Seeing past the subject (2)

I wrote an article some time ago on the value of using famous faces in your portfolio.

tl;dr: celebrity shoots are shorthand for access, big campaigns or notable clients. In other words, a middling photo of an A-lister may have more impact than a good photo of an unknown person.

I wanted to follow up with some comments and rules on this perilous practice, because it is a recipe with a strict “use by” date. Celebrity photos age quickly. And badly. You need regular and fresh produce, and more so in the age of Instagram. Because - regardless of whether the person stays famous or fades into obscurity - without new material to update and replace one’s portfolio, the march of time leads to the same interpretation: your most up to date celebrity shoot was too long ago. I’m assured by colleagues that in all other respects one’s portfolio need not change, and keeping old photos is fine: this consideration only applies to photographers cashing in by using famous faces on their websites. You’re tied into a constant game of catch-up, but that's the price you pay for trading in the currency of currency.

Here are the rules:

A-Listers: You can keep them for around a decade in your portfolio. Just make sure they're still recognisable.

B-Listers: Remove/update after 5-7 years.

Reality TV stars: Remove after 3-5 years.

Influencers: Check if they’re still famous every 1-2 years.

People who appear on Christmas pantomime posters at train stations, if they have an accompanying line reminding you where you’ve seen them before e.g. “… from The Bill”: No.

Niche favourites: These are podcasters, TikTok stars etc. who have the envious position of being A-listers to those who know them, but otherwise aren’t widely recognised in public - so don’t count as celebrity, and therefore can be used indefinitely.

Political and Historical Figures: These shots are like vintage wine and can remain in your portfolio indefinitely, as long as you have a collection of similar images. One photo of Nelson Mandela won’t work - it’s just a lucky commission. You need Margaret Thatcher, Bob Geldof and Freddie Mercury to complete the set, and so establish yourself as someone who’s really been around.

Living legends: There are only a few of these but you can trade on them on your website forever. Ideally, place them on your homepage and bring them up in conversation regularly. They include people like David Attenborough, Helen Mirren, Christopher Walken and Stephen Fry.

The exception to the rule is if you have more than twelve famous faces, in which case you’re a regular at this - perhaps even a celeb photographer - and don’t need to remove any old photos ever, on the condition that you must keep adding.

Next time I’ll talk about why portfolios containing two pictures from the same shoot should result in a prison sentence.

Out with the old

In my recent article about how we improve (“A little learning is a dangerous thing"), I talked about how my old work isn’t good enough now - can’t be good enough - as my skills / critical eye have developed. I wrote, “Hopefully, in the years to come I'll feel the same way about the pictures I have in my portfolio now. Because if not, I'm not improving.”

There’s this idea that anything not recent doesn’t represent us, is somehow false or misleading for being out of date. We’ve moved on - or regressed. But I’m now coming round to the conclusion this is erroneous. More on this later.

Regardless, in the meantime my website is bloated, and in need of a refresh: I’ve not done much to it in a while. This seems like a good opportunity to remove some of the dead wood. And besides, the more I’ve improved, the easier I should be able to cull old images. Right..?

Before finishing marking pictures for deletion - a troubling task - I ask for thoughts on a forum: how old is old? How do you feel about showing work you haven’t done in a long time? Does it still represent you?

I say troubling because it’s really not easy. It’a not like old food - I can’t just look at the date and bin it. Some of my old photos I still like. Do I really have to take them down? I don’t want to. Hmm. I’m not nearly as dispassionate as I should be in displaying my work. Or today, at least. It just doesn’t feel like the right thing to do in the name of a cleaner portfolio.

The hive-mind replies. The near-unanimous response - a slight surprise and a great relief - was that it’s completely fine to have old pictures, as long as they don’t look dated, and as long as you have new work, too.

So I’ve gone through again, looking only for the weaker pictures, with only half an eye on the date taken. That’s surely more important, how good an image is. But I don’t know which are good or bad. It’s an important skill and notoriously difficult. I’ve only ever culled a few images over the years, those which begin to stick out rather obviously after a time. But nowadays the quality and style is, I feel, fairly consistent throughout. I know better than to seek true objectivity from colleagues, as they will tear apart my keepers and praise the ones which need to go. And they’ll disagree with one another. As for deleting the weak ones myself, on the one hand I’m bored of nearly all my work, and on the other, I’m oddly attached to much of it.

