I have just returned from the US where I had a fantastic two weeks in California, with material to potentially fill out about 5 blog posts! My main reason for going over to the States was to speak at the Art of Photography Show in San Diego. My image ‘The smothering’ was shown at the Art of Photography Show at the Lyceum Theatre and I finally got to go over and see in in the flesh (above).

My talk was about 2 hours long and addressed alot of the regular material from my previous talks, covering my background and evolution.

With this talk being focused more on the art scene, I was eager to talk more about the intentions behind my images and also touch upon the blurring of art and commercial I feel are present in my own branding as an artist. I mentioned two commercial shoots I did recently – a fashion shoot and a shoot for a band (both I will be sharing images and posts about soon) and how I wanted to bring an element of fine-art, or at least what the clients identified as my ’style’, into the images. And, in the opposite way, I mentioned my ongoing occupation with incorporating something shiny, polished and almost what you might call ‘commercial’ into my art images, hence my surprise at my obviously-Photoshopped image ‘The smothering’ being selected for the AOP show by Natasha Egan.

Regarding processing techniques, one thing I did learn on my trip was that maybe it doesn’t matter at all what you ‘do’ in your art – it’s really how you angle and market it, in order to aim it for the ‘art’ scene rather than the photography gadgetry audience. I went with Steven Churchill to the Museum of Photographic Arts where I saw an exhibition by Jerry Ulesman and Maggie Taylor, who both use compositing in their images: Jerry with film, and Maggie with digital scanning techniques. Their work was appropriated together in a museum context, complete with small screens showing the process of making one of Maggie’s images. There was also a little display of different books about compositing from old ones on film techniques through to modern-day Photoshop manuals. I felt as though the idea of ‘compositing’ in photography was not such a big deal or taboo as I have seen it represented elsewhere. Natasha Egan selected my image ‘The smothering’ because of the conceptual depth she personally saw in the image, and unlike my mainstream audience, was not interested in the slightest in ‘how’ I might have done it, for she is not someone seeking to ‘learn’ the technique for herself. It was refreshing to see my image being accepted in this new context as it has been largely the type of image that has attracted most of my workshop attendees, for example. Maintaining a presence on the fine-art scene is important to me as it keeps freedom of creativity at the nucleus of what I do: with workshops, lectures and commercial work building around that core.

Here I am with Sean Black, the photographer whose work I was displayed next to in the show. I first met Sean at the Palm Springs Photo Festival in 2009 and so we were delighted to be shown next to each other. Sean also came to my workshop in LA afterwards, which I will be blogging about shortly!

I was fortunate to be introduced to two galleries in San Diego, one of which I will potentially have a show at next year. Both gave positive feedback on my work and I may write up the portfolio review from one of the galleries in the manner of my previous meetings with curators/dealers.

Above: me with Steven Churchill, director of the Art of Photography Show, with whom I spent my time whilst in San Diego. We went to a few museums and galleries together and visited La Jolla (further below) in the beautiful San Diego weather which I heard I was very lucky to experience at this time of year!

Above: long legs with the help of a 16-35mm lens!

On my last night in San Diego, a special lady came to pick me up to whisk me off to LA: none other than Brooke Shaden, with whom I spent the rest of my trip. We spent some time having coffee in the bar at the Se San Diego Hotel with Steven, before I left to make the journey. More blog posts to come: next one is how our collaborative workshops went!

At this very moment I am trying to plan my presentation that I am giving for the Art of Photography Show in San Diego next Thursday night, in which I have an image of mine exhibited. Steven Churchill, who I met in 2009 at the Palm Springs Photo Festival, kindly offered the idea of doing ‘An Evening with Miss Aniela’ as part of their speaker series, and I thought it was a great idea. I never worry about presentations or public talks – until a few days before I go. And now is that time…

Why does my mind seize up like this? I scheduled today to be the day I open Word and Powerpoint and get my arse into gear, but all day I have felt positively inert. Inertia is the classic feeling I get when I am trying to plan a presentation or talk of some kind. There is so much I want to say and yet I don’t know where to start in planning it. It’s like trying to write a dissertation, except in this context, you shouldn’t feel like you have to say a massive amount, as no-one wants to watch someone reading off reams of notes. Improvisation always sounds more natural and is more enjoyable to watch.

That said, I have a folder full of previous presentations I have delivered: from Photokina Cologne to Photocamp Bradford, and my habit is to go to my last delivered presentation (in this case, the last one was one I did at Portslade Community College) and simply tweak various bits to fit in line with my latest thoughts, cover any burning issues that have emerged since then, add new work and any topics they raise, and mention what else I’ve been doing. Main things to cover this time include my commercial Self-Portrait Photography book that has just gone to print (a mix of technical, art and commercial like nothing the shelves of Waterstones has ever seen – and that I am VERY excited about), and my recent fashion and band photo commissions, along with more to say about the hybrid nature of the modern photographer/artist since I first started airing my thoughts in my Photocamp presentation last year.

