First blog for a long time

Hello world or is that the other platform.

I wanted to write a few words and see if I like this format before really doing much with this

BJP's photography rights campaign

The British Journal of Photography has launched a visual petition in response to the growing number of photographers being stopped under anti-terror legislation. The campaign is designed to raise awareness and help change public perception.

Amateur and professional photographers alike are urged to submit pictures of themselves holding white plaques with the phrases 'I am not a terrorist' or 'Not a crime' written on them. These self-portraits should then be submitted to the specially created flickr group. BJP aims to gather thousands of these e-'signatures' over the coming year as a protest against the increasing restrictions photographers face.

You can take part in the debate here.

Feeling hot hot hot

So there I was, 6am Monday 29th June and already sweating. Some weeks I spend a lot of time at the studio, and some weeks I spend a lot of time on the road and on location. The studio is an oasis of calm and cool, even when it’s thirty degrees outside. So guess what I was mostly up to this week – a week that included the two hottest days of the year so far? Yep, on the road, in my un-airconditioned car and outside photographing fences, factories and fairways. Why is it that you never get asked to photograph industrial fridge interiors in the summer?

But we shouldn’t complain, right? This could be the only summer we get. And on the plus side my right arm is really tanned from hanging out of the car window in the good old M6 car park. So not only do I have the obligatory T-shirt shaped golfer’s tan, but one arm is a completely different colour to the other – great for comedy sketches, not much use for anything else. Now if I could just book a job in France I could even them up!

Here, there and everybear

I'll bet you're wondering what happened with the bear costume. No? Well I'm going to tell you anyway. When Calumet asked me if I fancied taking on their Hasselblad Challenge I thought about it for, well, about 2 seconds or so and then I said yes. Let me explain… a small group of photographers were selected and given the following brief: "Here’s the latest 50 million pixel Hasselblad, there’s a big white studio - go shoot and may the best image be displayed" or words to that general effect!

Now I normally shoot to instructions and themes provided by others, so I couldn't wait to get my thinking around this one. After calling on a few friends from the advertising and creative industries a plan began to form. Something urban, showing off the studio and the camera’s capability, images that could be polished if we chose, perhaps some slightly weird stuff happening to amaze and confuse and, with the fantastic 28mm lens available, it had to be wide!

Bizarrely, I just couldn't get the idea of a bear on a bike out of my head. I don't know what that says about me. As it turns out, the cycling bear shots just didn’t cut the mustard and ended up on the cutting room floor, but some of the other shots are pretty spectacular.

In total we had 9 people on the shoot who all gave their time for free and favours (don't ask, I won't tell). From Peter, the videographer to Mike, our friendly bear, I thank you all! We'll be releasing some of the images soon but in the meantime here’s a behind the scenes shot, taken by Tomasz.

Bear today, gone tomorrow

So I’m trying to get hold of a bear costume for a shoot next week. But apparently there’s been a bit of a rush on bear costumes. I could hire a crocodile, a parrot, or a Scooby Doo, but all the bears, even Winnie the Pooh, have full diaries next week. So the credit crunch obviously hasn’t hit the bear costume industry. Either that or there’s a bear convention on at the NEC. I shall keep hunting…

Introducing...

Our new assistant, Tomasz, started with us this week and is already showing us he knows his stuff, especially when it comes to Photoshop. Even an experienced photographer like me never stops learning and it’s always good to have an enthusiastic photography student around who has the time to learn all the little tricks that enable you to tweak an image to perfection. Tomasz is originally from Poland and is studying photography at Solihull College. Take a look at his work at www.tomkawalek.com

Ladies and gentleman, I would like to thank…

Photography competitions are everywhere. A quick google search will reveal hundreds of them across the world in any given month. Fabulous, you might think. I’ll enter a few and hopefully get some recognition, win a prize, be able to call myself an award-winning photographer… So I’m preparing to send off some of my very best images when the terms and conditions catch my eye. Hold on a minute, what does “"you grant a perpetual and irrevocable right to use your images worldwide and in all media without further recompense to you"” mean?

And herein lies the problem. Why is this company or organisation really holding a competition? Is it because they’re passionate about visual imagery and wish to seek out and reward the best photography they can find? Or do they want to get their sticky mitts on your best images and then use them anywhere in the world, for any purpose they like, FOREVER? And you thought you were entering to win a shiny new gizmo or world recognition!

There’s one organisation fighting this trend for poor terms and conditions for competitions and that’s Pro Imaging – the international web-based group of independent professional photographers. I’m a member, and I’m keen to promote them to fellow creatives as they campaign for the rights of photographers and also explain in simple terms the issues around copyright and licensing.

Check out their website www.pro-imaging.org And watch your back if you’re entering any competitions!