New image Parasite (click here to view larger).

It can be considered a flipped, flea-shaped freakier follow-up to The fourth soil, another recent image of mine:

(View The fourth soil large, with description, here)

Parasite evolved from experimentation in Photoshop, following on from the same love of the shiny saplings rendered illustrative-looking after converting to monochrome, ‘timeless’ perhaps, or at least arcane. But here I was strangely inspired by the anatomy of the flea, and in merging the body with the branches, I called to mind a collage-like look reminiscent of Ellen Rogers. The result: the beautiful and broken human parasite. I have loved to see the comments so far on Flickr which have cited Dali and H.R. Giger, as well as taken on other interpretations of the creature as a seed of new life, the germination of a better humanity, life-making as well as life-taking.

Recently I’ve been writing more with my images. With this one however, having been inspired and stimulated by the comments on my images on Flickr recently, I had a better idea. I asked for your words. I wanted to place the words of my viewers directly onto the image, making it into an anatomical chart, as in the mock-up below.

I wanted to know your articulated thoughts on how humans are parasites on the world, feeding from its resources – that is: in both good and bad, and natural/inevitable ways. I wanted to hear what you truly feel in response to the conceptual subtext of this image – even if it involves digressing, or taking on a different reading.

Update: and here is the result. Click to view large.

For those who can’t view this on flickr, here is Incestipede.

What started as a simple self-portrait nude just to show off my pond turned into a Bourdin-esque harking back to my image Corolla and one of the most impulsive titles I’ve ever typed. There were so many hard decisions I had to take along the way of this bizarre edit, aware of a certain inspiration from the sculptures of Henry Moore. And it’s the first image from a new abode: we’ve just moved into a wonderful 60s character home and I can’t wait to further explore the artistic possibilities. Our cats love the open space both inside it and the rural vole-laden idyll around it, whilst I get perfect peace to write my new book, so it’s the start of a new chapter in more ways than one. I hope this invites a whole new spell of strange and beautiful images.

View larger on flickr

(View on flickr)

I find myself again citing Guy Bourdin as an inspiration for my recent work. It’s funny to recall how much of a longstanding inspiration his work has been for me, as I can recall referencing his work back in ‘06 for pics of mine such as The deaths. I feel that now I can comprehend his work better (even though he never intended his work to be ‘art’ beyond the perishable medium of a fashion magazine). I must have seen only a fraction of his lifetime of work, but what I have seen represents, for me, an intersection of different approaches – the surreal & composited (obviously manipulated) through to the more natural and effortless (not obviously manipulated) which have both equally inspired me.

Above: another image recently inspired by Bourdin, Corolla (view on flickr)

I had a bit of a revelation reading & looking at a Bourdin book the other night and thinking about my own direction. I feel like I know where I want to go with my own work, both inkeeping with whatever style I may have fashioned so far, and also how to take it further and diversify it (it’s liberating to feel that way, because it’s like being cosy at home and also opening one’s eyes to the world at the same time).

I feel braver that I do not want a ‘personal/commercial’ divide in my work, and I want to be bolder – be it with colour, subject, tone, or all of those. I want to approach commercial work with the same mindset as my personal work. It may only be a lucky few who make a living from doing that, but I’m happy to devote myself to reach for it.

I am also feeling confident about the way I work. Through the years I’ve wondered at my own methods and felt as if they maybe need correcting, regarding my spontaneity as probably just a necessary facet of self-portraiture (my book Self-Portrait Photography professes to the haphazard nature of the genre and how all its 8 contributors have embraced it as part of their methods). I’ve realised I don’t envision images exactly as they turn out – and that is fine. The place I’m shooting in, the props I use, the colours of outfits – I’ve become maybe more proficient at gathering specific ingredients but I watch them bake into an often surprising shape that somehow felt it was right all along. I find that the important thing is to do, using those props and things that throw you towards the concepts you want to express, to set oneself a somewhat loose brief.

I believe that artists work on more levels than the obvious consciousness. Our art can tell us more than our simple conscious mind comprehends at the outset.

With this picture, Retreaded above (continuing as part of my new work), I prepared the trip to the pile of tyres (by asking permission from the yard owners beforehand), and I also thought for hours overnight about what I would do in the shot and that I wanted to wear red. I still didn’t have a rigid plan though. On the day having forgotten my tripod mount, I had to have Matthew hold the camera where I wanted. Both shooting and processing developed organically, in a way I have always enjoyed.

denude definition

de·nude (dē no̵̅o̅d′, -nyo̵̅o̅d′; di-)

transitive verb denuded -·nud′ed, denuding -·nud′·ing

to make bare or naked; strip; specif.,

1. to destroy all plant and animal life in (an area)

2. Geol. to expose (layers of rock) by erosion, weathering.

Below – b/w version (view on flickr).

I took this in Ashdown Forest the other morning.

Wandered for about an hour with Matt, looking for the perfect tree. There were plenty of fallen ones but with too much of a busy cluttered backdrop. I circled this one about three times before I was convinced it didn’t look too much like an unidentifiable fossilised elephant trunk.

This is technically a HDR panorama – made from 2 images (a second shot for the upper third of the image, to heighten the scene) and each were auto-bracketed for 3 exposures, giving a total of 6 images (processed in Photomatix & converted to b/w in PS CS4.)

Matt suggested trying monochrome, and I liked it this way, calling to mind the work of Rutger ten Broeke. I saw a book of his breathtaking rural b/w female nudes at the Kahmann Gallery booth at Photo LA last month. I haven’t been able to find as much diversity of his on the web as I saw in the book, and neither can I find his book for sale online unfortunately. His website showing a few pics can be seen here.

My first commercial book, Self-Portrait Photography is now available to buy on Amazon UK and Amazon US. This blog post covers information about the book’s content and also about the book launch/signing I am having on 3rd March 2011 in London. See further below or go straight to Facebook to RSVP.

I have been working on this book for the past year, and the work within it is from the past 5 years of my self-portraiture. I am tremendously excited about this book, because of how much genuine quality content I believe it holds within its 176 pages. It is a book for aspiring photographers as much as it is a book about my own photography.

Above: the intro pages, click to view larger.

Chapter 1 covers an introduction to self-portraiture; its history in art, all about my own background, and the modern photo-sharing phenomenon. This was my opportunity do my own research about the background of self-portraiture through the ages, and to reflect on where we have arrived with regards to the self-portraiture artists create today, and the new media they use to share it.