I always am tempted to start the whole thing from scratch, bored by the idea of trotting off the same introductory lines about how I got into photography and Flickr this and Microsoft that, but then I come round to the sensible conclusion that my previous presentations actually went quite well due to those carefully prepared and illustrated Powerpoint slides, delineating my emergence from bored depressed student to present ‘artist’, happy but slightly confused at what to call myself…

(Above: Sojourn and Soliloquy… two separate self-portraits from my work that both use naked flesh and yet have somewhat very different tones.)

I have found that having a Powerpoint slideshow is always necessary, simply to be able to show my pictures. It’s also a way to show a few bits and pieces like the odd brainstorm or press clipping. I have found though, that incorporating a PP show is the point of difficulty itself – because then you have to work out what you are going to say whilst a certain image is onscreen –thus initiating the need to write down some notes with the slide number alongside – and the whole thing necessitates a kind of choreographing. That leads to the need for rehearsal – unless you want to run the risk of eradicating the natural, free-flowing, actually-look-at-the-audience appearance. Some of my past talks have been so carefully prepared though, that I end up sounding natural simply because I know the words so well that I don’t have to look at my notes.

I’m sitting in a car park writing this blog post. I needed to get some space to myself to be able to think – that’s how foggy my mind goes at times like this. I can’t have any clutter around me, or any people talking about anything at all, or the cat unfurling its long black body near me and causing the ultimate delicious distraction… I brought a hot water bottle and my laptop and have managed to get quite a lot done at last. I made the mistake of bringing my internet dongle with me but at least I got this blog post up. Unfortunately, a guy has just turned up in his van and parked opposite, and is staring eagerly thinking I am some kind of dogger. I think I will post this, turn on my engine and move on…

My talk is free to attend, at the Lyceum Theatre, San Diego, Thursday 28^th October at 6pm. Read more about the event at this link.

It is also definitely a cause for celebration in itself, however…

I used to be disinclined to enter competitions, or I’ve tried to make more of an effort with entering my work here and there for competitions/calls for entries etc.

And my efforts paid off this year, I’m pleased to announce that my image The smothering has been chosen to be part of the Art of Photography Show 2010 in San Diego, judged by curator Natasha Egan:

There were 13,692 entries from 67 countries, and 113 pieces were picked by Natasha Egan to be exhibited in the show. So I felt it was quite an honour to be chosen!

The smothering is being printed and framed over in the US as we speak (it costs a bomb… at least double what I’d pay here to print and mount, gah) and will be hanging at the Art of Photography Show at the Lyceum Theatre in San Diego from 28th August to 7th November. It’ll be available to purchase (one of limited edition of 5, and they’re nearly sold out…) On the opening on 28th August, prizes will be announced, so fingers crossed! Although I won’t be there for the opening, I hope to be in San Diego later in September or October to host an evening talk for the Art of Photography speaker series, and also have plans to run a workshop or two whilst I’m on the west coast…

I’m absolutely super stressed at the moment preparing for my East London exhibition, so I can’t even bear to think about those plans at the moment, but will keep you informed!

When submitting my work to competitions etc, I regularly assume my work won’t fit what the judges are looking for, especially the arty farty ‘contemporary photography’ calibre. I try to bypass that negativity and keep submitting, though I don’t expect results. So… getting a piece into this show, and also being chosen for the East London Photo-Space, has been surprising and made me feel quite happy. It shows you should keep plugging away at what you do, and have confidence in it. Surely blending in with norms defies the point of art? That’s an issue I’ll be debating in my next post when I discuss the value of the ‘portfolio review’…

My next blog post is a follow-up to my meeting with art dealer Michael Hoppen which I’m pleased that people found interesting. Next I’m going to be writing about my meeting with independent London-based art curator Katy Barron, and discussing The smothering in particular, because whilst Natasha Egan chose this image from nearly 14,000 photos, it’s an image from my portfolio that probably least impressed Katy Barron…

Stay tuned!

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My last status update on Facebook read ‘Had best day in Bradford with best family and best boyfriend’. And I was not kidding! On Saturday 5th September, I spoke at an event called Photocamp at the National Media Museum in Bradford. It has been running now for three years at different venues in West Yorkshire, but it was my first time at the event. It was quite random how I got involved – one of the organisers, Louise Miller – or kanpai girl on Flickr – funnily enough spotted me in a Japanese restaurant with sister in Leeds just before we saw Drag Me To Hell at the cinema, back in the summer. I did not know I’d been recognised till Louise emailed me the next day to say hi, and propose the idea that I speak at Photocamp!