But the ‘bored’ part - does this mean I’ve improved? Yes? Great…but if so, where’s the new, improved work to replace what’s to be removed? Ah. Well, I do have a few images which need putting up. But for now, mostly, it’s about culling.

So I ask myself these questions about each image:

• Do I like it?

• Does it represent the work I do, or would like to do? Or rather, will it appeal to the clients with whom I’d like to work?

• Is it the best example among similar images in my portfolio? Is it different enough to justify existing?

  (while keeping in mind)

• Has it been taken recently?

Devoid of context, the best images in a portfolio continue to shine. These images below - the ones I’m retiring - all suffer from the corollary: standing alone as they do, they don’t say much. There’s nothing wrong with them per se, but I don’t feel any of them quite spark an emotion or connection on their own. And I realise why - I’d included many of them as placeholders, representing a technique, style, or kept just because they were a little different.

Getting rid of a dozen images is not quite the grand cull I’d imagined, but it’s a start.

2017 in pictures

Here are some of my favourite shots taken in 2017. As many have already appeared - one of the drawbacks of blogging regularly - I'm including some background this time around.

I'll start with a shot which wasn't even taken last year, but was under embargo until then. Nor is it a shot which will change the direction of photography, but I've included it as it was one of those simple portraits where you go with what you have. One of a series shot for Pfizer to accompany a video, we had a small space, zero props, limited furniture - but then with a little expression, the photo works out. It sits better as part of the series.

One of a number of portraits for the Toyota Mobility Foundation, our original plan here was to shoot near here in Shad Thames, in that lovely narrow cobbled lane, with its walkways and sense of history. On arrival, however, we found the street swamped in bright, ugly barriers and garish signage for some ongoing and ghastly repairs. So we used the riverside, and although Tower Bridge was a bit obvious - I'd emphatically NOT wanted to use it - for our purposes it (grudgingly) photographed ok.

I'd recently bought a ~30cm circular mini-diffuser (a disc, basically, which fits over the flash) which I used here for the first time. I wanted something quick and portable, yet not susceptible to pulling down stands - as umbrellas are wont to do - in the slightest of breezes. The disc gives a fairly soft light for the tradeoff, although it is a bit of a faff to attach securely. Anyway, it helps a very flat lighting situation. I had it close, just out of shot, which softened it further and meant I could keep an eye (and a foot, for security) on the stand.

Technically this is a few years old but appeared in my blog this year. I love shooting top-end performance, where costumes and lighting complement the extreme skill and dedication of the dancers to make great images. The slightest imperfections really show with this kind of photography, and so when everything is exactly as it should be and everyone is perfectly in time, it makes all the difference in the world. 

This was a simple campaign portrait, which I've included only because I was pleased at how well the colours of clothing & hair worked together, despite there being no guidance.

Jewellery, Cutlery and Glass make up the unholy trinity of really difficult things to photograph, and I have always avoided them when they've come up in the product photography requests which I get from time to time. These bottle shots, however, were a small part of a wider lifestyle series, much more up my street.  

This kind of work is first and foremost science, requiring precision, patience, some logic, common sense and attention to detail. None of which are my strong points. Glass is mainly about lighting - specifically, not lighting the glass - and while the physics of light is quite simple in theory, it's quite the infuriating opposite in practice. With this kind of work, you really have to know what you're doing and understand the approach and its principles. But with a lot of reading up, watching YouTube tutorials and practising beforehand and, later, work in PS, I managed to do a reasonable job on these.

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that while these are decent product photographs, they are probably dreadful Product Photographs (and I'm ok with that). 

You know you're struggling for locations when you find yourself on the roof..! I'd made the fatal mistake of browsing what others had done around the National Theatre with it's lovely concrete and soft shadows (hard and graphic on bright days), and had utterly failed to use the environment satisfactorily for my own efforts, so we kept moving. Finally we ended up here, in front of the Fly Tower at the top of the NT. As in, if this doesn't work then there's nowhere else to go. 

Actually, it's one I think could work and I'd like to shoot again, but on a longer lens and further back, so the subject is framed more tightly by the grey facade behind. Or maybe try harder to make the most out of the indoor options. Or not as hard. I don't know.

A product image for Fruitflow, included here only because it was shot on my kitchen table. I don't know why this fact makes me happy. 