Chapter 2 covers everything the aspiring artist/photographer needs to think about regarding equipment: what to consider when picking a camera, lenses, tripod, lighting, and other vital accessories for this genre of photography, like remote shutters.

Above: from the Shooting chapter (click to view larger)

Chapter 3 is all about shooting your own self-portraits: from choosing clothing, locations and props; how hair and make-up can affect a shoot; how you might plan a shot, using mirrors, how to pose, shooting nudes, shooting in low light, and using props to complement your images. All of these spreads are angled toward the self-portraitist’s needs and aims. There are also spreads detailing the artistic shooting process behind my pictures such as my series shot in Death Valley, and my images inspired by the painter Balthus.

Chapter 4 is all about the processing: the ‘how-to’, if you like, of a lot of effects seen in my work. First I discuss the place of modern manipulation and also talk about the technical side of shooting digital: the best ways of saving and storing your files. I then move through the world of post-editing from the basics, through to the advanced; from the staple tools in Photoshop right through to wild and otherworldly effects. I look at how colour and curves adjustments can make all the difference to an image, the different ways of converting an image to monochrome, and move onto using compositing to make fine detail-changes to a image. Then I break down the process to producing multiplicity or levitation images, citing the process of my popular image The smothering. If that weren’t enough for this chapter, I also throw in a spread all about HDR (high dynamic range) and how I’ve used it on my self-portraits taken in Abandoned places. Unlike any other book, I cover it from the self-portraitist’s angle. And that is not it…

Chapters 1 – 4 are already crammed full of images and info and inspiration and advice, but the last two chapters add massive additional value to the book!

Chapter 5 is where eight contributors, who are all self-portrait artists of different styles, nationalities, ages and backgrounds, share a written insight to their work that they have never shared anywhere else.

Cherry-picked for diversity, and yet all beholding something utterly mould-breaking in both art and photography scenes today, they all excel at what they do. There are four spreads (8 pages) dedicated to each artist. They are, from top left round, round clockwise:

Federico Erra

Yulia Gorodinski

Annette Pehrsson aka. ‘Welcome ghosts’

Joanne Ratkowski aka. ‘Dr Joanne’

Lucia Holm aka. ‘Miss Lulu and the Teaspoon Shortage’

Rossina Bossio

Noah Kalina

Jon Jacobsen

Each photographer talks about their background and how they got into self-portraiture, and about their artistic process to creating their work. They each discuss two images in detail, from conception to execution.

CHAPTER 6 is a textual reference guide, as full to the brim as I could make it (I literally had to slash it in half to cram it in, so you get a quality edit) all about the photographer marketing their work – most of these topics I have never covered before. Standing on the experience I have garnered over the past 5 years of being thrown in at the deep end with fine-art photography, and bolstered with research, I first talk about photo-sharing and how to use the internet as a tool to leverage a career in photography: going about getting a website, blog, and using social media to develop an online presence. I then discuss the all-important issue of photographers’ rights and how to deal with magazines, publicity opportunities and plagiarism. I move onto printing, exhibiting, self-publishing, and the decision of whether to sell stock photography. All of this is from my perspective as a fine-art photographer and from the angle of a self-portraitist, but this information can be useful to everyone who involves themselves in photography, even if you don’t plan to go pro – because through photo-sharing it is so likely to be handed a ‘pro’ opportunity that most people do not know how to deal with.

Above: full cover (UK version), click to view larger.

This book is jam-packed with information, tips, advice, inspiration – and tons of images. It is no ordinary photography manual; I feel it blurs the boundary between an art book and an instructional book, with a relatively small price tag.

SELF-PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY: The ultimate in personal expression. By Natalie Dybisz aka. Miss Aniela

For those in the UK (published by Ilex), see the book on Amazon UK here.

If you’re in the US, buy it on Amazon.com.

On Thursday 3rd March 2011, 6pm – 9am, I am having a book launch/signing at:

DreamBagsJaguarShoes
32-34 Kingsland Road, Shoreditch
London E2 8DA
+44 (0) 20 7729 5830

Nearest tubes: Hoxton, Old Street, and Shoreditch High Street.

The book will be available for £20 (personally signed if you like). You can RSVP on Facebook here. Hope to see many of you there!

Above: Free range.

For over a year now, I have wanted to incorporate environmental issues/topics into my work. I did not know how to do so without feeling like I was forcing some unwanted didactic quality into my images, not wanting my work to turn into some kind of advertising campaign. Instead, I have waited until it felt right, until it felt instinctive.

I spent a month this year with artist Brooke Shaden whose approach to photography is quite methodical, often involving pre-conceived plans and sketches, determining an outcome down to the pose intended to be used. Not being used to this, I had to make sure I had more of a plan than I am used to having, which would be the case in going out with any other artist, but especially one of Brooke’s nature.

Below is an image using Brooke herself, where I purposely brought along a basket of foliage (bought the day before from a local Salvation Army shop) to go with the environment. Unlike Brooke who lives in the area, as a foreigner I was excited by the environmental set-up of the scene: the sci-fi quality of plants engulfing and seeping from a huge manmade structure (an apartment block) and the strange Crewdson-esque vibe that would be created by standing a person amongst it, letting the interaction between man/manmade and nature speak for itself. After editing this final image from my selection, it took me about two weeks before I was convinced that the lack of special effects, levitation, multiplicity etc, wasn’t a deficiency but a departure that worked.

I wanted the title to merely whisper a suggestion of meaning: the human angle of the character sleepwalking, or the more ecological idea of nature awaiting a day to engulf and break free, but placid enough to maybe be neither, or a symbolic intertwining of both.

Above: Unrest.

So, I thought upon my environmental inspiration, the outlook and insight that has developed in my head from despairing every time I enter a supermarket and buy another chemically-bagged salad or huge plastic box with a small meat chop rattling about inside; from the political documentaries watched by my boyfriend in the evenings on the implications of such issues as frighteningly imminent oil and water depletion; from the barren landscape and mood evoked by films like The Road and Solent Green, and basically everything I think when looking round… a series of vignettes in my head would include fast food wrappers stuck in trees; a man in a shop buying a crate of bottled water already wrapped in thick plastic – squeezing it into a plastic bag then squeezing another plastic bag around the other end; Drive-Thru Pharmacies (that was in America); oil-slicked birds in the news, and birds that end up like a living Christmas cracker (see Midway by Chris Jordan).