Photocamp seems to be quite a popular event, this year it sold out its 150 tickets (£7.50 each) and rather quickly too. It aims to bring together a collection of workshops and sessions for people with/developing an interest in photography. I was there all Saturday and was astonished at how much people got for their ticket price. There was a great variety of topics through the sessions, from male portraiture through to strobism and building your own camera (too many to choose from!) and it also made use of the Museum venue with talks and tours around the various exhibitions and archives.

I had only been to the National Media Museum once before. That was back in 2004, when I had taken part in a local photography project called Leeds in the Picture, and my friend Hannah and I (who I met on the project, and is now a very close friend) volunteered to be interviewed on the radio on behalf of the project. That was one of my first experiences with photography, and here I was again, this time giving the keynote to a photography event. Nice!

The keynote was for 30 mins in the cinema of the museum, to all 150 attendees, and then later I did a 70 minute session in a conference room, themed on composites.

I have done several presentations to date now: Microsoft Pro Photo Summit, Photokina, live photoshoot in Seattle, Focus on Imaging and Palm Springs Photo Festival, over 20 presentations that have been slightly different each time but with similar general themes. In preparing my keynote for Photocamp, I wanted to give a rundown to my ‘story’ in the fashion I had previously introduced myself, with the usual references to Flickr, photo-sharing, and how digital technology had triggered everything for me, but I wanted to bring in some new topics following recent thoughts on art and photography. I was aware that the presentation, being a keynote, needed to touch upon issues that weren’t entirely personal and anecdotal, but which had some universal relevance to photography and were observational of a wider picture, not just of ‘Miss Aniela’ herself.

Now – what was very different about this event? The presence of all my family! My mum and two sisters were in the audience. Being so local to where my family home in Leeds (I travelled up from Brighton the day before), they could all join me.

It was really good to have them there, and made the whole day really fun. It was a first-time opportunity to have them watch me talk in-depth about my work, as it’s probably the most detail they’ve been subjected to, and offered a unique context as they were (at last) captive audience to my thoughts and opinions! Heh… Also, thanks to Matthew, who took most of the pics you see here on this blog.

Jon Eland opened the event, and amusingly started the intro to my keynote with the question, ‘do you have a set called 600 faves’?

After introducing myself, I described how the exhibitions started, how I was approached by Microsoft last year, and what opportunities with other companies and individuals have ensued, along with the surrealism of being on the cover of American Photo. I emphasised how my beginnings in photography had been unconventional and ‘off the cuff’. I started with little equipment, not even a tripod, did not formally study art, and have made my livelihood so far through impact made on the internet. I wanted to convey to the audience how it was simply my passion and curiosity for photography that got me started, and how I’d like to inspire them with that notion today: of the power of ’self’.

Regardless of people’s taste in photography, and whether or not the huge cinema-screen-sized self-portraits before them were their cup of tea, I wanted them to consider me an example of ‘someone who has utilised the tools afforded to us by modern technology’, basically a speaker-friendly way of saying what Louis Lesko said in a well-worded testimonial about me which appears in my book: ‘an example of what happens when an artist has the temerity to ignore established paths and create herself from nothing, by utilising all of her own assets in synchronicity with the opportunities afforded by a modern-day global network’.

I then proceeded to try and further break the ice by saying I don’t think I stand here giving the keynote necessarily because I have bags of talent – ‘that is for you to decide’, but because I have done things and got them out there. I proceeded to call the word ‘talent’ redundant, not just because it is thrown about so much on the telly at the moment to describe anything and everything, but because success in any field depends on skills and applying oneself, and that if such thing as inherent talent, or an ‘eye for photography’ exists, it’s not enough by itself to get you places, just as a state of the art DSLR doesn’t take great pictures by itself.
Whilst I do believe to some extent that being an ‘artist’ is inherent, maybe because I’ve seen several young photographers with a visual eye that could not yet have been ‘learnt’, and the notion of ‘learning’ art seems very problematic to me, what is more important is being resourceful.
To add here: there are photographers who I personally think have ‘talent’ insofar as they seem to have a magic appeal in their images, and there are some who also have great interpersonal skills, ambition and confidence, and those who don’t. The former are the ones who will be successful photographers. Likewise, I have seen photographers whose work I don’t personally think is good, or maybe just isn’t my cup of tea, but they have fantastic skills which may include excellent articulation, PR skills, business skills or simply confidence, and they will do better than the ones who don’t get themselves out there, however much talent they might (subjectively) have.