Photographed for the charity Sense, who help people with complex communication needs, this was a workshop collaboration with Wayne MacGregor Dance. 

Often, a corporate portrait means a headshot on a white background. Lighting tends to be conservative, so the focus is on getting the right expression and mood. 

Environmental/location portraits are, of course, more interesting, and I liked this shot. Being further back normally helps the subject to relax, and although the arms could be read as defensive - rather than confident, which would negate this - it's a simple way to break up the picture. With her arms at her side you'd have a large part of the photo taken up by the dead space of her light, plain shirt, as well as having her hands right at the edge of frame. 

I'd discussed the lighting and space issues with this at length in my blog, but have included it here on its merit regardless as a pretty successful group photo. It was hard to envisage how or even if ~40 people would fit into this shot without it becoming a mess. I can usually imagine up to ten fitting into a location, then it's all shrugs and crossed fingers. 

My recurring photographer's dream - well, nightmare, really - is of a group photo that never quite gets taken, as various people wander off, cameras stop working, and endless interruptions and delays prevent what should otherwise be something straightforward happening, but gets worse and worse. A rising crescendo of stress and chaos, before waking. 

It's pleasant, then, when in reality, a potentially tricky large group somehow comes together!   

Your mind begins to wander when you're covering an event. Shortly after you've got all the 'safe shots', there's a moment when realise you haven't taken a photo in a few minutes. Some might call it creativity. To others, it's just messing around.

It usually results in (completely irrelevant) zoom bursts, shooting through bottles of water on the tables, looking for weird compositions and ultra-tight crops, even looking for reflections in attendees' glasses. Most of these shots get deleted straight away, but occasionally you get something that works, and that might be useful for the client.

Or perhaps the flash just failed to go off on this shot and the resulting silhouette was a happy accident - I can't remember. 

I love her hair. Nothing more to say.

Retouching... I couldn't work out what needed to be done with this, let alone envisage where I'd further like to take it. So I just played around in PS but without any real goal in mind. So it feels unfinished, not quite there, and slightly fraudulent as it's outside my normal style anyway. I'm certain I'll come back to it at some point. 

Hindsight is 20/20, and in this case my immediate thought is that I'd have added another gelled rim light to the left for symmetry if I were to do it again, but that's not actually my main issue. For any shot which relies on perspective, I'm never sure if I've got the best one. Should I be closer to the subject for impact? Or have both of us move further back (behind me), using more of the tunnel? Should we be lower to the ground (crouching or similar) adding a vertical aspect to the shot? Or perhaps just have me shooting lower to emphasise dominance? Should he be further away - do I always have the subject too dominant in the frame?

Yes, it would have been possible to try these variations - and perhaps we did try a few - but at the cost of precious seconds or minutes spent on each. So you often go with your instinct and return to the one you think works best. Which could be the shot you feel is safest. This, then, becomes your style, as you reassure yourself each time it was the right one. But the problem with having a certain style is that it can be limiting. Is 'best' the same as 'safest'? How can you continue to work on a shot which makes you feel uncomfortable, knowing that a different approach - often the straightforward one - works?

I didn't have much of a plan going into this parkour shot, other than I wanted to heavily light it, and darken the (busy) backgrounds both out of necessity and aiming for drama. But to get an action shot (at least, the ones I'd have liked to capture) would require more precise lighting than there was time for. 

So it became something very static, rather defeating what the sport is about! When she posed, looking at camera, it just didn't work at all. We came up with the idea that she's readying herself - well, planning, at least, by her expression - to jump, and it turns out that potential energy isn't too bad a tradeoff for kinetic.

This was a straight portrait of another parkour practitioner taken shortly after - I just like the colours and basic setup after the (over?)complexity, stress and scrabbling around involved in the previous shot.

War Horse was on tour, and this is your typical PR photo to announce his visit to Brighton. Bright and sunny, I stopped it right down to darken the sky, and if you can partly obscure the sun, you get the starburst effect. I then used two 600EX flashes from the right on full (or nearly full) power to light Joey (horse) and the person's face, with a third flash lighting Joey's body. There may have been a fourth filling in from the left, but it doesn't look like it's doing much.

A silhouette might have been another option, but it didn't work as it the shape was too busy. We also tried Joey rearing but this didn't work either as we lost his face, the eyeline connection with the person holding him, and it also looked rather messy with bodies etc.