Below are Gyre falls (left) and Fall again (right).

I started to incorporate unlikely props and materials into my images, centred around waste, plastic, household objects and banal functional items like traffic cones. In musing over ideas, I have also done some sketches, but found that I prefer to write down words, at least at first. Basically I have experienced a desire to inject a little bit more preparation into my normal spontaneous approach, but still letting the ingredients come together organically whilst shooting (especially if I’m shooting myself, and hence can’t see and frame myself like I can with another model). The selection of the final picture(s) from the shoot, and of course what I do to them in Photoshop, will be another part of the conceptual journey.

Rather than submitting to some singular message that suggests how we should live, I have sloped into instead suggesting the futility of doing anything. That may sound depressing and negative, but it’s not the place of my art here to tell people how to make the world a better place. This series is about brooding, about inwardly reflecting, taking as much righteous ‘message’ from the image as you wish, in the manner of a private religion. The contrapuntally-placed fashion models amongst flies and pig heads in the fashion images of Guy Bourdin have inspired me to believe I don’t have to eradicate the sensual or ‘beautiful’ quality from my images, but place it in a context that is weird or surreal, which together with the title can be topical, but esoterically so (depending on the viewer). In the same way, I don’t have to feel tedious using myself as a model, even as nude and provocative, despite it harking back to my past, more whimsical self-portraits in a way that might be irrelevant. The whole point is that I wanted to provoke a questioning, a feeling of unease, a picture that can still be enjoyed and not necessarily dictate a lesson in ecology.

Above images: Taking stock.

With model Christopher John Hills V in Self-destruct below, the litter already in the wooded location (the bottle) merged with a prop I’d brought along myself (the FedEx box) as well as the smoke bomb and cigarette (and crucially, a lighter – luckily Christopher had one).

Above: Silent siren (model Katie Johnson).

Regarding my series and the softcore ‘intent’ that I am describing here, so far it is been nice to have my followers so far (on Flickr) ‘get’ it, but there is not a definitive ‘it’ intended for everyone to get. I have noted to myself that this is the first time I have ever embarked consciously on a ’series’, but an important aspect is in welcoming ambiguity. The titles I add to the images are a helpful way of both directing the viewer towards the potential meaning, but also remaining aloof, often with something mystical sounding or something that could be a pun.

Maybe for sake of that ambiguity, I shouldn’t be writing this, or you shouldn’t be reading this. Maybe the point is that there shouldn’t be words. On that note I will end this post here and simply continue with my series and maybe another time soon, I will be compelled to share further thoughts.

2010 has been a great year, but then again it is interesting to look at every year’s progression since I started photography in 2006.

As time moves on and I generally widen my resources (ie. looking beyond Flickr), it becomes clearer to me that ‘photography’ is not monolithic and the word cannot can’t be discussed generally. Any one of photography’s purposes depend on the context of viewing, and of the viewer’s disposition, taste and expectations.

Being a ‘fine-art’ photographer, I have not been confined to a single commercial focus (ie. things can get dangerously aimless) so I have quietly admired a variety of different types of photography over the past couple of years. If I have to summarise what I enjoy seeing in a photo, across all genres, I think there are two main things I seek: a sense of the genuine, and also, the ‘wow’ factor. The first refers to how I only enjoy the work from someone who at least tries to be original, no matter what the outcome, expresses what they really want to show, rather than copying others’ work or blatantly emulating ‘trends’. The second refers to how I also like to be instantly stimulated by whatever I see in an image – there has to be for me, an exciting reason as to why the artist has chosen to express the situation visually. But seeking to use a ‘wow factor’ in my own work has often left me trapped in a rich diet of tidy polished colourful frames, and photo compositing.

This ‘diet’ has caused me to feel a certain cynicism to types of photography such as documentary, any photography that seemingly comes straight out of camera. I like to step back now and then and ‘detox’ myself from that standing. However, I also realise that even though my own images feature a lot of beauty, colour, boldness, and seemingly meaningless ‘beauty’, I have always been a fan of the ‘real’; particularly, naturally occurring juxtapositions within a scene. This has become more apparent to me since being attracted to abandoned buildings and their ready-made ‘found’ appeal:

I also understand why I have always been drawn to natural lighting, and ‘natural’ situations (a location or scene already prepared) rather than using the blank canvas of a studio or ever spending that much time having styling done, or preparing intricate props. Upon that ‘ready-made’ or natural scene of course, I introduce a contrived element which is in the form of a human, and often, for a variety of reasons including convenience, has been myself. This contrived human element, especially when I have used myself, is a way for me to call the final result ‘mine’.

It is refreshing to me, however, to remember that photography is not all about being beautiful, tidy, polished, perfect, and not always about compositing. I could do a week-long seminar on how I would encourage others to look at how you can achieve an effect across several images rather then just one: multiplicity images, HDR, panoramas, and even any combination of them put together, and indeed, the workshops I run are all about that. I think it is liberating to consider, when making a creative photograph, how you an add or remove something from the frame afterwards, whether to add more people, remove a chair for a trick effect or a person holding a reflector. Here are a few heavily composited images I created this year:

Body repairs - a ‘trick’ image where I have used compositing to ‘erase’ the chair and the person holding the chain. I also treated the background separately in order to lighten it and radically de-noise it, which added a painterly touch. I added more hair to the front of Katie’s head and reddened her lips. The image is cropped to keep the figure prominent in the frame and also treated with Curves adjustments.

Bending over backwards - a rare occasion where I completely transform what I consider to be a dark and mundane shot, into a very bright and peach-toned ‘trick’ image by compositing a raised leg from another shot (see the full mind-boggling process on this blog post).

Visions of Trees - An example of a multiplicity composite I did this year, where I shot many images of the two members of the band Visions of Trees running around an abandoned satellite dish and composited them together to create the feeling of flow and action.

A highlight of 2010 was having one of my images, The smothering from 2008 (also notably one of my most ‘processed’ or illusion-based images)  selected by curator Natasha Egan for the Art of Photography Show. It was also discussed by Egan in an interview where she compared the image to another photograph from the show, “Chris helps his girlfriend, Mona, smoke crack in their apartment in Hackney, London” (here) a very different kind of ‘photograph’ that Egan used to compare with mine conceptually, “they’re both in a box, both pictures are taken in these tight quarters, and yet the results are different people experimenting with… life’s challenges.”