I continued to elaborate: when I first started on Flickr I didn’t have any goal, nor was I aware what it would lead to. At the start, I just created images because I enjoyed it, and wanted to create more and more, and because I was sharing it at the same time, and not keeping it hidden, it got out there, and had an impact. In that sense I do encourage the use of the internet to share your work. However, I also wanted to share with the audience some mixed feelings about the net. Recently I’ve become a little jaded with all the self-promotion from other photographers on the net: on Flickr, Facebook and Twitter, as it’s easy to put across a distorted and complacent image of oneself. That is why it’s great to physically talk to people as I did at Photocamp, and break through the often-misunderstood veneer of the internet!

I then went on to describe why I take self-portraits, and how it’s been a way for me to seize those ‘tools’ I had been previously harping on about: a way for me to jump up and take pictures without relying on anyone else, or having anyone else’s permission or interception. It’s also been a way to build my confidence with a camera, and to try and hone a style. I mentioned how a lot of people are taking self-portraits, from what I can see on the internet, and that the appeal of using oneself as a model must be an attraction for many; being cheap, easy, and not requiring confidence or know-how to get started.
As in previous presentations, I broke ‘Miss Aniela’ down into her component parts of ‘control’: digital camera, digital processing, photo-sharing and self-portraiture, I showed how we have easier access to creating art and going from amateur to ‘professional’.

This is where I wanted to make this presentation different, however. I wanted to question words like ‘photography’ and ‘photographer’; ‘art’ and the ‘artist’, and ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’. I wanted to argue that many of the labels we feel obligated to give ourselves are starting to defy meaning. Like the word ‘talent’, I want to question some words of which our pre-conceived notions are beginning to become outdated. I said to the audience that although I stand here introducing myself as a ‘professional full-time photographer’, I want to disect exactly that means, because the conventional notion of a full time photographer is something that is being challenged.

When I hear those words, I get an image of someone with lots of equipment, maybe even using and developing film, taking lots of pictures every day, verbally directing other subjects to his gaze. The word ‘photographer’ strikes an immediate image that I don’t fit.

In that sense, you could encourage me to use the label ‘artist’. I produce work that is made up of individualised pieces, to my own brief and whims, which I intend to then exhibit and sell. I don’t take pictures every day, and some days I even get fed up with photography. So, you could say it’s more like my chosen medium as an artist, for the moment, and is one of several media I could choose to express myself in.

On the other hand, I can be described as a ‘photographer’, because I also have a foot in the photography industry itself – speaking at events like Photocamp, about, specifically, my photography; promoting photography products, being featured in more photography magazines than general ‘art’ magazines.

We are all aware, however, that there are many different types of, and jobs in, photography. The two I am concerned with here are ‘art photographers’ and ‘commercial photographers’. The ‘art photographer’ we tend to know as someone who works on individual photos as ‘art’. The ‘commercial photographer’, be it fashion, advertising or catalog, tends to churn out a high quantity of images, to a specific brief, and generally with a focus more on aesthetics rather than concept.

So therefore I might want to describe myself as an ‘art photographer,’ and yet, I don’t fit all those qualities that one conventionally sees in accepted ‘art photographers’, as someone who has not studied art, and who embraces digital technology and the internet as a photo-sharing space. I’m usually mentioned with the word ‘flickr’ in the same breath, and like it or not, it’s sad to say that some galleries still have a somewhat snobby attitude toward the modern: toward artists who share their work on photo-sharing sites and who don’t have art degrees – or, who don’t have a certain kind of traditional style. This is where I went on to get specific about the type of images you normally see in galleries.
I gave a little brainstorm of the qualities I see in the work of a typical ‘art photographer’ and a ‘commercial photographer’, and the rules they are taught to adopt. I emphasised that these are just my observations and are a very general statement about either side of the spectrum, certainly nobody will follow one side only, there will be exceptions and overlaps and just intended to be a quick exercise.

I showed some examples of work I consider typical ‘art photography’.
The conventional ‘art photographer’ produces photography that is: often sober, sombre, subtle, very minimally processed, most often taken on film, not digital (or appearing to have been taken on film). They will follow fewer technical rules, maybe even be badly composed, blurred or strangely cropped, overall, not looking, on face value, to have been that ‘difficult’ to take. You will conventionally see images like this in art magazines like Foam and Photoworks. The focus seems to be more on the concept or narrative, which will often be given textually alongside – as in the work of Brighton artist Eva Kalpadaki, whose images in her series/exhibition ‘Empty Space’ are accompanied with a verbose explanation telling us what we should be seeing in the images of blank walls.

