Sean Taylor back at The Mill

Singer/songwriter/excellent guitarist, Sean Taylor, was back in the area on Friday appearing once again at The Mill Sessions.

For those of you with good memories, you may recall I photographed him last year (and for those that don’t, here’s the link - Sean Taylor and the Mill Sessions). And he and his manager liked the photos so much, they were used for his new album, Love Against Death.

So with Sean back for another performance, it seemed liked a good opportunity to take a few more shots.

This time he arrived earlier in the day, so rather than rushing to get a shot in just before the gig started, I went over to the house he was staying at around mid afternoon.

I took a portable backdrop and lighting equipment with me and set about getting a good headshot.



What became apparent almost immediately, though, was he was not feeling particularly comfortable while I was taking the photos. Most people aren’t in front of the camera, so a lot of my time is spent helping people to relax in the unnatural setting of someone pointing a large lens at them and clicking.

However, for Sean it was more to do with the fact he didn’t have hold of his guitar. While I was playing with the lighting and checking the connection of the camera to the laptop, he just sat and played.





Catching him immersed in his own world of music felt much more authentic, so for the next shots in front of the lights he had his guitar with him.

Of course as soon as he had the guitar in his hands he started playing again, which, as anyone who has seen him play live will know, is completely mesmerising.

The idea of photographing against a neutral backdrop is it makes it easier to manipulate the background later in post-production. But as I clicked away, I realised pulling back to include the lights and surrounds looked more interesting. Revealing the stage set seemed more in keeping with the lack of falseness or pretension you feel when he plays.





And as he continued to play, I felt like I was getting a personal concert. There was no one else about to enjoy the way his fingers move around that guitar and the soulful mood of his voice. So after confirming it was OK with him, I flipped the camera into video mode and recorded Sean singing “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues”



My wife, Maggie, didn’t get to see Sean Taylor when he played last year, but has been thoroughly enjoying his albums since I came home that night singing his praises. So on Friday evening we made sure we had a babysitter on hand and Maggie came along to The Mill with me, where we were both just blown away by his performance.

With the camera on my knee, I recorded him singing “Coal Not Dole” – my favourite track off his new album. Unfortunately the light was really low so the visual quality is not very good, however the sound is good enough to get a sense of just why you have to see this guy live.

Now available for your iPad and iPhone

Last year I put together a book called Facing The Weekend which included all the portraits I took over the Spring Fling Open Studio weekend, and the year before, I created a book of my exhibition, Staring Back.

Facing The Weekend, and Staring Back were both published using the online service, blurb.com (as the new book will be too).

Now while the quality is superb, the drawback is they are not particularly cheap. By the time printing and postage costs have been added, you won't get any change out of £30, even for the softcover edition.

However, Blurb have recently introduced the option of selling downloadable versions designed for iPads and iPhones, which means you can now experience these books on your devices for less than a tenth of the cost of the printed versions.

Follow these links where you can also preview the books before you decide whether to buy for only £2.49 – that’s about €3 or $4

Facing The Weekend
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2488930

Staring Back
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1314623

The book I’m currently working on – Artist In Residence: Please Let Me Take Your Photo! – should hopefully be ready in time for the coming Spring Fling weekend in just over 4 weeks time.

A Weekend of Photography and Art

This weekend is going to be rather busy.

Last year I teamed up with several other local, professional photographers to form the Galloway Photographic Collective. The idea is we are pooling knowledge, experience and resources to promote our businesses, photography, and this corner of Scotland.



It’s taken a few months and lots of debates and decision making, but we are officially launching this weekend.

On Saturday evening of March 31st, there will be a preview of our joint exhibition at The Catstrand, followed by a talk by internationally renowned photographer, Colin Prior.

The following day is an Open Studio Trail with 4 different venues where the public will be able to view photographs, talk to the photographers and sample their home baking.

It’s all looking to be quite an event.

Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to attend as I had already arranged to be at the Scottish Tattoo Convention in Edinburgh that weekend (see last post) taking photos of people with ink-adorned bodies.



However, my photos will be on display at the Catstrand and at the Lock Ken Gallery and Café, where Allan Wright has kindly given me some wall space for the Open Studio Trail.

