The Bartender Never Gets Killed

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.

Click image for large version

Click image for larger version.

In a previous post I mentioned that I’d be visiting Adrian Tyler in Madrid.

It really was a flying visit and we were both pushed for time, but we managed to grab time for me to look at his work, and he gave me a crit on workprints from the Exotic series .

I don’t get to meet other photographers much so I really value hanging out and talking about work. I came away with the clear understanding that I need to work more. Adrian is just so prolific, with multiple projects on the go and trips planned up to a year in advance.

But the main learning point for me was in the way Adrian edits his work. I rarely print anything, yet he prints small work prints of everything, shuffles them around making edits. Then constructs small spiral bound books of potential sequences. It works really well. Having the ability to flip rapidly back and forth really helps evaluate if the sequence works. Being a book designer, I guess he has a natural feeling for the format. But there is certainly something totally different about shuffling prints. I tend to make slideshows, but it  isn’t as organic as handling the real thing.

since upgrading to WP 2.3 my pages are unreadable. sorry for this I’ll sort it out asap…

UPDATE,

Ok, after several hours messing around everything is now working smoothly … I hope

I could do with some help on this one…

I recently wrote I was negotiating a sale of a print

Well, I’m still negotiating! Main sticking point now is perspex or glass. Glass is expensive and heavy in large format frames, but the potential customer is a heavy smoker (yeah, I know but it is Spain), and the guy has been scared off using perspex by that stupid frame shop I wrote about in an earlier post, who said that perspex needs replacing twice a year in a smoky environment… any ideas?

Going to see Adrian Tyler this week.

I’ve never met him in person, but we’ve communicated for years by email and on various lists. Like me, he’s a Brit expat married to a Spanish woman. Unlike me, he chose Madrid rather than Barcelona, so he’s stuck with a naff football team, but the night life is waaaaaaaay better! he’s also very kindly offered to put my wife and I up when we visit Madrid later this week - reminder to self, get his address!

I like Madrid, it has a really great museum, La Reina Sofia, home of La Guernica (maybe good ‘ol GW should be taken to see that one…), which is close to Atocha Station which is a fantastic building

In between the two is a great bar which servers ‘the best calamar sandwiches in the world’ (or so the sign outside says). I had a great afternoon with Chris Jordan there, sangria, art, food, good company… certainly a high point from my Photoespaña experience.

I’m really looking forward to seeing Adrian’s new work .

It is a huge step forward from previous work Imo in that he is exploring new territory. In the past he’s been adopting a Becher-like approach , whereas now he is trying to merge his urban landscape work within the wider context of human involvement. It is an interesting strategic problem reconciling the two almost distinct groups of photographs in this set - my instinct is to present this as dips, but then, it would!

I’ll report back after seeing the work and talking to Adrian.

I’ll be updating to the latest version of WP over the next few days, so if things look screwy please bear with me

Been really busy and I’ll be posting the results soon, but first a rant…

I’ve a customer who wants to buy this print…

He’s an art collector and this is his first photograph. Size is 50×150cm. I’m not doing the frame. I sent him along to the best photo framers in town. They do all the big museums and galleries, they will also be printing the image. They deal ONLY in photography.

So, he goes one Saturday just after they closed, but there was a guy he talked to who gave him prices and options. Then, the best bit, the guy in the shop said ‘you know a photo only lasts for 15 years…’?

So I then have an outraged customer who more-or-less says he can’t trust me. So, I download Wilhelm, Kodak tech specs for Endura paper etc etc calms the guy down, but the doubt remains.

What the hell can you do when even ‘the experts’ give potential customers a crock of shit???

Ok, stop it. For the first time my stats are telling me that the most popular browser is IE. Its a crap browser, don’t use it. Thank god for the land of the free

Just think, if Apple had any kind of market share they’d be next. Hmmm maybe an Ipod that only use apple software. C’mon EU, you can do it!

I’m really busy at the moment shooting and doing other things so things have been a bit slow on the blog. But something worth checking out…

Jen Bekman (spelt her name correctly this time!) has finally launched 20×200

Well worth supporting.

A while back I posted in this post that Mel Trittin was setting up a studio

Well, Mel now has the studio up for business

And I think, although I could be wrong, that if you look really closely at the LH pic on the corrugated wall, you might recognise this

What a great place to work!

Bearing in mind I don’t shoot things that move very often. I thought I’d have a go at reshooting the pic from my last post.

So I went to the same bar, sat in the same stool, had the same mix of beer, tapas and coffee, and tried a reshoot, but even then…

Ever had one of those days?

There was a huge storm last night, so I didn’t sleep much.

I accidentally deleted some pics. ‘No problem’ I thought, restore from the backup disk… except one folder hadn’t been saved to the backup disk. ‘No problem, restore from the weekly system backup..’ only that file was corrupt on the backup.

O.K time to reach for the trusty recovery utility only to find I’d been tramping all over the data with hobnail boots on and couldn’t get anything to recover.

So, this pic is now totally postmodern, it exists only as a virtual copy of itself… bastard…

Ed Nixon is making triptychs!!! Nice shot Ed.

Click image for larger version…

Click image for large version…