but among the thrilling features not found on the Phillips is the camera.

People rave about the iPhone 4s camera and the various apps you can use with it, the most popular being Instagram. With a few friends already using Instagram I had to give it a go and early indications are I will have to watch my step or become hopelessly addicted to photographing flakey old doors, kittens, funny signs and the sun as it shines through translucent leaves, cobwebs and dandelion heads.

I think it’s fair to say though that Instagram is more about the filters and effects than about the content of the images. You can take a photo that previously would have been fit for the bin and make it quirky and interesting by fiddling around with it, adding a vignette and a sepia cast or whatever you fancy.

Is it still photography? Well, yes I suppose it is. It might not be photojournalism. Much of the time it might not even result in an interesting photo, but if photography is about looking at the world in a different way, Instagram seems to be about looking at photography in a different way. I’m not a huge fan of the billions of images uploaded to the web every second of every day, but it’s not a tsunami that will stop any time soon, and I’m now responsible for a small share of that.

Exit road from Longleat with road cones down the centre

Is it art? Who cares?

What iPhonography (yuckword) and apps like Instagram allow me to do though is step outside of being a professional photographer and explore a less serious side. If I wield an SLR people expect me to take great pictures of whatever I’m looking at. With an iPhone I can join the party and use photography as a bit of fun and no one will expect me to produce stunning art. Either that, or they’ll see my Instagram efforts and think it represents my professional work.

Now that I think about it some more, I wonder if that Phillips still works? It might just save my reputation.

in Industry Comment 7 comments
 by Tim Gander

Here Comes the Rain Again

Naze Holiday Park in Essex

You need sunshine for an outside pool shot

Do you remember summers? I do, though I have to think back a bit.

I was thinking about this year’s weather and how it affects my work. My conclusion was that it doesn’t affect it as much as it used to, especially when I was shooting holiday park brochures for the likes of Hoseasons and Great British Holiday Parks.

It was always a bit of a struggle to time the shoots on lodge and caravan parks because I would have to organise the dates with the parks I was visiting, then spend a few days at a stretch traveling from one park to another, allowing about a day at each one, taking pictures for each park’s brochure page.

The brief tended to include getting a hero shot of the pool, a selection of caravan interiors and exteriors, the entertainments (daytime and evening), general views of the park and surrounding areas. Mostly these shots required people/models that I would have to find on the park and persuade to be in the shots.

Apart from the interior shots, everything else required a certain amount of sunshine, and I wasn’t always lucky.

One particularly memorable year I found myself in Whitley Bay, rained and fogged in for two days. Having shot all the interiors I possibly could, I waited and waited, but the weather was showing no signs of improving to the point that I gave up and drove home.

The work itself wasn’t entirely without its joys, meeting lovely people and having a bit of a laugh along the way, but it was undeniably long, hard days and when the weather broke down, it could be dispiriting. Often the shoots were timed around May before the holiday season started, so if it wasn’t decent weather it could be quite chilly and not many people around to model for the shots.

Foggy beach

After waiting several hours for the fog to lift at one beach, I gave up and got this stock shot instead

If I’d had to shoot parks the last couple of years I think I would have gone slowly insane. Apart from the wasted effort of organising and traveling to parks, once you’ve committed the best part of a week to shooting on location you can’t book in other work. If the weather then wipes out the park work, you’re left with not much more than a couple of wet-weather payments, which don’t add up to a hill of beans.

In addition to all that, there’s the deadline to contend with. A designer would need the images by about the end of June at the latest in order to get the brochure designed and to the printers ready to go out just before Christmas. Some parks would just get skipped altogether if the weather meant that time ran out.

No, I don’t miss shooting parks too much. It was nice work, and it got me out and about. I’ve covered parks from the Isle of Wight to Wales, Dorset to Kent and Essex and both East and West coasts of Scotland, but I’ve since replaced the work with other things, and if the last few years are anything to go by, I’m probably better off for it.

in Case Studies 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Review preview

For some time now I’ve contributed occasional articles to the Warehouse Express blog site where I’ve discussed topics as diverse as looking after your copyright on social media sites, the changing face of photography since 1945, fast flash synchronization, and using flip-out screens on compact cameras.

The flip-out screen article was inspired by my having bought a Canon G11 which has one such flippy-outie screen. Warehouse Express asked if, being something of a G-series fan, I would be interested in writing a review of the G1 X, Canon’s new, beefier version of the G-series cameras. How could I refuse? So they sent me one.