Then I went onto show some examples of work that I consider more akin to that of a ‘commercial photography’. The images are: dramatic, colourful, polished, staged (or are staged as candid), visually-led (with a varying degree of concept or narrative), have instant impact, have followed more technical ‘rules’ of photography, and often in celebration of beauty or colour. The images might well be taken using digital cameras and processed with high degree of post-production e.g. Photoshop.

I then expressed an excitement at the fact that work like mine, which has traits that people have previously labelled as ‘commercial’, ‘beautiful’, even ‘fashion-like’ is being accepted as ‘art’ by galleries who would normally accredit artists producing work in the former category as the norm. Since gaining interest from galleries in Madrid, Miami and Chicago, I feel more encouraged to believe that my exhibitions so far have not been novelty one offs. By sticking confidently to our own tastes and aesthetic style, we can hopefully pave the way for more modern digital creativiity to be accepted, but crucially, to be accepted as valid ‘photography’.

What we see on the web, on sites like Flickr, are lots of people becoming active in sharing work with similar qualities of an art/photography hybrid.
However, I wanted to construe exactly what role photo-sharing plays in the production of modern photography, because I think it is more than a ‘role’, but a shaping force. The new ways that people are sharing their work is having an effect on the nature of the work they produce.
I see my work more onscreen than I do in print, seeing it most often postcard-size on a screen. I would describe myself as a ‘web born artist’, someone whose work is different because of the medium through which I’ve shared it from day one.
When you look at people’s work on flickr, or any website, the most popular images are those which look good at small or thumbnail sizes. In fact, some people might specifically, maybe even subconsciously, gear their work to have a composition impactful enough to draw attention at thumbnail-size, to increase likelihood of internet hits. So, this new space, and the way this new space acts as a route into an art or photography livelihood, changes the art itself.
I don’t believe this is necessarily negative, or inferior to art as we know it, but simply indicative of a change.

As I’d done in my first presentation, at the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit, I cited the example of the Tate Britain collaborating with Flickr in 2007 to invite submissions from the photo-sharing public on the theme of Britain, in ‘How We Are Now’. One of my images was chosen for the final 40 that went on digital display in the gallery. This is interesting as it shows how the modern photo-sharing phenomenon is meeting the traditional art world and blurring the boundaries. The Tate showcased not just photography, but the photo-sharing public, suggesting a change of traditional routes into the art scene.

I went on further to describe commissions and projects that have come my way through building my persona on the web, and then also mentioned how the inundation of praise on the web can on one hand encourage complacency, but on the other hand, can reveal certain societal attitudes that people would not get such a chance to reveal in other contexts. One of the biggest issues raised is my sex.

I have often been asked whether I think my images would have caught so many people’s attention if I weren’t, as they claim me to be, a young female who comes across as attractive in the pictures. I was asked this recently in a magazine interview, and I gave the answer I am about to give here.

My answer is that most likely not, my pictures wouldn’t be so popular.

However, my response is that we all have the free choice of what subject to use in our picture, be it an appealing landscape or model, or a pretty cat.
The issue is that we are not used to those subjects being in control of their appropriation.

The more I see female self portrait artists like myself asked these questions, the more I am aware that the need to ask it tells us a lot about the place of women and men in society, what we are used to seeing and by whom. When other photographers use models in their images, especially appealing and beautiful models, the pictures grab people’s attention without the photographer being queried or probed about how much interest their images have roused.
A woman who takes pictures of herself gets the credit for the work, which some people are uncomfortable with, because usually women in images do not ‘speak’ or have any kind of presence beyond their superficiality. Moreover, self-portraiture is difficult, and not to be undermined, which is why it can be so rewarding, and why so many people (men and women) do it. In particular, I think it is good that more women seem to be taking it up. Whilst the content of women’s self-portraits can never meet feminist ideals (as there are so many ideals, but not to get into that minefield here), to produce images of oneself, I think as a woman, is particularly satisfying as we can single-handedly challenge the many images of women we see around us in the media who are usually photographed by a male-dominated industry.
In that sense, I like to think that my work can offer something to women, and to everybody, in terms of encouraging you to seize hold of your own image and represent yourself how you want.

And that was it. I was going to give a detailed rundown of what I did in my Composite session, but this post is long enough already! The session took some of what I mentioned in my Focus On Imaging presentations, in terms of the ‘categories’ into which my work falls according to its level of processing, and unpicked the process on how to do a clone or levitation image.

However, I then went onto describe all the different levels of compositing beyond those: the more subtle ways you can combine more than one image from one shoot, or images from different shoots, or using stock images (preferably one’s own), textures, and also talking about complex compositing jobs I’ve done: ‘knowing where to start’, as here, and ‘knowing when to stop!’ as here. I also cited some examples of great other compositing work: Quizz, Mattjin, Oladios, Brooke Shaden. Better to have been there, really.

