By no means has it been an easy year, or a year where I’ve got everything I want.

This year has been more about making things happen in the face of not being able to get quite what I want, and learning slowly about what my goals actually are.

Above: my favourites of my images from 2011 whittled down to 9 – click to view larger (or to see them uncropped and whole, you can go to my newly designed website).

I’ve shot a large volume of work compared to other years (including over 30 models, thanks to the events), gained experience in new situations, engineered a new kind of exciting event, co-hosted a workshop production in a dream location, released a book and written my second, but most importantly, I have gained a clearer sense of direction than ever regarding where I want to go.

This year I’ve been working in two main series: Ecology and Surreal Fashion. Between them, I can cover most of what I currently want to express. They are quite different: Ecology uses stark nudes and landscapes, dystopian moods and ambiguous, environmentally-linked messages. It’s where my self-portraiture work has led to, though it’s not all self-portraiture. Surreal Fashion is my first substantial series featuring other (fashion) models, that has grown around an aesthetic that combines photos with other media, with more of an attempt at a conceptual core than most typical ‘fashion’ photography.

On the events side

This year I’ve done some teaching-based workshops in London, Scotland – and LA, right at the start of the year. I’ve also co-hosted a workshop for Phase One (further below). But what has epitomised this year has been our new event, what ‘we’ (that is, myself and Matthew my husband-to-be) have come to entitle the Fashion Shoot Experience.

It was a conception of two desires: 1) to transcend the typical ‘workshop’ and the limitations and contradictions it poses, as to what a photog/aspiring photog can truly take away other than some force-fed techniques and an illusion that the ‘art’ in photography can at all be ‘taught’. Maybe that is because I’m overall valuing being an ‘artist’ more than just a ‘photographer’. And 2) I wanted to put together a fashion shoot, instead of waiting around for a commission, but to make it happen myself. But the sentiment is not just “the only way to learn is to do it”, but “images get made whilst you are ‘learning’ – whilst you just do it“. Both myself, and all the participating photographers (who are everyone from students to seasoned pros) are on a ‘learning’, ‘doing’, and just ‘being’ experience together, making greater use of a great location that the typical workshop could.

The positive feedback from other photographers on the events has really made me proud of the event we have put out there. I really feel like I been able to facilitate a meaningful and fruitful experience for other people. And its growth is marked by going stateside: in 2012, one year after its launch in London, we’re taking it to New York.

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Books

Feels to me like it was ages ago, but it was only this year my book Self-Portrait Photography came out in the UK in Feb (Ilex) and in the US in March (Pixiq), which has sold 24,000 copies worldwide to date and is going into second print run. I’ve also been writing my second book this year, which comes out in the spring, Creative Portrait Photography. Writing these books is one of the best, if not the best, work I’ve enjoyed so far in my photography. There’s an inevitable commercialisation and level of compromise involved in the final product, but I love the freedom I get in putting them together, and I value the growth I gain in every book I write.

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Shooting at Weston Park

The PODAS Phase One workshop has got to be one of the best things for me about 2011 (see blog post with video). Getting to sleep over and shoot a workshop and eat great food – and even play dress up before the models arrived – in the most wonderful stately home, and be paid for it – wow – I was very lucky. There, I made what I think is my favourite image of the year overall, Storm Door (below).

And the important ‘OTHER’

This has also been a strong year for self-development. Particularly in the last couple of months, I have really solidified my sense of self and direction in life. Prioritising healthy eating and fitness above absolutely everything else, including photography. I’ve drastically addressed stress: the importance of getting headspace from perpetual computer use and the constant ‘I could be doing more’ mentality. I am so happy to be doing what I do for a living, but now I realise, for one reason much bigger than any other: the fact that I can organise my life around the priority of health, in body and spirit, which includes regular exercise, rest and rebuilding a connection with nature, in antagonism to much of the modern lifestyle that befalls most of us. Moreover, my intended direction(s) with my art have been in mental tumult over the last few months, finally landing on the one thing I want to do with my art: to question, and to seek truth.