Having played with the G1 X for over a week now, I have to say… well you’ll have to read the finished article to know what I think of the camera and see the pictures I’ve taken with it, but I’ll give you some insight into how the review process is going.

Canon G1 X

My review copy of the Canon G1 X

I was a little daunted at first when I realised I was actually going to have to go out and take pictures with this camera, preferably ones I’d be proud to show and which would demonstrate its capabilities. I mean I’m always happy to take pictures, but I don’t like reviews that don’t really push the equipment or show interesting photos. Colour charts and pictures of buildings on a sunny day don’t really do it for me.

As luck would have it, the day after the camera arrived so did some heavy rain and local flooding (don’t worry, no houses flooded). I grabbed the G1 X leaving all other cameras at home on purpose and headed out to the affected part of town. The camera was going to have to sink or swim! Well, not literally; I don’t think buoyancy tests are a normal test for a digital camera.

Since then I’ve shot portraits, events, street scenes and I’m hoping to test the camera in the most difficult of lighting conditions, the Frome farmers’ market at Standerwick, which has been a long-term photographic project for me.

With a bit of luck I’ll have a total of about 3 or 4 weeks to really try this thing out, and once I’ve processed the images and written up the review I should think the finished article will go live on the Warehouse Express blog pages pretty swiftly.

Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to make a big song and dance about my first product review. I won’t let you miss it.

Until then, I will offer this sneaky peek at the picture set since the picture below has already been released for editorial use via Alamy Live News.

flood waters in Frome

First outing I had with the G1 X was a bit of a weather event

in Reviews 11 comments
 by Tim Gander

Film isn’t dead, it’s just resting its eyes

Getting rambly and nostalgic in my middle (going-on-old) age…

Remember film? I do. I remember hand-processing black and white film in the Bath Chronicle dark room. I remember chemicals that stained my clothes and made them disintegrate. I remember the beautiful, shiny strips of cellulose hanging in the drying cabinet, fluttering ribbons of potential Pulitzer prize-winning images awaiting the lightbox, the loupe and the enlarger.

And now I’m getting all nostalgic again because for some strange reason I went from preparing to sell my last film camera (a Canon EOS 1N) on Ebay to buying black and white film and shooting some photos with it the other week.

This change of heart/mind came about partly because having seen some of the feeble prices the 1N commands on Ebay I knew I’d get more than 90 quids’ worth of fun from using it again.

I hadn’t used the camera since the year 2000 when I went digital, but it still works perfectly, and going back to film has re-informed how I shoot digital.

As an example, because I was shooting film that I didn’t want to waste I decided to be extra careful with the metering, so I used a hand-held light meter instead of relying on the built-in one. Seeing the consistency in exposure across the negatives, and thinking of all the times I’ve had to override the metering on my digital cameras, I think I’ll use a hand-held meter a lot more often when shooting digitally.

Now as tempting as it is to go back to processing my own films, and I do still have the tank, bag and reels for doing that, I don’t think I’m going to go that far. At least not yet.

For my first outing with film in 12 years I opted for Kodak BW400CN, which is black and white film you can process in a colour lab, which means that having shot my film I was able to drop it into Boots and have it processed and printed in an hour.

The next stage was to choose a couple of negatives and have them scanned by the lovely folk at click2scan who by amazing coincidence have just expanded into a premises in Frome. The photo here is my favourite from the roll of 36, which was mainly test shots for metering, contrast and the like.

Catering staff on cigarette break in Frome, Somersey

Smokers, Apple Alley, Frome

I’ve put another roll of the 400CN in the camera and might shoot colour after that. If I do, I’m sure I’ll keep you updated here.

In the meantime, why not dig out your old film camera and try some shots (instead of taking snaps on your iPhone and trying to make them look like old timey Polaroids, Kodachromes or sepia prints) But be prepared for something that took me by surprise; at first, every time I shot a frame, I’d find myself looking at the back of the camera where the digital preview would be. A slightly embarrassing tic I need to deal with.

in Personal Work 9 comments
 by Tim Gander

Tips for Top Shots

Photography, like ventriloquism, has a slightly uneasy relationship with radio, but when I heard John Wilson was going to be interviewing Terry O’Neill (celebrity photographer), Don McCullin (war/conflict, now landscapes), Harry Benson (politics) and David Bailey (fashion) for Radio 4’s Front Row, I knew it was going to be a treat.

These four were chosen for their roles as a new wave of photographers who shot and helped shape the 1960s, although I found it slightly incongruous that they were being asked for their top tips on how more of us could get perfect “snaps.” And yet, this premise did illicit some interesting answers.