Snaps round the building:

Above and below: With organisers Jon Eland and Louise Miller. Thanks Teresa for taking these snaps.

With the family:

Above: having a prolonged tea break after giving my keynote

Above: Joking to my sister that I was going to pose like this, to my mum’s disapproval

…then realising there was a class full of people behind the glass window just ahead

Thank you to the people who bought a signed copy of my book ‘Self gazing’ (which was available after each talk).

A big thank you to the organisers, and also to my family, Matthew (and Louise!) for putting up with me all day and for being my trusty assistants, helping to lug boxes of books about!

I gave my presentation in an evening session in the delightfully orange Annenberg theatre in the Palm Springs Art Museum (seats orange, curtains orange, even the cleaners’ brooms were orange) . The museum was full of exciting diverse work, from a huge fibreglass puppy in the foyer, to the lifelike dummies of an elderly American couple, by artist Duane Hanson, who were slumped realistically in the corridor just outside the lecture theatre. I knew it was Hanson’s work as I came across his work in a book at college a few years back. Funnily enough I at first thought the dummies were real.

In my presentation I spoke about my work, the story of how I got into photography through photo-sharing, current opportunities and future plans. It was similar to my Pro Photo Summit 08 presentation but with a focus on what I called the ‘right here, right now’ factor that artists get by sharing their work online and by having galleries pursue them this way, also, crucially, being able to self-publish their work. I spoke about my Blurb books, examples of which were at the Blurb stand.

Other speakers at the evening presentations were Steve McCurry, Greg Gorman, Duane Michals, Mary Virginia Swanson, James Colton (from Sports Illustrated), Todd Hido, and Norman Seeff. Thanks to artist Jeff Dunas for being a great host.

I enjoy planning different angles to each presentation for different venues and audiences. It is, however, a challenge for any artist to (a) try and choose what to say about one’s work/life/motivations within the average 30 mins of their duration (b) always feel comfortable analysing their own work or talking about it, as opposed to the norm of letting viewers take their own interpretation.
Then there’s the actual delivery. Usually my body feels more nervous than I actually feel in my head. I now feel comfortable enough to want to change the format of my delivery. I’d love to mix it up a bit. After seeing a good few soundtracked, free-running slideshows of artists’ work at PSPF, such as the work of Brad Moore and Todd Hido. I’d like to see how mine could fare in this format – it would mean people wouldn’t get distracted by the pictures whilst I blabber on, they could watch them and give them whole attention…

I really enjoyed the festival. Even though we arrived 2 days in (almost halfway) I managed to capture enough of the seminars to get a feel for a running theme and indeed an indication of change in the world of photography: a blurring of the personal vs. the commercial, and merging of ‘art’ with ‘photography’ to a point where it’s not only me who feels as if they don’t know what label to give themselves. People talked about conventional topics: how to pursue galleries, how to get photography work, how to present one’s own website; and yet, there was a distinct feeling that the modern/future photographer does not need to separate their different portfolios of work and sell different angles of themselves to different audiences. One photographer present at a seminar on marketing oneself on the web, led by Dennis Keeley, Mary Virginia Swanson and Dan Milnor, said that he planned to ditch his structure of two sites and a blog, and bring them together into one space. He was determined to feel comfortable with the prospect of selling himself as one person, one unit, and one artist with not just a single portfolio of diverse work; but also a blog where he speaks his mind, ‘psychobabble’ as someone called it, showing his personal life, sharing his anecdotes and jokes (it was very interesting to hear that at he got at least two of his clients through sharing a simple, funny anecdote about his childhood on his online journal).

Above: outside the Art Museum.

I enjoyed watching other photographers’ work, even those of the style that isn’t usually my cup of tea. I particularly enjoyed Todd Hido’s night photography which inspired me to pursue my liking of low light and do some outdoor night shots later in our trip outside the inns and motels we stayed in. I was also intrigued by Norman Seeff’s presentation and his reassuring reflections on the notion of the ‘artist’ – how even in his years of film and photography he feels the confusion and fear he believes are within all artists, especially those who are first pursuing their vocation.
We were lucky on the evening raffles too – Matthew won a bag one night, and the following night, I won CS4!

Later I’ll write more about the trip we had post-PSPF, and share extras from the 30GB of image work we did, alongside my Flickr uploads.

Fuel stop!

Big thanks to Daniel Buchmaller who I met on my Seattle photowalk in February, who invited me one my first small aeroplane flight! It was fantastic. We flew over to Bremerton, landed and parked the plane for a spot of lunch then flew back over the skyscrapers of Seattle.