In fact, being in the Art of Photography Show was a great thing for me because I had the chance to evaluate lots of other brilliant images at which I wouldn’t usually bat an eyelid, and to remember that photography is not always about beauty in its most typical forms. I find it healthy to step away from the priorities commonly found in that of mid-range fashion and other commercial photography, and recall that photography has the power to do many things other than to tantalise and make someone slobber over a woman or product (or both). The phrase ‘easy on the eye’ reminds us that gratuitous, isolated beauty in a photograph is precisely that: easy, and therefore does not challenge the viewer. It is irksome phrases like that which have helped me push my own boundaries.

I admire the work of Noah Kalina, Yulia Gorodinski, and Annette Pehrsson. First I must mention that all of these artists’ work is distinctly different from each other and I am not lumping them into one box, but they all provide for me, in some way, a change from my usual: they offer candidness, something a bit more ‘real’, and generally, less ‘composited’ in the fantastical sense. Whilst Noah’s work has a dry-humoured, candid simplicity, Annette’s has a beautiful timeless romanticism that draws as much attention to her use of interiors and nature as much as the people being portrayed in her images. Yulia’s work is a guilty, or not so guilty, pleasure of mine. Whilst her work has all the candidness of the other photographers mentioned here, she shows how she can combine feminine beauty and colourful post-processed allure into those same witty images. All three of these photographers are in my commercially-published book Self-Portrait Photography which comes out very soon – one of the best things awaiting me in 2011!

I have also recently been inspired by the images of Martin Parr, and my last blog post showed some shots I took over Christmas whilst inspired by browsing his work.

To look at the work of photographers here mentioned, is to almost enter into another world: that of the ‘haphazard shot’, or at least, what appears to be a haphazard shot. The motive of that shot is not necessarily to say everything, but to suggest, and by power of suggestion, to potentially to say a lot more. I could put numerous examples from the photographers I mentioned above, but I recommend going to their websites to look at their images (Kalina, Gorodinski, Pehrsson, Parr).

Some images I created this year had more of an influence from this alternate realm of image-making. In May shortly before going for a fashion shoot with make-up artist Ania Gastol and costume designer Lenka Padysakova, I looked at the work of Chris Dorley-Brown. His work can be described as social-documentary street photography (he does surprisingly use photo-compositing, but to different ends) – what a difficult influence to have stuck in my head as I photographed smiley model Maria around the marshes and Hackney Wick! But the locations selected by Ania were already interestingly contrapuntal to Maria’s beauty and Lenka’s elegant costume styling, so they provided a grungy contrast. I also wanted to keep the poses a bit odd or candid. Below is one of the images, where I feel that I did something veering towards this ‘haphazard shot’, one of the many shots where I kept the block of flats visible, in pursuit of something Dorley-Brown-esque:

The ‘haphazard shot’ almost thrives on what is not in the frame. Something might be cropped off, maybe someone’s body or even head. There is not always an obvious focal point that the camera (and therefore our eye) latches onto, but there is always something important focally, and the eye will lead about the frame in an intellectual dance of curiosity. The focal point might be understated or captured candidly. There will be ‘beauty’ somewhere, maybe in the form of a vibrant colour, an attractive person or a pleasing geometric form but they are rationed like a chocolate biscuit in the middle of a strict diet (and maybe quite elusive at first, as though the biscuit were hidden by the person imposing the diet…)

The moment I felt the least frustrated was when I photographed her spontaneously standing by a crumby looking Austin Maestro. At other times I encouraged her to pull out of her model poses and stand straight-on at the camera, not to smile or pose her hands, but just to ‘be’. I felt at the time that the images came out confused, half ‘fashion’ and half a bit candid. Later I felt more excited when putting them together as weird diptychs, and now, looking back, I think it was one of my favourite shoots of the year, be it a slow burner in my head. Having my original mind-inhabitant Dorley-Brown himself ‘fave’ a couple of my pictures on Flickr made me feel as if I had had done something right or interesting. I was also drawn to making juxtapositions through diptyches rather than elaborate composites:

Some photography (ie. typically most contemporary photography) is not meant to be looked at for fantasy. People look to it for reality, for documentation. We all know the feeling of looking at old family photos and naturally accepting that the ‘wow’ factor of cherishing such images lies in the time that has passed; the differences between then and now, the things that have aged or gone. It is the aim of the ‘haphazard shot’ photographers to evoke that same feeling in a photo that has been taken ‘now’. In such photos, the viewer is not looking for special effects. They are looking to see something that relates to truth, such as politically and socially. It may be ‘truth’ relating to a specific circumstance within a family or any wider situation. The ‘wow’ moment may happen more in the head than in the eyes. The photo may even be composited in Photoshop in some way, but it won’t be evident. It will hide away as elusive as a cloned-out crisp bag. Simply because the photographer has chosen to present the image, he/she is saying something is important; by the notion of their use of ‘photography’ itself, something is being called to our attention, be it witty, humorous, or simply the way in which the artist has viewed the scene through a pair of eyes that take nothing for granted. These kind of images encourage us to see something extraordinary in something ordinary.

The ‘haphazard shot’ celebrates all that is imperfect, and at once therefore perfect, within the glimpse of life as the photographer has witnessed it. It is less about instant arrest of the eyes, and more about invoking a story in a more suggestive than overt manner.

As much as I admire work of photographers producing images very different from mine, there is something I am personally drawn to about surrealism, fantasy, embellishment and sensationalism. I think that what I do enjoy personally as an artist is experimenting with exactly how much of those saturating elements to use. This shot of Maria below, for example, may be very sobering from the likes of levitation and multiple clones, but the bubbles in the air with the lips and eyes that appear on them are the implausible element, the slightly dreamy addition that remind us we are looking at the scene of some kind of contrived, styled shoot. The costume stylist is visible in the frame and is crudely cropped off, but somehow provided a pleasurable sense of what was going on that day, half contrived and half ‘behind the scenes’.