And if all this wasn’t enough, the WASPS Studio buildings in Kirkcudbright, where my wife, Maggie, has her studio is also having an open weekend for the public to view and buy art direct from the artists.

So if you're any where near the South West of Scotland this weekend, there's a visual feast to be had.

If you'd like to keep up to date with developments and events from the Galloway Photographic Collective, then do visit and "Like" our Facebook page, which can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/gallowayphotocollective

Portrait and Tattoo Photography

Last year, invited by a guy I’d photographed singing in his punk band, I went up to Edinburgh for the Scottish Tattoo Convention. As a portrait photographer who loves faces, seeing all these people covered in piercings, tattoos and more than a few outlandish hairstyles, I felt like a kid in a cookie factory (click here for the post about it).

One of the things I came to realise afterwards, was there seems to be very little good tattoo photography about. There are millions of photos on the web, but most are very amateur. It seemed odd to me that people can pay hundreds of pounds, even thousands, for their tattoos, and yet the best photo they have of them was taken on a phone or a cheap camera in poor lighting.

In response to this revelation, this year I’ve taken out a stall at the Scottish Tattoo Convention (Sat March 31st & Sun April 1st) and will be setting up with camera, lights and a laptop. For a very reasonable rate I’ll take people's photos, edit them right there and email it to them so they can put on Facebook, print it out for their wall or send it to their granny.

So for the past couple of weeks I’ve been honing my skills by taking photos of anyone I can grab with a tattoo and have been discovering it’s quite a different kind of photography to my usual black and white portraiture. Not only am I having to think much more about colour, it can also be a tricky thing to strike a balance between a person’s face and their tattoo - because that’s mostly what I want to do – take portraits of people with their tattoos rather than just the tattoos on their own.

I’m in the process of getting a banner printed up to hang above the stall to attract attention. Ami, with her brightly coloured hair, piercings and back piece that runs from her neck to her derriere was an ideal choice.

 

For a few more photos of the colourful Ami, check my Facebook or Flickr pages.

I’ll be taking my son, Rogan, along with me - partly for the company, and partly to help deal with waiting customers when I’m busy.

However, I’ll be letting all the tattoo artists know he’s only 16 years old, and he will not be allowed to enter the Win-a-Free-Tattoo competition...

Album Cover Photo for Sean Taylor

In the post this morning I received a copy of Love Against Death, the new album by blues/acoustic singer-songwriter Sean Taylor – even though it’s not due for release for another 8 weeks.



It’s not a pirate copy, but a complimentary one as the cover and internal photos are ones I took of Sean when he played at the Mill Sessions in Gatehouse of Fleet about this time last year.

It was the middle of winter and dark outside. I was given a large empty room, but I only had one studio light with me, and I had about half an hour before he had to be downstairs for his performance. I switched off the overhead lights and shot by illumination of the single light, creating stark shadows and a deep moody atmosphere.

Fortunately for me Sean was less self-conscious than most people I photograph, which meant I was able to get several shots I was really pleased with. I edited the best 3, put them on my blog and sent him copies. I was delighted when he started using them as his Facebook profile pics.

About 3 months ago I was contacted by Sean’s manager, Stuart, saying they wanted to use my photos on the new album. Over the past couple of years, Sean’s profile has been on the rise as he’s played at major festivals and made various radio appearances. Stuart has high hopes this will be the breakthrough album to propel Sean to a much wider audience.

It’s a great album. My personal favourite is track 10, Coal Not Dole.

The rest of the world won’t be able to buy the album until March 26th – 12 months to the day after the TUC ‘March for an Alternative’ protest, when hundreds of thousands of people united on the streets of London against the government’s austerity measures and in support of a fairer society.

The first song on the album, Stand Up, is about this protest – here’s the video for it



He's booked to play at the Mill Sessions again this May - I'm really looking forward to it.

The Challenge of the Self Portrait

Last year I was asked by The Stewartry Camera Club to give a talk to their members about Portrait Photography. It seemed to go down well and I was asked back this year to talk about self-portraits and to set a competition, which I did on Wednesday.

In some ways, self-portraits can be seen as one of the most challenging forms of photography for most photographers, because there are significant obstacles to overcome on 2 levels.