Where 2011 has brought me

It was only a short while ago that this end-of-year post would have said something along the lines of: in 2012 I want to break into commercial work, grow my name, expand, in essence just get bigger, better, richer, greater, work and whip myself harder than ever, blah & etcetera. I’m questioning everything about that outlook. I still crave ways to use my work in other (commercial) avenues, but the right ones. This year, I have already felt this change coming, manifested in my Ecology series which has been somewhat a test run for me, for how matters of environmental concern meet ‘art for art’s sake’. I wrote a blog post about it earlier in the year where I professed to the series’ softcore quality and that “it’s not the place of my art here to tell people how to make the world a better place.” However, although I still crave subtlety, I now want to invoke deeper thinking, to actively engage my audience. I do want to make the world a better place, because it is possible.

I realise more about who I am as an ‘artist’. I’ve battled with feelings of dissatisfaction about my direction, feeling that a lack of commercial work meant I am less of a photographer. Maybe in a way, but not less of an artist. I now see what my work is: it is my dog by my heel, whom I want to stay true to me, close to my side. I see that my dream is to always be able to be myself, to channel every profound thing I feel, but not just for me. In that respect, as I grow in knowledge and awareness all the time (as well as passion and altruism) the art does too! I want to turn up the volume button, by increasing my work’s power and also its channels of expression; by using words, and by sharing more than just pictures that compel one to simply look and enjoy. There are too many issues around us to ignore, and too many layers to those problems than is typically regarded by the mainstream media. The kind of ‘issues’ I am referring to will become clearer later.

It is quite astounding to consider the potential power of a photographer who chooses to value truth over money, message over self-lording. What if my pictures can help expose truth, shift attitudes in one person and then another, and bit by bit make a difference to this world? That notion is just too exciting. I’m starting to even wonder, what is the point of art if it does not make a statement, to try make a difference? I want my art to have other purposes beyond our typical notions of ’success’, and I realise I’m going against some people’s advice when I say that. I’m interested in how this new perspective will change things. I know for a fact it will make me happier.

Above: Heatstroke (my favourite from Ecology this year)

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Some inspirations this year…

Here’s some references of things I’ve noted inspiration from in 2011: this picture ‘Mr Vet’ by Milosz Wozaczynski, pictures like this by Susannah Benjamin, and pictures like this by Chiara Fersini, and even illustrational Biblical stuff like this off Google Images, and weird animal hair pieces of Nagi Noda… also in a more general way by the following, in a random order: Tim Walker, Federico Erra, Rutger ten Broeke, Yulia Gorodinski, Martin Parr, Gregory Crewdson, Guy Bourdin, Noah Kalina, and Peter Kemp – as well as the other 4 contributors of my new book.

I also highly recommend this inspirational book Art & Fear, which has really helped me this year.

Cheers to a stimulating, enlightening 2012!

Above: ‘By the lake’ (2006), one of my earliest clone pics which I still use alot in articles, exhibs etc.

For these artists, I’m looking at all of their work, and plucking out quite a wide range that spans back to their early days of photography, to meet with their reluctant and somewhat horrified responses. ‘You want that picture? That’s so old… I wasn’t thinking about concept at all back then… I just clicked my camera, and hoped for the best… the quality of the image isn’t so good, as I shot in the lowest of the low Jpeg format…’ and so on.

Now, where quality is concerned, unfortunately there is a limit to what you can do with a picture that is a grand total of 300kb. Let’s not forget, however, that quality can be rescued using tools like Genuine Fractals, and you can improve on what technology, or your budget, or your brain, didn’t do for you back then.

However, in an aesthetic sense, provided that the image is good enough quality for the purpose at hand, I find that I may be drawn to the artist’s earlier work, in some single cases, more than their recent work. Yet, they seem to think that their earlier work is somehow embarrassing, and take your suggestion as a reminder that they need to clean them off their webpage.