Despite Joey being a model, you still look at his eye first, and that led the approach to the picture. 

Lighting is key in dance, not only to emphasise motion and shape, but because there needs to be enough of it to freeze the action. Breakdance is fast and unpredictable, and getting decent shots of people spinning around on their heads are as much luck as judgement, in low light. Freezes and other gestures, as above, are much easier. In other words, I was being lazy.

As with the parkour image, a pause at the height, or moment of change in an action, can be enough. On his own, a shot of just the guy in centre really would be a bit lazy and missing real action, but the gesture of guy in the background just saves it.

I hope that was of interest. See you next near!

While I was waiting...

I've said elsewhere that one of the things I like about Instagram is that it's a place to put all the images which don't belong anywhere else. Too random for Facebook, not relevant for clients, and neither suitable nor strong enough for my portfolio. But worse would be to leave them on a hard-drive, forgotten in a cupboard, forever. While browsing my IG feed, I noticed that a great number were shot while I was waiting around for something.

It's an interesting category. These are the kind of images which, most of all, should fall between the floorboards. These shots are either an afterthought or noticed when you're thinking of other things. They're the result of time spent idle, with no planning or prior intention, and they wouldn't exist but for the opportunity of a few free moments. 

A friend was delayed. St Pancras station, London.

In a cafe, waiting for a coffee.

In a car park, on arriving early for a shoot.

One New Change, London. Waiting for permission from the site manager.

Underground station sign (I had arrived early).

Archway. Meeting a friend. 

I don't remember where this was but it's a lamp-post (or was, originally). Strictly, I wasn't waiting and I knew I wanted to do this for a while, but it was taken on a break between shoots.

Taken through glass in a queue at an airport.

Cracked glass at Sushi Samba, London, while waiting for people to arrive for an event.

Gelled flash through opaque glass. Waiting to do a portrait, I was playing around with the idea of using a coloured spot behind the subject. It wasn't working (there wasn't enough space to spread the light), but did make this interesting shot. 

London. During dinner at a press launch.

Photographed while the film crew were interviewing a subject. I did actually send this one to the client along with a couple of other stock images from the day (there was a lot of waiting around).

London, in between corporate portraits. The 'razor' building can be seen (centre) through curtains. 

Not quite waiting for paint to dry, but the next best thing.

Various gas pipes and pressure gauges in a factory corridor. I have absolutely no idea what they were for.

The Tower of London, the Walkie-Talkie, the Cheese-Grater and the Gherkin. Taken from the event space at the top of Tower Bridge at dusk, while waiting for speeches to finish. 

From the archives - two

I've nearly finished going through my archives in search of old images which I'd originally dismissed. 

As I've said elsewhere, even strong images tend to fade over time, both due to familiarity, and as one develops or improves. But occasionally, I'll come across an old reject which, with a fresh look, away from context - and usually with a different edit - I like much better second-time around.

Out of tens of thousands, only two or three of these I've since dusted off, tidied up, and put up in my galleries. But dozens got close - and were then rejected again.

The photo below is from a series of portraits of musicians (initially all 3- or 4-star rated I expect) but I thought this particular one could be worth another look - was it really only average? Yes. I really wanted it to work - a simple, outdoor shot like this would go well on my website. And there's nothing really wrong with it - and technically and aesthetically it's fine, but something about it's just a bit empty, boring, flat:

No matter how revised or polished a photo is, if it's not working, it's not working. You can do wonders in post-production, but there has to be something in the original which can't be created later, which has nothing to do with adjustments or photoshop. 

It's important to be brutally honest and unforgiving when judging an image, but often, subjectivity gets in the way. Usually it's the lengths you knew you'd gone to to achieve the shot - you were so invested in it that it becomes personal. 

I think it's about changing your role once you've put the camera down and when you're going through the work on the computer. You have to become an editor - a different set of skills - because as a photographer you can't be objective. And as an editor, this image isn't good enough. Next!

Egosurfing

I posted one of my photos of Julia Donaldson recently. I was thinking about when I've searched for my work online (photographers have to keep track of their images), and she always appears on page one. So I wanted to post three of my most Google-friendly* shots. 