The first is to do with the technical difficulties in getting the exposure, composition and focus right when you can’t actually look through the lens – at least if you want to avoid the cliché of just standing in front of the mirror with your camera in front of your face.



So you have to try and get everything set up then either set the timer, run round, get into place and adopt the right posture and expression before the camera goes click, or you need something like a cable or remote release that allows you to trigger the shutter from a distance – at least if you want to avoid the other cliché of holding the camera at arms length and just pointing it at you.



However, in many ways the far bigger challenge is in deciding how you wish to portray yourself to the world.

It’s one thing for other people to take your photo – it is their interpretation of you in that moment. But if you are taking it yourself, you have to make the final decision about how you want to appear. Intelligent? Sexy? Cool?

However, the problem with trying to look cool, for example, takes us back to those dilemmas from our teens. Cool people seem to be effortlessly cool. People trying to be cool are inherently un-cool. So how do you make yourself look cool without looking like you’re trying to make yourself look cool? The risk of ridicule if you get it wrong is gut-knotting.



The reality is that while most people are wary about having their photo taken in case they look awful, most photographers feel this even more intensely. Indeed, for many, one of the primary advantages of holding the camera is precisely so you don’t have to be in the image. So to tell an audience of camera club members that I wanted them to turn the device on themselves was never going to be an easy sell.

However, I did my best to try and fill them with enthusiasm for the idea, primarily pushing the notion of photography as storytelling. It can be like having your own dressing up box – you can pretend to be whomever you want.

And once you move away from the suggestion that it has to be some kind of accurate representation, and into the idea of performance and play, then the possibilities for creativity and fun open up massively.

I don’t know how many will enter the competition. I know it will push almost all of them completely out of their comfort zone, but I feel the experience of doing it will be all the more rewarding because of that.

In about 3 weeks I’ll be given the submissions to look through and judge, and in the 2nd half of February, I’ll be going back to announce the winners.

Although anyone who is brave enough to overcome their reluctance and actually enter is already a winner in my eyes.

And if you have 5 minutes to spare, below is a video about the making of the Lavazza (coffee) 2012 Calendar, where they asked 12 famous photographers to create self-portraits. Each had a very different take on the concept.


The LAVAZZERS 2012 from Eugenio Recuenco on Vimeo.

Photographic Challenge

In one of my biggest challenges yet, a couple of weeks ago I not only had to photograph a group of pro and semi-pro photographers, but I had to be in the shot too.

I recently teamed up with half a dozen other photographers in the area, with the idea to pool resources, expertise and marketing power. The theory is we could help make this area an attractive place for those interested in photography (buying prints or taking workshops) to visit.

It’s early days yet, and the aim is to officially launch next Spring, but things are slowly taking shape. The constitution is written, executive posts filled, bank account opened and the website is under construction.

It was decided it would be useful to have a group photo to go on the website, and to use for publicity purposes once we launch. As portrait photography is my speciality, the responsibility for the photo fell on my shoulders. Inevitably this presented several challenges.

An initial idea of an outside shot of us all against a backdrop of a beautiful Galloway landscape was quickly dismissed. It’s hard enough to negotiate a time and date to suit 7 self-employed people, let alone rely on the weather in Scotland, in winter, to be pleasant. We needed an indoor space large enough to fit everyone plus lighting rigs, and while my wee studio is fine for one or two people – three at a push – it’s not designed for groups.

Fortunately Allan Wright leapt to the rescue and we were able to use his gallery – a large white painted room – after he’d removed his framed prints from one of the walls.

But while composition and lighting are tricky enough, in order to be in the photograph myself, I couldn’t just click when everything was perfect. I had to keep setting the timer then run round to get into position and hope no one was blinking, or looking in the wrong direction, or leaning in front of anyone else, or pulling a silly face.

And when photographing more than about 4 people, crowd control becomes an extra necessary skill...

Even then, it’s one thing to photograph the general public – group shots are usually family gatherings where they expect to follow the instructions of the professional with the camera. But to photograph a bunch of people who make money from their ability to use a camera means the sense of scrutiny is cranked up to the nth degree.

Still, somehow I survived and below are the final images. One where we look very serious and professional, and one where we, er, don't...