Amused by the surreal, lonesome plane-filling fuel station at Paine Field airport…

…I had to set up a pic. Daniel helped me to take these ‘trying to get the gas pump to the plane’ (!) shots. We used his swarve Nikon D3. I wasn’t quite sure about any of them enough to upload to Flickr but it was fun to edit them nonetheless!

Above: with the kind permission of these men we experimented with taking pics with another plane that landed… these ones are too cheesy for anything but my blog!

Some poser shots from the airfield, on the left wearing ‘the pilot’s’ sunglasses )

Our plane

Above: Damien, who was having a flying lesson

Some shots from the air:

And flying back over Seattle – which was amazing (and a bit scary):

Space Needle from above

The pictures weren’t that great, using my 17-85mm lens but it was nice to have some captures from above anyway, once I’d got over my jitters from being in the small plane which wasn’t as rickety as I expected!

———-
NEWS
Soon, I go to the US to attend and speak at the Palm Springs Photo Festival. I am giving a presentation on the 2nd April, speaking about my work, and also, how I use Blurb books, with my own book Self-gazing.
If you are in the area, come along!
We are also having a bit of a holiday out there afterwards, Las Vegas, Death Valley, Sedona, and the Grand Canyon. I look forward to some great pic opportunities!

And another thing I will do in this blog post is call attention to this year’s Microsoft Future Pro Competition which is open for entry until 30th April. The competition is open worldwide to college and university student photographers.
I get alot of emails from young photography students who are looking for inspiration, direction, advice, or just to be able to reference my pictures in their work (the latter which I’m always flattered by!) I would point out this competition to every one of those young people. I had the pleasure of meeting the winners of last year’s competition, at the Pro Photo Summit, as they were flown out to Seattle to receive their prizes. The winners included Ed Salter from the UK. They were in a great place to meet with photography professionals and kickstart their creative career, so if you’re a photography student, I recommend taking a look at the competition. It’s free to enter, and you could win $20k…. read more about it and see the pics from the other winners from last yearhere too.

Above images: the MS booth. At this event three of my images (mounted on hardboard, 1m x 70cm) were on display on the Microsoft booth which was great. I managed to take two of them home afterwards.. I gave The escape to my sister and put South by southeast on my own wall, which actually looks very nice. I like being able to slap up a print on the wall without having to go and pay for mounting/framing first…

The presentations

Above three images taken by John Mathieu

My talks were 40 mins each, two a day for the whole 4-day event. They were similar to the presentations I did at Photokina, except since Photokina I have come to know the products much better and use them more intuitively in my workflow. Whereas the Photokina presentations were about communication being an important part of the photographer’s workflow, the thrust to the presentations this time was RAW, and getting the most from shooting and processing RAW before destructively editing your images in Photoshop, the latter being the stage with which I’ve always been preoccupied.
There are also specific tools in Capture One Pro which are great for my own methods: the colour picker, meaning I can tweak specific colours in an image like this before the original has even been converted from RAW:

Also, the prospect of shooting tethered. The first time I shot tethered was with Alexandra at Pravda studios in Seattle. With regards to self-portraits, I’m starting to tether up my shoots (at least, indoors) to be able to view my images as they come in, not only larger than I would see them on a camera LCD but also in a way that avoids me having to keep getting up to go to the other side of the camera. Instead I can turn my laptop towards me. Not only that, but process an image and set it as a style to be applied to the other images as they come in.
In the case of clones, the ‘Overlay’ feature, a referencing tool in the program, can reduce the opacity of one image to exemplify how it would layer over another.

This is great for any of my clone composites, the one I showed as an example in my presentations was The evening banter (below) in which the clones are particularly huddled. If this image hadn’t have worked out, I said to my audience, I probably wouldn’t have gone back to reshoot it. I’m interested in guaranteeing a better chance of success in my fine-art shoots, without surrendering too much of the spontaneity I enjoy so much….

I showed a range of work in my presentation, and as in my presentations at other events, alluded to the three ‘categories’ of processing in my work. It would be misleading to say I love the processing more than the shooting and that the processing is always more important for me. Some images take more processing than others, some barely any. So, I refer to three categories: the ones that take only a slight tweak of processing to be presentable, which have been composed almost completely in-cam, and for which the role of processing is to emphasise and enhance, not to ‘create’ as such. An example would be Life on the downs:

Here is the image with the original capture on the left:

Other examples would be The dance, Girl dreaming, Stretch, Pink & read.