Do I find their response odd? Well no – because that is exactly how I feel as a photographer too, regarding my own work. If someone emails me with a query about a print, or a licensing request, and gives a link to some old crummy picture I either think they’re blind, or just a bit weird with low standards and a penchant for blobby Photoshoppery. I will follow through with their request, unless it involves publishing the image in a context (like an article or an exhibition) where I can choose another one to represent me as an artist.

My feelings are that those images were indeed wanton escapades with my camera, where I might have thought pressing ‘Raw’ would make the camera shriek like a zoo animal and that whiter-than-snow over-exposed highlights can be cured with the burn tool in Photoshop. If I have the opportunity to use newer work, I will push for it. After all, I’ve had much more experience since then, I think more about what I shoot, I shoot in better quality, etc etc…

That is all very well, so I understand these artists’ responses. However, I want to say to these artists (and anyone else who thinks this way about their work) that your early work (at least, aesthetically, even if it’s poor pixel quality) isn’t that bad. Just because you spontaneously clicked your camera and didn’t think too much about concept does not mean that your images are meaningless and therefore worthless. Sometimes, a lack of specific intention is the best thing. It is possible to produce your best work this way.

An artist’s earlier work might be messy. It might be amateurish. For some artists though, and for some of their work, their best images are their earliest pieces, because they let their true experimental side free, without reigning their techniques in to conform to rules they have learnt from research and reading. There will be the odd piece of work they created in their experimental days that is simply unbridled genius, yet the artist will dismiss it, with a blushing recollection of its lack of pre-shooting preparation. Even the more slapdash work will have some unmistakeable flavour about it that reveals the artist’s true style before they ODed on self-scrutiny. Generally, we are supposed to get better as we go along. We are all told that practice makes perfect, and that we get better with experience, and that we are only as good as our last piece of work, etc. At times like this though, I want to question this norm, because sometimes our most recent work can be our driest, least daring, over-thought-out, concept-heavy, mundane attempts at putting everything we know into our photography.

At times like this, then, I feel that the self-taught artist, the artist who does not study art and photography, is on top. When an artist is free to do what they want, without pressure of personal expectation, commercial motivations, artist reputation, etc, they can produce their best work.

Going away from extremes for a moment (for the artists who inspired me to make this post, I am not in any way referring personally to your work), all I want to suggest is looking at your own work from the point-of-view of an outsider. Does/would an outsider know that a particular image had no forethought, no planning, wasn’t shot with professional lighting, was inferior to your current way of working in all kinds of various ways? No – or not necessarily. There is also the diversity of personal opinions, and I encourage other artists to appreciate that someone might come along and love a picture that you’ve been meaning to delete off your Flickr stream for aeons.

Of course, I need to apply this encouragement to myself, and think about how my own earlier work can be seen as more than a bored student’s attempt at escaping into a dodgily composited, imaginary world full of multiple selves (though some pictures were so bad I did admittedly remove them from my Flickr stream). I am aware that some of my long-term viewers on Flickr prefer my earlier work which is characterised by multiple selves and slightly radioactive interpretations of sunny Sussex scenes. They like it when I upload something new that has a similar vibrant colour palette to the earliest stuff, that might have spent too long in Photoshop for me to deem serious (like this one for example), with a content that, intellectually, is as deep as the baby end of a shallow pool.

We then enter that problematic area of personal taste: one artist’s direction is appealing to some, and not to others. I am equally against an artist trying to please everyone, or feeling guilty that their change of taste doesn’t appeal to all their audience segments. Without making this blog post too long, I just want to mention that personal interpretation is everything. If there is something on your Flickr stream you absolutely abhor, take it off. You are the artist, and you are the only person who has the right to decide what represents YOU.

I just want to encourage you, though, to remember what it is that you’ve always liked about photography, what made you get into it at the beginning, and to carry that passion through.

You don’t have to have a master plan to create a masterpiece. Equipment, rules, and technical know-how really are second to all-important creativity.