As usual, feel free to click on the images for larger versions.





Left to right-ish (click on names for links to their websites):
Morag Paterson and Ted Leeming
Roger Lever
Phil McMenemy
Allan Wright
Kim Ayres
Ian Biggar

Who's watching who?

I much prefer taking photos where the subject is staring straight into the camera. It means the viewer of the photo gets the feeling they are being watched while they look.

In this case, however, a TV cameraman was filming me while I was taking a photo of the director. So the viewer is not only being stared at, but is being filmed too.

For a bit of extra fun, I overlaid an image of a piece of glass that's been sitting in the garden for several months. Finally, giving it a sepia tint makes the photo look a few decades old rather than the few weeks it actually is.



As usual, feel free to click on the image for a larger version

The Geese at The Mill Sessions

The Geese are a local "indie-folk" band, who I’ve photographed on previous occasions. In fact one of my photos graces their first CD, back when they were just a 3-piece band.

They were performing at The Mill Sessions on Friday past, so we needed a photo of them for the collection.

My comfort zone is photographing people one at a time. Once numbers start becoming plural, the difficulties multiply exponentially. The more people there are, the more chance one of them will be blinking, looking the wrong way, obscuring someone else or pulling a dodgy face.

Time was limited as there’d been a mix up in communication, and I had far less than I’d have liked, as they had to go and sound check with Marcus, who was recording the session.

The upshot of all this was when I got back home to look at the results, I discovered I didn’t have a single shot where they were all looking at the camera and no one was laughing, moving, or obscuring someone else.

Fortunately over the years I’ve become reasonably adept at using Photoshop so was able to take different heads from different shots and merge them together. This final image, then, is actually an amalgamation of about 4 photos. However, I know from talking to other professional photographers, this kind of thing goes on all the time. At least I wasn’t removing wrinkles or making anyone look slimmer.



Filming proved to be a bit problematic too. I was sitting only 4 or 5 feet in front of them - which is great for an intimate live performance, but not so good trying to fit all the band members into the screen. So I had to have the wide-angle lens on the camera, set at the most extreme I could. Unfortunately, the result of this is everyone’s somewhat distorted.

However, if you can forgive the visuals, this song is one of my favourites, and does give quite a good sense of the style of The Geese. It’s called “Trade Not Aid” and is about a man who is drowning but when he calls for help, the person on the shore who can throw him the lifebelt tells him helping him for free could set up a culture of dependency, so he should trade something for the help instead.



For more info about The Geese, visit their Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Geese/168328679870494

Finding Albert at The Mill Sessions

Finding Albert are a rather talented, up and coming band who played at The Mill Sessions last week.

As in previous performances this year, I set about photographing the band before the gig started.

Up until now, I’d been photographing people singly, or in pairs, so with Finding Albert being a 4-piece band, it took a bit of shuffling about to fit them all into the shot. There’s also the problem that the more people in a photo, the more chance one of them will be blinking, looking in the wrong direction or getting lost in a shadow cast by one of the others. It took a bit of time, but I got there in the end.


Finding Albert: left to right -
Chris (drums), Rob (vocals and keyboard), Neil (bass), Michael (guitar)

An additional difficulty, however, lay in the fact the summer has now long since passed and it was dark, so there wasn’t the option of photographing outside. And the empty space I’d used in the first 3 Mill Sessions earlier in the year wasn’t empty.

My solution was to bring along a light, a reflector and an extension lead and use the stairwell.



The gig itself was superb. With room only available for 50 to 60 people max, the venue allows a real sense of intimacy. It feels like barely a step up from having a band perform in your living room. Stripped back from their usual big amps, the drummer even used a cajón, as a full drum kit would have over-powered everything else in this smaller space.

As well as the obvious advantage for the audience, for the performers it also feels like playing to a group of friends, creating a mood that is both intimate and relaxed.

Sitting at the front with my camera on my knee, I put on the wide-angle lens so as to fit everyone in at such a close distance. There’s no fancy camera work, but the videos below should give you a flavour of the evening.


Back to Rome


My Friend Jack

For more about Finding Albert, visit their website here:
http://www.findingalbert.com/

or their Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/findingalbert