O’Neill, for example, apparently hates cameras, “I only have a little Leica and a Hasselblad,” he says. Is that ALL you have, Terry? I’ll dream on…

What was also interesting about O’Neill though is that he, like Don, never takes pictures at family events, and I have to sympathise there. Terry says it’s because when he takes a photo he wants the lighting and everything to be just right, and he’d hold everything up if he tried to take pictures at parties or on holiday.

Like Terry O’Neill, Don McCullin also rarely takes any kind of family photo. His wife complains that he never takes pictures of her. His reason (excuse?) is that since his cameras have been used to photograph conflict, his gear is somehow contaminated, and he just wants to shut it all away in its cupboard until he needs it again. Of course at 76 years of age Don isn’t shooting conflict any more, but look at his Somerset landscapes and you’ll see the work of a man who is clearly at conflict with himself. Of the four photographers interviewed, it would seem Don is the one most haunted by what he’s witnessed.

Harry Benson made his name, rather like Terry O’Neill, photographing the likes of The Beatles, but where Terry majored in celebrity portraiture, Harry developed his career in politics. Among his most famous photos being the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and he talks about the experience of getting the shots (if that’s not too cruel a juxtaposition) of the presidential candidate as he lay dying, or already dead, in the arms of his wife. Harry says, “I didn’t even bother going to the hospital. I knew it was over. Anyway I felt I’d done my work for the night.” That was an incredibly telling line.

If you were to ask people on the street to name a famous photographer, David Bailey’s name would probably crop up most often. Famous for his style of fashion photography, where he moved the whole genre away from the static studio to the street, his approach has always seemed less reverential, and in interviews where he compares his career to the likes of Don McCullin, you can sense the relief he didn’t go to conflict zones to make his name. Maybe this explains why in this interview he delves back into his school days to find conflict and discomfort. Doesn’t seem to have done him any harm…

In terms of ‘tricks from the professionals’, Bailey does impart useful knowledge. Something I’ve seen photographers fail to do, and I’ve failed to do once or twice myself, is engage with the person you’re photographing. Talk to them, find out what makes them tick. You’ll always get a better portrait that way.

From Terry O’Neill we learn to always fill the frame with what you want to say. That’s a lesson I learned from my first picture editor, who used to scream FILL THE F*****G FRAME! at me (only for my first two assignments, after which I learned).

I like Don’s advice, that if you’re likely to get killed taking a picture, you better make damn sure the exposure is correct. He would leap up, take an exposure reading, then set and frame the pictures before pressing the shutter button. All this under heavy fire.

Harry’s advice, to always stay at the centre of the story for as long as possible, is also good advice. Not to get distracted by peripheral things.

Finally, David Bailey’s advice, apart from remembering to talk to your subject, is to shoot against a plain backdrop and shoot black and white. As he says, “With colour you look at the colour before you look at the message. With black and white you go straight to the message.” Of course shooting black and white isn’t a luxury we have for every assignment, but that quote is a useful one for making the distinction between colour and monochrome photography.

Photographer Don McCullin

Don McCullin in typically down-beat mood during a presentation at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, circa 1991

Hear the full interview here, I highly recommend it.

in Industry Comment / Reviews 3 comments
 by Tim Gander

Clarity within reason

I recently blogged about photographers who profess to use only natural light (ie they hadn’t figured out flash, so why not hide ignorance and pretend flash is for some sub-species of photographer), but another trend that’s been getting under my skin recently is the over-use of something called Clarity.

In case you’re wondering, clarity is an adjustment photographers can make to their photos from within Adobe’s Lightroom application. What it does in (really brief) layman’s terms is increase contrast in the mid-tone areas of a photograph. It doesn’t do much to the brightest and darkest areas of a photo, but it can improve or make a real mess of the in-between tones.

I use Clarity on many of my images just to add a little more ‘punch’ than is in the original RAW camera image, but the rule I apply to the Clarity slider is the same one I apply to many image-processing effects, that is; if I can see the effect, I’ve probably gone too far.

And too far is what I’ve seen a lot of recently. Especially on portraits. I first noticed the sledgehammer application of Clarity in a Sunday Times Culture magazine portrait of Jack Nicholson last year. I wish I could show it here so you’d see what I mean, but I can’t find it now, so instead I’ve demonstrated the over-Clarity effect below with one of my own photos.

You’ll see this effect used on some corporate portraits too, and to be honest I think it looks ghastly. It ages all whose portraits are touched by it. It gives everything a kind of super-digital weirdness and makes skin look bruised and like badly dried-out leather.