Below are pictures I took of myself (collaboratively with Matthew) early in 2010, where I was inclined to avoid processing the image too much, keep the crude but pleasing red doorway in the shot, and let the weird beauty of the abandoned children’s ward speak for itself with its words on the wall as shot. I describe these images are somehow self-indulgent in that they remind me of the pleasurable weekend I had that time. Instead of combining two of myself into one of my usual multiplicity pics I decided to do a diptych. However, the placing of the children’s books around me, and the overall weird implausibility of a woman in her underwear sitting in this context (interpreted as distinctly sexual by Newcity Art in Chicago) still makes this image far more ‘contrived’ than what is found in most ‘one shot’ photographers’ portfolios. It’s just not as ‘contrived’ as most of my other work.

So, of course, what is ‘contrived’ is entirely subjective and contextual. The contradicting issue is that most situations which photographers like to capture ‘candidly’ are those which have been set up originally for contrived purpose. Noah Kalina’s images of models in funny poses mid-shoots spring to mind. One example this year for me, was my image Soliloquy (below). I originally set up the camera to pose vacuously on the bed with most of my body and my face within the frame. Reviewing the images afterwards, this image struck me for its simplicity and minimalism. It said alot to me than the other images, even just as my own psychoanalysis, almost. Its one of those self-portraits that suggest my images can sometimes tell me more than I am trying to tell others… or at least take their own track of meaning without my conscious intentions playing a big role.

An exercise in emotional detachment (below) was shot with a cigarette and smoke, creating an effect delicious enough in-cam. I had the idea of the title beforehand so I was intent on expressing something a bit more ‘raw’, featuring myself doing something a bit more ordinary than usual. All that I wanted to do to the image afterwards was to crop (choosing to crop off the top of my head to further dissuade the notion of it being a normal ‘portrait’) and to bolden the colours and tones in Curves.

Below are shots taken for a fashion brand, where I have had the model standing demurely, not doing so much as even flexing a leg, looking down, looking out of the frame, boldly cropped in-cam, and statue-like amongst her sleepy surroundings. Other images on the same shoot did wilder things but these were moments where I relished in a ‘one-shot’ simplicity to emphasise the clothing a subtler way.

Below is a shot taken outside an abandoned house at the end of the summer. I had a lovely afternoon frolicking in gowns with Matt and Sarah Schloo, but I have since struggled to find something new in those images beyond what I have previously done in similar scenarios with gowns and abandoned places. Getting dressed into my normal gear and standing for a ‘look where I am’/'wish you were here?’ Facebook-type shot outside the dilapidated premises provided what I thought was a more interesting glimpse of the scene: just myself loitering. I liked it because it was genuine, and not posed in the manner of the shots inside. I didn’t feel the need to share it publicly though for that reason – it is a shot I like because it is not a performance, it’s my own souvenir of the day.

Some other images I enjoyed creating this year, and how they relate to natural vs. contrived

Above: Every day is a holiday, featuring Tim Andrews. This is obviously composited, to provide an illusion beyond reality, but the shooting stage itself as an epiphany for me as I loved the raw shots more than I usually do (especially for this rare occasion for me of photographing a man) and the process of collaborating with a subject whose ideas interplayed with mine was a new and enjoyable experience. I felt confident about the things I did (such as keeping the umbrella & light in the frame, especially when I hardly ever use lights like this) and the concept of what was going on in the images was important from the outset, whereas usually I do things in a bit of a blind dance for it to become clearer later.

Above: The same fashion shoot as the one producing the purple dress images further above. In terms of the model’s pose here, everything is ‘as-shot’; her pose, her hair and the props were all placed as such. However, this particular shot was composited together from about 6 shots, to form a photomerged ‘panorama’ of sorts, providing a fish-eye effect beyond the capabilities of the lens I was using.

Below: The morning they met the clouds, a collab with Brooke Shaden. The effect of the early morning mist had very much that same pleasing effect as cigarette smoke – I wanted to avoid over-processing the shot afterwards. I instead wanted to bolden the image overall. This image, however, is composited to bring the ideal shot of both Brooke and I together into one frame. That is largely to do with the technique of shooting self-portraits: you cannot be precise about pose and positioning as well shooting a subject in front of you.

It is a vast and potentially convoluted topic that I am broaching here and I am half reluctant to post it, in case I am inclined to continually re-edit, but a new year’s resolution is to avoid doing that. I have drafts from 3 years ago of essays I never posted!

Overall, I strive to hit the balance between artistic and commercial, to bring something a bit more dramatic and visually interesting to ‘fine art’, and something a bit more narrative-led and meaningful to otherwise ‘commercial’ images. I would not want to flounder helplessly between the two, never satisfying the needs of both, and being labelled as the outsider by each respective circle, but to succeed in making part of my living from both sides. Having my image discussed in an artistic context in The Art of Photography Show this year was certainly a confidence boost that it is possible.

In 2010 I also enjoyed going out to LA to meet Brooke Shaden and witness her approach to photography which is very much an antithesis to the likes of the photographers discussed earlier in this post. (I will be further collaborating with her in a couple of weeks.) Starting workshops was another feature of the year that I am significantly pleased about, having been something I was planning on starting a few months leading up to it. It was empowering to realise that I could host my own independent classes without the aid (or to be more precise, the burden) of doing them with/through a company, and that I could surprise myself in being miles more proactive than some of the so-called ‘business people’ I met in 2010 who tried to offer me such an opportunity. Workshops have been rewarding in multiple ways; financially, artistically, and socially; organising and running them has so far been very stimulating, and felt like good and healthy hard work. I look forward to doing many more in 2011.

My ostensible photography-related goals for 2011 include doing more commercial work (to find a proactive fine-art agent for advertising, fashion and/or other commercial work), keep doing enough regular work to continue saving £xxx a month to buy a house, and to work on a new, separate series of images that will embody a particular concept, and ambitiously push a few personal boundaries. Also this year I would like to completely eradicate frustration and negative feelings in my day-to-day career whilst maintaining a healthy level of self-criticism – and dedicate an afternoon a week to reading. I have so many books on my shelf and would like to see beyond their tantalising covers…

In 2011 I encourage myself, and all fellow creatives to keep doing what you do with confidence – and to always keep your own personal passion for your art as genuine to yourself as possible – but also to keep welcoming the inspirations of a more diverse range of photographers into your work.

Happy new year to all my blog readers!

Here are some pics we took (only the ones my family allowed me to show)

Click landscape ones to view larger.

