The Bartender Never Gets Killed

I’ve posted about Keith before, but I’ve just had an email from him regarding the Crane Silver Rag paper, and he tells me he helped with its development and is a consultant for Crane. Really nice when you find a product you like has an input from a photographer you like!

Keith has some new work up too. I can’t insert these images into the blog as Keith has a roll-over presentation (Update: of course I can put these into the blog! and if Tim on a Mac can do it…!). But some of the extended are very nice indeed.

I had a couple of people over to look at prints and work-in-progress over the weekend which resulted in an order for a trip and a BW 50cm x 50cm ‘Green Thing’ pic (REALLY excited about this last as I’ve never done a fine print of this as I was using a flatbed when I was doing this project - I also think I’ll be talking to John Brownlow again as his Epson printing on silver rag is amazing).

I came away from these sessions quite energised, but at the same time slightly perplexed. I’ve noticed that some photographers, and some photography collectors, build a ring fence around photography with a strict personal definition of what photography ‘is’ and what it ‘isn’t’.

Looking at the montage/construction lying on my worktable, I had comments like ‘these are all good images, why are you ripping them up, and layering them like this?’ Which got us into a nice conversation about what I’m trying to achieve - always good to check your intentions! But I’m finding that this whole question never even crosses the mind of art collectors. Although I admit the work I’m showing ranging from BW landscapes, through colour urban landscape work to the latest projects, can be confusing!

I was also contacted recently out of the blue by my ex-wife, Pauline Thomas. I’d not heard from her for many years, but she was very complimentary about my work now. She was a bit surprised I think, as I was a musician when she knew me ( a career sadly curtailed by a car crash). She is an ex-Art Development Officer in the UK and her approach to career progression is remarkably open and not suffering from the ‘is it photography or not’ scenario. But she’s given me a lot to think about - thanks Pauline!

Been fairly quiet recently as I’ve been away from the pc building a montage/construction. I started off on 50×70cm board but quickly realised that was too small so I moved up to 1mx1.5m.

I’m using a combination of older pics both BW and colour and the newer digi pics. No jpeg as this is lying flat and I can’t get an angle!  Not too sure about the archivability but I’m not too bothered as it is really a test. Don’t know how I could do a portfolio review with this kind of thing, but I’m certainly very happy with how it is progressing.

It has lead me to start thinking about the problems in presenting this work, and the different expectations between ‘art’ (single images) and the ‘photography’ (themed ‘bodies’ of work) market. More later

This is a pic of the bar where I normally have my morning coffee, although at the moment with the temperature so low, it is a carajillo de anis!

I’ve a lot of photos of this bar as it catches the light in different ways  at different times of the day - it even features in an ‘Exotic’ pic.

I’m going to be building some ‘constructions’, part of which will be photos stuck to archival board. Anyone know the best archival way of putting pics on board? I want the pics to look stuck on, so dry mounting is too clinical. I was thinking linen tape????

I first came across Rob when I still lived in the UK but I lost touch after I moved to Spain. His blog is here and you can get to his webpage from there.

Rob gave me lots of help when I was trying to learn how to load an M6 (put the base plate in your mouth, throw the camera high, pull the leader out of the cassette, catch the camera, throw the film etc etc), as well as helping persuade me to do the Charlie Harbutt course at Duckspool.

Rob has been earning his living as a wedding photographer, a very brave thing to do! I’m glad he’s still doing his personal work.

Since my return from Madrid I’ve been in a self-imposed exile from the internet - well apart from Tim Atherton’s blog and the occasional read of the streetphoto list.

I’ve been adopting a Winogrand approach to photography in that I’ve been shooting, then burning the stuff straight to disk without looking at it. I’m now starting to wade through the resulting images.

I recently got this print from John Brownlow. And yeah, I know, the jpeg doesn’t do it justice!

It is printed 50cm x 150cm on Museo SilverRag, an amazing paper. Everyone who has seen the print prefers it to a C-Type. The reds are just so much more vibrant.

This has got me discussing with people who have seen the print how many hours it takes to make - the scanning, spotting, compiling, photoshop work. Forget about the hours spent walking around or worrying about the ‘art’ side of things, just the sheer sweat of making the print justifies the purchase price, and often astounds people who think ‘digital is easy, isn’t it?’

I’ve also updated my website to include 6 images from the ‘Exotic’ series. The series now has a pretty solid identity, and I’ve had some print enquiries so it made sense to make it visible without coming to the blog.

Anyway, I’ll be putting up new work in a little while.