I thought it worth writing this article because if you’re looking to commission portraiture for your company and would like to avoid the DFS-face-effect provided by the Clarity-hammer, you might want to recognise the signs of its use in the portfolios of the photographers you’re considering using. Then decide if that’s the look for you.

Portrait of farmer

Just a touch of clarity here. Can you see it?

Farmer portrait

Not so subtle. His hat looks 'bruised' around the edges and the face details are looking over-cooked

Farmer portrait

AAAAAAAAAGH! MY EYES! THEY'RE BURNING!

in Industry Comment 4 comments
 by Tim Gander

When ‘specialist’ isn’t special.

“I specialize in natural light photography” is a statement you’ll see on some photographers’ websites, but what does it mean? What is ‘natural light’ and does it make these photographers special?

Let’s get any pretense out of the way first; I’m rarely convinced by such statements. To me the subtext of what they’re saying is, “I don’t know how to use flash, flash scares me so I’ll pretend I don’t need it. I’ll just say I’m a specialist at not using it.”

In essence natural light is any light which isn’t man-made. Sun and moonlight is about it, but looking at some of the ‘natural light’ photographers, they’ll happily pull electric light into their lighting armoury, regardless of the strange colour casts you’ll get on people’s faces under this lighting.

Sometimes the photographer will fix this by turning their pictures to black and white. Which is fine if the client wants black and white. Not so clever if the images are for a colour project.

There are very few photographers around who can genuinely limit themselves to only taking pictures using natural light and nothing else. William Eggleston springs to mind, but I’m not sure you can hire him for your wedding or commercial shoot.

Brian Harris is a working English photojournalist who very rarely uses flash, but can get away with it because of his talent combined with the kinds of commissions he takes on.

Location studio lit portrait of student

Photo taken in a lecture theatre, where light was so low the only option was a portable studio light

As for myself, I often have to work in difficult lighting conditions but make the pictures have a particular style and look. This might mean daylight is sufficient, but often means I have to supplement the daylight (or even replace it entirely) with portable, battery-powered studio flash.

This may not be as simple as pointing and shooting using whatever light there is, but for me the results are worth the extra effort.

If you’re looking at hiring a corporate photographer who “only uses natural light” or “never uses flash”, chances are they just don’t know how to use flash. This isn’t a skill or specialism, it just means they haven’t learned the basic requirements to do the job. It’s always best to check their website first, look out for a dominance of black and white, or strange and inconsistent skin tones. For your projects it’s often important to get a consistent style across all your imagery, and that’s where portable studio flash can help. Oh, and someone who knows how to use it!

in Industry Comment 8 comments
 by Tim Gander

I’ll take my own photos, thanks.

Apart from those posts where I apologise for not posting that week, this may be one of the shortest posts I have ever written.

I will simply say that every photo you see on my website was taken by me, while it would appear other photographic outfits buy in royalty free stock imagery to illustrate the kind of work they’d like to do, but can’t back up with their own examples.

That is all. Have a lovely week.

Tim

in Industry Comment 2 comments
 by Tim Gander

Groundhog Assignment

It’s inevitable that if a client retains you for long enough, eventually you’ll end up repeating a previous job.

This might be as simple as updating a portrait of the CEO, and you’re not normally looking to reinvent the wheel in that scenario unless the company imagery needs a change of style. On other occasions it’s about finding a fresh way to re-photograph an older idea.

Such it was last November when Wickes asked me to repeat what I’d done for them in a previous year. That is say, a press shot to illustrate the story that their call-centre colleagues would be operating the switchboard into the night in order to take pledges for Children in Need.

call centre lady

Hardly an original idea, but the wig, expression and phone receivers make it eye-catching

The lady in the red wig was the shot which went out previously, and it was very well received, but of course I didn’t simply want to repeat that. I had to come up with something similar, but not the same.

Luckily this time around the props were different, but the setting was the same – a dark, messy open-plan office space with light which wasn’t going to work for pictures. I decided to use the Pudsey Bear bunting and a different floor of the office which was closed for the night, therefore I could set up lighting and spend some time with the model photographing her away from all her colleagues to reduce the embarrassment factor.

call centre lady at Wickes for Children in Need

This time the bunting added colour and gave more clues to the story

The results convey a similar energy and use much the same “tight” newspaper style, but the content of the picture is subtly updated and more of the Children in Need branding is included, which I think helps to tell the story even more fully.

You might think it would be boring to have to repeat something previously photographed, but for me it was more of a challenge to come up with something new, and I enjoyed the challenge enormously. The thing about photography is you can always update and improve a good idea.

in Case Studies 2 comments