To come: blog entry analysing this type of photography, and looking over my pics in 2010.

Staying with, and collaborating with Brooke Shaden in LA has been a wonderful and enlightening experience. Our primary intention was to host two collaborative workshops which I wrote about in my last blog entry. The rest of the time, apart from preparing for, shopping for, and recovering from our workshops, was spent shooting together.

Hallowe’en in America for a first for me, pleasantly spent walking round Hollywood with Brooke and also my friend Don Thornhill who had come over from Oklahoma to hang out and also come to our workshop. Brooke showed me some great vintage shops in Hollywood, which sell a whole host of cheap vintage dresses that in my head put my favourite, much sworn-by second-hand shop in Brighton, Snoopers Paradise, to shame! Together with Don and another friend and workshopper Katie Echle, we also had a day at Universal Studios. It was a toss-up between that and Disneyland and I voted that Universal Studios would have more content I’d be interested in! At Universal I went on a rollercoaster ride for the first time (excluding a one-off venture onto Flamingo Land’s ‘Wild Mouse’ I had many years ago) in return for Brooke’s promise that she would watch a horror film of my choosing: the original Hallowe’en (Brooke is scared stiff of the entire horror genre). At Universal I very much enjoyed the tour around the grounds, which placed into surreal proximity to one another the sets for Psycho, Jaws and The Grinch…

Before our first workshop, Brooke and I shot together on a beach in Malibu at dusk. Brooke said she wanted to try out doing a long exposure. We used a variety of methods to make the focusing work in the dark conditions and posed for 20 second-shots together in various poses on the shore. We each took a picture from the final selection that we had contributed the most direction toward, and processed them in our own ways:

Abandoned spirits by Brooke Shaden (view on Flickr)

My image (view on Flickr)

Looking over them now, I don’t like any of the shots we took apart from the one Brooke processed. Most were out of focus or fuzzy, including the one I had initially liked and processed (above) and I felt that Brooke’s processing and the application of curves and textures had brought out a certain mist on the sea in the long exposure more than it obscured it. It was an interesting experience though and definitely more inspiring to me than shooting in daylight in the same location. Shooting the human body draped in light material, and allowing motion or the exposure to blur or obscure its form, is the same kind of exciting principle behind alot of my wavy-gown self-portraits taken in abandoned buildings: the lucky dip of coming back to the camera to find out how your movement (or in this case, lack of it), paid off in the creation of an image more ethereal than the norm.

Another day, we set off to a creek to take photos. Seasoned pro Brooke wanted to shoot underwater, and it was a desire also of mine, although somewhat still a fantasy. I had never submerged my body into such cold water before, so it was an accomplishment in itself that I managed to get above my ankles in it. Even though the day was warm, hot even, Brooke had warned me that the creek would still be freezing. I managed to pose for some shots but we could tell that the harsh lighting of the midday sun, even though we were in a relatively sheltered spot, was debilitating to the mood of the shots. After I got dressed and subjected Brooke into the same wet gown and positions I had been in, I encountered the same problems shooting her, but on reviewing the shots later there were some I found I liked, forming into a composite:

My image Troubled water (View on Flickr)

Brooke’s image The baths (view on Flickr)

I was surprised to find out for the first time how tightly Brooke plans her shots (shooting only 5 or 6 shots in total during a session, for one particular idea) whereas I can shoot tens of images before I fully feel a sense of direction of where a shoot might be going. Brooke produces her images exclusively in square-format, often building out her frames in-camera specifically to accommodate this, whereas I use all dimensions of frame. Brooke uses many textures across her work, whereas I very seldom use them at all. Brooke’s work (generally, but not always) feeds from a muted, dreamy palette, often mixing tones and textures as if swirled with a paintbrush; whereby my images are more frequently laden with bold and often blocky, arresting primary colours.

All of these comparisons are interesting to make in light of the similarities that are also evident between us, which initially drew us together when we discovered each others’ photostreams on Flickr. We both do self-portraits, use significant amounts of post-production, and are similarly self-taught which has reared somewhat idiosyncratically destructive workflows in Photoshop, where we basically use layers and the eraser tool to thrash out any one composite, as we have only ever had to heed our own tastes for our fine art’s direction. Through the new experiences of workshops and commercial jobs, that each of us have almost simultaneously taken up, we have had our workflows challenged. We can empathise with each other’s advent of learning new tools and techniques to adapt to these different contexts: in the workshops, the responsibility of teaching other people flexible and sensible Photoshop methods; and in commercial work, the advantage of keeping options open for clients whilst processing images.

I was also curious to see Brooke’s use of lighting in her shooting. For example, I was interested to see how she shot from a particular angle in the warehouse, shooting from a light spot into a darker corner, so that the background of the shot would essentially be eclipsed and she would have an easier job making the setting even more abstract in Photoshop. I, however, was drawn to creatively using the setting as a context to my pictures, sometimes problematically, given that there was alot of clutter in some places that could not be moved from its position. I was constantly drawn to the car shell, thinking again and again of how I could use it, wanting to use it as a directly interacting prop with the model, but there was a pillar right next to it and bits of other clutter which limited the angle from which it could be feasibly shot. I ended up having the car in my workshop image without even really trying that hard to do so – which I guess anchors the point that these desires, to abstractify or to accentuate the setting, are instinctive.

This is also evident in the images we created on a misty morning. After the second workshop was over and the end of my trip was drawing nearer, we knew we wanted to shoot again and to take advantage of an early morning rise. We got up to catch the sunrise and the mist over the fields before it, making shots of both of us, and of each other from the same position to composite together later (the best way to get the right shot of each person):

My image The morning they met the clouds (view on Flickr)

Brooke’s image Running from wind (view on Flickr)

My image has essentially taken all of the action of the pre-sunrise mist, the mid-sunrise sky, and the crowning glory of the sunrise itself, and baked them all together with the heat of a warm colour balance and curves adjustment. Each feature stands out larger than life (literally more emphasised than reality) in a kind of cinematic composition, sharpened and brightened. Brooke’s image is ‘cinematic’ is its own way. The first user comment on her Flickr post reading ‘it reminds me of a high definition movie’, with others citing ‘The Village’, ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Sleepy Hollow’ as the image’s allusions. Compared to my image, the processing’s colour temperature is cold: cool, evening-like, murky, chilly, filling the square frame round the characters as they run together ‘from the wind’. It is clear that whilst Brooke was attracted to the light (or rather, darkness) and atmosphere of the pre-sunrise setting, I was more attracted to the moment of the sunrise itself, and the golden hues it sprang over the field on which we were standing. I wanted to shoot Brooke, and us together, standing in the new light.