For the past four years (at least), when I search my name, the image that's usually on the top line is (a version of) astronaut Tim Peake:

As for viral, one photo from a set I took of War Horse's star, Joey, among the poppies at the Tower of London (Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red) has been everywhere, with thousands of shares and likes on Facebook**:

Finally (drum roll...) my most "shared" photo is from 2006 of two Sphynx cats, Dream-maker and Felicity. They are not only beautiful, but they appear to be kissing. As such, it wins the Internet most days:

*By 'Google-friendly', I usually mean shared. And by shared, I mean infringed, a euphemism for stolen. 

**Alas, the value of a picture credit is zero.

Seeing past the subject

The discussion about Charlotte Proudman had me thinking. Not about how inappropriate the comment was, nor the misuse of LinkedIn, or sexism. I wondered whether it's even possible to separate a good photograph from a good subject. Not to say the images below are good or not, but to argue that the subject matter often has a bearing on it.

I have photos of John Sergeant and Arlene Phillips on my website. To be quite honest, I'm not sure if they're very particularly strong images, but they do suggest access, which can equate to experience or skill. Hence, portfolio.

Similarly, many sports photographers might have shots of Usain Bolt/Mo Farah/Jessica Ennis/Oscar Pistorius shot from the end of the race track, crossing the finish line and winning the final. Even though these photos are far from unique and possibly not very exciting*, their value is in their fame and recognisability (which comes from newsworthiness). They show how - like the athletes they depict - the photographer is at the very top of his or her profession.

As for newsworthiness, we have etched in our collective consciousness innumerable images depicting great tragedy or joy, and never really consider or care whether they're 'good' from any other viewpoint (technical, artistic, creative etc.), but only see them as records of historic fact, and therefore as powerful photographs.

So: photogenic subjects, famous subjects, newsworthy subjects. These kinds of people blur one's opinion seamlessly: "Is it a 'stunning' LinkedIn image, or is the subject 'stunning'?", "Is it a great portrait, or just a well-known face?", and "Is it a good photo, or just access to some incredible event?"

Most interesting of the three kinds of subjects above is the 'famous': interesting because our cultural, subjective, informed position affects (determines?) how we view images of famous people. And it's very much rooted in its time. That is, it makes all the difference if the viewer knows who the person is, and even their opinion of them. If they don't know them, or at least don't recognise them, their viewing is immediately and irrevocably altered once given this information**. So, back to the title: I dug out some images of (I hope) less-recognisable but nonetheless powerful ladies.

This is someone you would know but probably not recognise:

She's an author, and as for fame, her most well-known book is perhaps only second to Harry Potter. Her work has spawned shows, films, mugs, socks and school bags. Every young-ish parent in the country will own at least a few of her books, and many (myself included) know them off-by-heart. It's Julia Donaldson, author of the Gruffalo.

But is it a good picture? Well, as I've been saying, sometimes it's hard to see past the fame of a person and judge a photograph objectively. In the end - and despite there being only a couple of decent images of Julia online anywhere - she never made my portfolio because I don't think the image is strong enough. 

So much for fame. Next are three leading ladies who are (perhaps?) less-recognised still but nonetheless hugely influential, powerful and successful. We have President of International Markets for Mastercard, Ann Cairns; Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Pearson, Kate James; and Vice-President EMEA for Facebook, Nicola Mendelsohn. All these did make my portfolio - but not with these photos. Other images from the shoots were stronger (please take a look in my corporate and portrait galleries).

Let's assume you don't recognise them, and, unlike with Julia Donaldson, there's no immediate association going on even once named. Does their business or their high position affect your judgment? As it happens, two have appeared in national newspapers fairly recently, so will be recognisable to some. But does it matter? Does it make a difference how you view them?

It comes down to historicism - the extent and angle to which the background to an image influences our opinion. Perhaps we like to think we can be more objective, but there's much more going on here. We can't help but frame our view with external knowledge, a cultural climate, and our personal bias and taste.

*Not unique, since many other photographers are positioned in the same place. And not exciting with respect to a photographer's more creative and/or less newsworthy portfolios. To put it another way, if the images weren't of global sports superstars winning the Olympics, but instead showed (otherwise identical) shots from, say, the second-round heats at the U-21 Commonwealth games, they'd be unlikely to feature in a portfolio. 

**I should add that you can argue it's easier to read a portrait of a famous person. You have some idea who they are, and can judge to what extent the photograph captures and confirms that aspect of their personality. Or indeed, questions it. Success or failure in the portrait is surely tied to this in some respect.