The second category is what I call ‘50/50′, for images which aren’t dependent on neither shooting nor the processing, it’s an equal weighting of both. South by southeast, for example, may have taken on it’s filmic look through b/w conversion but no other shot taken that afternoon resulted in that same effect, so the original capture’s windblow hair and expression are just as important key components to the final image:

Original next to the processed version:

Other examples would be At Portland Bill Lighthouse, Light wielding, Memoirs of a woman of leisure, and The right way.

The third are the images, such as the clones, which are composites needing more intricate work, with more than one image, but several.

…and a breakdown of the original shots and the processing stages:

All the images in the Multiplicity category would belong to this group, but also, other kinds of composites, such as my recent ‘Trick’ images which do not use clones but use compositing to create the illusion of an impossible feat. I think one of the most interesting parts of my presentation was a breakdown of the processes used to create these trick images. I showed the original images and method I would use to create different levels of ‘tricks’ in these images, and a brief slideshow of the compositing in process (to see the full process of the trick images you’d have to attend one of my presentations)

Above left is part of the process of creating Sprung:

And above right, The smothering:

And… I met Lara Jade! You might know Lara Jade from flickr. She was with her boyfriend, Luc, whose does equally stunning work.
I was just a couple of minutes into one of my presentations when I saw Lara Jade in the audience, instantly recognisable by her distinctive hair and looks which i know well from her self-portraits. I managed to track her down afterwards and have a lovely chat with her, and introduce her to Drew Gardner, a fashion photographer who was also at the event presenting for both Microsoft and Phase One. Here is Drew pulling in the crowds:

Above: me with ‘the cavegirl and the naughty schoolgirl’, just a hint of the very cliched use of female modelling roles on other stands…
Above photo taken by John Mathieu

It was a great event and I had some interesting chats with people… some opportunities afoot, will reveal more later )

We decided to venture first into the market to shoot some pics and avoid the rain…


Above two pics (both images by Daniel Buchmueller): arranging a shot inside Pike Place market, where sellers were just setting up…

Above: a self portrait in Pike Place with the help of a flash gun… here I talked about multiplicity, as well as posing techniques, use of timer, use of action in shots…

Above images: by Henry Yang (all b/w images in this post are by Henry).

After taking some self portraits inside the market, we took some abstract shots of fruit stalls, and then went back outside to shoot some images on the street and by the famous Public Market sign…

Above: by Henry Yang.

Above left: pic taken by Yoni, amusing as it was just the moment before I realised Amy (from Microsoft, who was popping to the market to buy some flowers) was there – and then pic on right, taken by Daniel Buchmueller, was just the moment afterwards…

Above: both images by Henry – I really admire the pic on the left, sums up the photowalks perfectly! I love the way he has caught Josh (left) and Daniel (on the right) looking through their cameras as if they were stuck to their bodies… one pointing one way and one the other way, as if looking through binoculars, and perfectly composed within the frame.

Above: then going into the cafe for various beverages, chat, and a break from the drizzle. Image by Henry Yang.

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Thanks to Yoni, Daniel, and Henry for giving me permission to blog their pics!

Now, images from the two photowalks in LA: first at Union Station, and then on Santa Monica pier. I’m now racing through these pics to get up to date!

Pictures from the first meetup at Union Station:

Above: my demo of the ‘cloning’ technique…

Above: Cresta posing by a British bus parked over the street from Union Station…

Above: more of Cresta

And then at Santa Monica pier:

Check out Jeff Greene’s composite here of the clone jumping shots I did of him that afternoon.

First of three lovely ladies from Flickr who I met – the lovely Brittany (I hope Miss Britt doesn’t mind me blogging her pic, click through to see it on her stream)

And here…. on the left is ’stainedglassheart’ from Flickr (i’m trying to find her page but the crap Flickr searching system is making that difficult – will post a link to her stream as soon as I locate it!) and on the right – Katie Lee, or ‘reflecting truth’! I love Katie’s recent series of self-portraits,‘charmed, i’m sure’, so it was great to have a chat about those!

Katie joined me, Jeff and another photowalk guest William for a meal afterwards…

Along with another person I know from flickr!: Mike Zara, or monkeytime

Still to come – more pics from the US trip (including my trip on a small plane) and various other antics; also images from Focus On Imaging where I met a very famous British Flickr user )

Here are pictures from the second day of San Francisco photowalks on 3rd February 2009, first at the US memorial:

And later at Panhandle to the Conservatory of flowers:

Above: taken by Ziv Gillat

Above: taken by Ziv Gillat

More to come….including pics from LA where I met TWO Flickr pals….

Also coming, pics from Focus On Imaging (Birmingham) where I randomly met another of my fave artists from Flickr!!… as you will see!