Whilst I picked up a tip or two from Brooke, for example, feeling renewed confidence that the diffused light of a cloudy day is perfectly beneficial for alot of image concepts (especially as I enter another British winter), I was pleased that by the end of my trip, after having tried to encourage Brooke to use a reflector at the workshops, Brooke was taking a trip to the local camera shop to buy her own! Brooke, having been initially reluctant to use one, started to see the benefits of being able to bounce light back into the models’ faces without necessarily upgrading to wires, batteries and hindrance of anything more than that. I have only started to use reflectors in the last few months myself, and and I can’t believe how I went without one before in many situations with good sunlight.

I was inspired by my stay with Brooke, for several reasons. One reason is that there were many things about the way she works, as I’ve outlined above, that are similar to the way I have always worked. In some ways then, it was like watching an echo of myself having the same seemingly bizarre conviction to shoot in unconventional light or spaces, and with the shots later at home, to mystically cook up something in Photoshop, that would reveal itself with the same kind of mystique and intrigue as if it were coming from behind the screens on a make-up transformation programme. My trip with her encouraged me to believe that all of this kind of way of working is valid, exciting and full of endless possibilities, and that I should continue producing work in the way that feels right to me at any one time.

The differences in how we plan images, however, were also enlightening. Whilst we both routinely enjoy trawling around a charity/thrift shop, such as the Salvation Army store we rummaged in together the night before a workshop, Brooke would usually be looking for something predetermined – something she had specifically thought of before, and sought to hunt down. I’d be open to whatever grabbed my fancy as I wandered, and building an idea from what I find. Our differences in approach are innate to us and shouldn’t necessarily be changed at all, but I observed and admired Brooke’s drive to make a certain image that would propel her from initial idea through to execution in what you’d call a ‘bish bash bosh’ manner, efficiently and stoutly, whereas mine may romantically seize the moment but is open to potential procrastination and dithering. I regarded that taking a leaf out of Brooke’s approach might ensure that ideas that do swim round my head actually reach conception, by setting my sights on something physical that would guarantee some burgeoning seed of thought reaches germination and I can take the art world by storm with my amazing ideas (the last part of the sentence of course is a joke…)

I have had a Canon 5d MkII for over a year now and have always harped on about wanting to make a short film, but never really done anything serious with the movie function, especially as I spend more time moaning about having to manually focus it whilst it’s on. On our trip I wanted to do something with Brooke especially because she craved using the 5D to its full abilities whilst I was over there. So we did – on the last day of the trip – make a film, using model Olivia and a particular wooded setting, one used in many of Brooke’s images.

We shot and edited it together, though it was more of Brooke’s artistic vision than mine. (I had idea-paralysis for much of the time, spent sitting reclined in Brooke’s passenger seat usually falling asleep in a constant patch of sunlight as we rode up and down highways with Starbucks cappuccinos, with Brooke’s black ‘idea notepad’ slipping out of my fingers as I dozed off into a confusing dream. The pages were crammed with her stick-drawings and ideas anyway so there was no room for mine even if I had any). Brooke wrapped Olivia up in a couple of yards of ’stretchy fabric’ and had her writhe and break out of it like a chick from an egg, a naked woman emerging at the end. And here it is below:

During the trip I had the delightful privilege of seeing Brooke’s work in the flesh for the first time. Asking me whether I wanted to be ‘dragged out’ to Laguna Beach one evening to see her show, I replied of course! and saw her resplendent show at the JoAnne Artman Gallery. It is always fantastic to see work so large and physical after being limited to postcard-size web renderings for so long. Both the prints in frames and on canvas were beautiful. It was this evening when we had a chat with JoAnne, the owner of the gallery, who suggested the idea of doing a collaborative show of our work next summer. The idea was music to our ears – so going off to a restaurant afterwards to order nothing but a dessert, we discussed how we would embark on a whole new collaborative series for it. We may also be showing our work together as close as January 2011 if we are accepted for Photo LA, to which JoAnne is submitting us both individually and collaboratively. We’re also planning for Brooke to come over here next year to do UK workshops. The real motive, of course, of getting her to Blighty is for me to get a chance to make her a real builders’ cuppa from a ‘tea kettle’ – because the ‘frothy tea’ of which she enthuses is a result of her only having a microwave to heat up the water in. Watch this space!

I was fortunate recently to meet with Michael Hoppen, owner of the Michael Hoppen Gallery, Chelsea, London. The gallery sells the work of some of the most well-known photographers in the world – including Annie Leibowitz, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tim Walker, Guy Bourdin, and Richard Avedon -  so I was grateful to Juan Curto at Camara Oscura, Madrid, for the introduction. I made sure I set off a good 2 hours in advance to get from Hackney to Sloane Square, and given that it was steaming hot Saturday in central London, that got me there just in time!

I told him a bit about myself, and as he looked at my work he asked me what inspires me. I paraphrased that when I started, I was inspired by anything: paintings, literature, cinema; and recently I have started to look at other self-portrait photography such as Cindy Sherman and Francesca Woodman, as suggested to me by people who saw my work. He was very polite and warned me before going on to give his full opinion on my images, and did stress that he doesn’t want to tell me what to do or where to go. I said that was fine, I wanted to hear his opinion.

His first reaction was to comment on the ‘commercial’ quality of the lighting in my work, although I use all natural light, it seemed to him that I was doing something ‘unnatural’ to the lighting in Photoshop. For example, in Girl dreaming, he pointed out the diffuse glow that I had applied in Photoshop that made the image seem false. He expressed how the notion of ‘chance’ is what makes photography, and capturing things as they really appear, but using lighting in a way that makes it interesting without looking Photoshopped.

However, he was not suggesting that there was something wrong in using Photoshop. All the works in his current exhibition by Alex Prager, he pointed out, took many hours in retouching. However, the aim was to make the final result look as natural as possible, ie. to not look as if they had been Photoshopped. The use of technology was too overt in my images, according to him, he remarked that he thinks I have talent but the Photoshop was ‘standing in the way’. He was therefore saying I was using Photoshop too overtly, rather than too much.

He also said that having been a photographer himself, he had spent years producing images that had the same ’60s/70s filter-like lighting’ that he saw in my images, and that he ‘gets what I am trying to do’, but encourages me to ‘know when to stop’ in Photoshop. He said he liked South by southeast (one of my lesser-processed images, and an image that all three fine-art-gallery contacts I have been involved with have expressed a preference for, which is interesting).

I told him that I had had all these thoughts recently myself, and that my own tastes have been evolving to appreciate these subtleties of ‘chance’ and reality, and going against the desire to ‘polish’ everything and fit everything neatly into the frame in the manner of commercial photography. I showed him my recent image Soliloquy which I had put alongside an earlier, more gratuitous image of mine Coral Sunfish Sorts (a juxtaposition a gallery have made, as you will see in an upcoming blog post). Soliloquy is very different in its abstractification of my body and the use of negative space.

I also showed him my recent diptych Growing pains to show how I have continued along that vein of minimalism and almost what you might call a more offbeat or ‘cruder’ composition.

He expressed initial disbelief that all was ‘as it seemed’ in the actual shots above. I told him that the words written on the wall were actually on the wall of the hospital, as shot. He then moved onto say that maybe I should have photographed with more depth, playing with depth of field to put something out of focus so it wasn’t so ‘straight on’, perhaps if the words were written on a glass door in front of me rather than simply above me.

He also made an observation that I have never noticed before, that most of my images are shot ‘straight-on’ from waist-height, from the same perspective, with few exceptions (at least, from the images he looked at in my portfolio and on my laptop). He encouraged me to play with different perspectives and angles, to make everyday objects, such as a table, take on a different shape, through high and low angles.

He suggested I look at the work of historical artists who were amongst the first to use compositing in their photography: such as Lady Clementina Hawarden, Henry Peach-Robinson, and Julia Margaret Cameron, and to go and look at their work in print, which I intend to do. He reiterated that he just wanted to encourage me to look at them, rather than suggest a restrictive outlook. He showed me books by Denise Grunstein, Bellocq and also the exhibition in the gallery in which we were sitting, by Miroslav Tichy (Tichy’s images were shot for himself, without any intention of exhibiting them, which was an interesting comparison).

Before I went, I wanted to ask whether he thought it was a problem to be doing all self-portraits all the time, and also, whether I should go about with a more specific conceptual purpose to make my images have clearer ‘meanings’. Contrary to the impression I have got from other curators and directors (one advising me not to simply to show off myself looking ‘beautiful and long-legged’, but to look at the work of other trending, and more sobering, self-portraitists; one saying it is not clear what my pictures ‘are about’; and another one asking me ‘what I am trying to say’ because she doesn’t like ‘empty work’), Michael expressed surprising nonchalance regarding my employment of subject and arguable absence of clear meaning. He said that he thinks there is nothing wrong with ‘beautiful images’ and neither did he mention any issue in repeatedly using yourself as a model – these two factors were fine in his view.

I feel in retrospect very pleased with the meeting which was not too formal.

Thinking about his comment about too-overt use of Photoshop, I recall that other people have remarked that my work, to them, does not look ‘Photoshopped’ per say, but uses enough to achieve each image’s certain illusion or effect. This is because those people see a lot more Photoshopped images on the internet and make a positive judgement of my work by comparison. Michael Hoppen, on the other hand, is used to looking at a certain type of photography (his gallery deals only with analogue at the moment, predominantly silver gelatin prints) so how ‘Photoshopped’ something looks is of course will always be relative. Parts of my work may looked Photoshopped to certain people, even the bits that aren’t.

I do believe in challenging norms and expectations of the art scene, after all, being an artist is surely about being different, about expressing oneself without restraint or pressure of convention to ‘fit in’. In that sense, I might consider the unconventional parts to my practice as a potentially good thing. I say this only in a suggestive way, because I am aware that my feistiness in defending my sense of artistic autonomy has sometimes prevented me from having an open mind to what I could evolve or explore in my own work. A couple of years ago, I had yet to be truly aware of the commercial influences that shaped my work, being non-art-educated and spending most of my time on Flickr, looking there for inspiration, along with maybe some fashion magazines and movies.

I thought about work that does look extremely polished and contrived, even commercial, that can still be ‘art’, such as Gregory Crewdson’s. After all, anything can be art, it just depends on context, on who is saying that it is art. Context is also important: the fact that digital photography is somewhat commodifying photography and turning the ‘unique object’ of an analogue print handcrafted in the darkroom, into a global mass-production of instant image-making. If digital photography became (hypothetically) obsolete in the future, the work of a digital photographer could be displayed on walls with the Photoshop flaws as evident as the bugs trapped in the revered handmade camera of Miroslav Tichy, whose remarkable age-old one-offs now sell for £7500 a pop. That probably won’t happen, but I am trying to express how the context of a photograph, its historical relevance as an ‘object’, can be an esteemed part of its ‘art’ and sometimes equate the sum total of its value.

In this sense therefore, I fully appreciate the words of someone as experienced as Hoppen advising me on how my work can fit in with the contemporary photography scene as it stands today, without didacticism or self-righteousness. I also value how it is necessary to make sense of that person’s perspective, where they ‘are coming from’ in order to have made those judgements. As an artist it is important to listen to experienced people’s advice and consider also how your audience see your work, but that must be filtered through your own mind as the artist, because if you don’t have the last say, there’s no point doing what you do. Keep an open mind, be willing to ‘learn’, but let your style evolve through your own genuine desire.

As a result of the meeting, out of interest, I wanted to dig out my  unprocessed Girl dreaming for comparison. Here’s an earlier version before I did the processing to the light and dark (unnecessary?) which obscured the atlas to the left and, erm, The Jolly Postman to the right, and also before I cloned out all the crap on the table…

I guess it is all down to a matter of opinion which is better  – see my ‘final’ processed one at top of the page. (I definitely could have shifted the stuff on the table before I took the shot – but it was hard given that it wasn’t my own house and I had no idea when someone might walk in!)

I meet another London-based curator shortly, so it will be interesting to put what they say into context with this meeting.

The image of the Michael Hoppen Gallery at the top of the post is from Art Review, here