Friday 18 March 2011

18 March 2011

Filled with fresh vigour after posting my first blog, the following day drained all that away when my bag - complete with wallet and cards and mobile - was stolen.  I left the pub to walk to my Derby County match and left the bag lying under the table - a simple, stupid mistake.  Mind you, after feeling angry, distraught and, worse still, foolish, I soon found myself adopting a pragmatic state of mind to the whole wretched ordeal - that's after I had got through the massive inconvenience of blocking my cards and phone.  For one thing, I'm fully insured, had only a £20 note in my wallet, and had at least kept my keys in my pocket.  It could have been so much worse. As for missing a Derby County win - a rarity at the moment - I found it was the main match on the Football League Show that evening.  I also found myself reflecting contentedly on the fact that I am not living a life as desperate and amoral as the piece of ordure that took my bag.
I felt even better when, having worked out that I had lost about £100 as a result of this theft, had an email from a client rewarding me with an extra £100 for a job well done.  I am now completely over the experience, and will never, ever let my bag leave my shoulder again!
I've even surprised myself at getting through such a week without a drink: I'm supporting my wife Francine after she decided to give up alcohol for Lent.  Did you know, though, that ironically Sundays don't count?  This has made it easier, though left me a bit bemused: are we to glean from this that Jesus roamed around for for six days and then, on Sunday, came out of the wilderness to go to the pub?
It was hard, though, sitting in a  Pizza Express with a lemonade while my daughter and partner sipped on a large one.  That evening got better, though, after watching Derby Shakespeare's production of Hamlet, a particularly vigorous affair, made all the more visceral by being seated on the front row, exhilaratingly close to Hamlet's spit and Leartes' blood.



My daughter Helena used to perform with Derby Shakespeare but, even though she now lives in London, she has a bigger stage in Derby than ever before. I used Helena and boyfriend Gareth as my models for a photo commission from Derby Cathedral Quarter and just recently, they were standing 100 feet tall, quite literally: they are the faces on a massive banner adorning Chapel St Car Park.   









I also used Helena and Gareth for a series of photos that I could submit to the Trevillion Image Library which specialises in book covers.  I've only got 20 images in the library but have been fortunate to sell several of them.  I've just received the news that I've sold a photo of Helena for the second time.  Here is the image as it appears on the first book.  It's a novel by Jodi Picoult who is quite a big name in America.  Schuldig, by the way, means 'guilty'.















I've also sold an image of Helena with Gareth for a book by Anita Shreve, another big name Stateside.  Funnily enough, both images were taken within a few yards of each other - in a country lane in Brailsford, Derbyshire.  The doomy skies obviously helped.  What has been an eye-opener for me is that when a novel is published in other countries, you can get a completely different cover.  The Picoult novel is in German, the Shreve in Polish.  You get different titles, too: I can't find a Picoult novel called Guilty.  Skradziony Czas means 'stolen time', though the title of the American novel is Resistance.




I have worked with two other models in the last three months: Mark and Tamzin.  I discovered both while shooting production photos for the theatre troupe the Marlowe Players.  I was commissioned to shoot pictures to promote the Derby Cathedral Quarter Christmas lights.  Both Mark and Tamzin were very professional and as the images went down so well, I had no hesitation in asking them to model suits and jackets for my squash club colleague Rupert Bowling who runs an online company called suitsmen.co.uk. We recently completed a shoot in Ashbourne which went really well.  I'll say more about this shoot in future blogs.

Friday 11 March 2011

Blog Virgin Deflowered

Friday March 11
Here's my first blog and I have to say I winced as I typed that word 'blog'.  Surely the instigator of this worldwide realm could have created a more harmonious sounding word? It sounds so ugly. I have to admit I have started this whole blogging thing because I need to work on the SEO (search engine optimisation) for my website and a blog is what they call "text rich", very good for SEO.  This might make my motives sound a touch cold and clinical but behind it is a genuine feeling that I'm a good photographer who should have his website visited more often!
Also, I am a professional feature writer as well as photographer and, as I genuinely like to write, why not write about my photography?  Furthermore, in the last year I have photographed the Queen, Princess Anne and Charles & Camilla (it sounds like I'm collecting the set and, if William & Kate read this, I would be a cheaper wedding snapper than Mario Testino) so I have got some interesting aspects of my work to write about.
Today seemed a good day to launch into the blogosphere (no, that doesn't work as a word either, does it?) as I photographed the former England rugby star Jason Robinson.  He was a guest of investment bankers Brown Shipley in Manchester, a job I got through Bulletin, a financial services PR company.  Bulletin's rep couldn't be present so he asked me to do a short interview with Jason for their press release.  He was a very personable guy as he chatted about getting back into rugby (he came out of retirement two years ago to play for Fylde) and England's good form in the Six Nations.  When my questions were answered, he smiled when I told him the whole interview had been painful for me...  I'm Welsh.
Getting work at Brown Shipley is a classic example of the way one thing can lead to another in the uncertain world of freelancing.  I was photographing (for Derbyshire Life) 'Winster's Secret Gardens' - an Open Gardens scheme which the Peak village has embraced so richly - and met an old Radio Derby colleague Martin Stott.  I photographed him and his two daughters and was so pleased with the image, I emailed it to him.  Next thing I know, his company - Bulletin - hires me to do a shoot at an evening to celebrate the recent opening of Brown Shipley's offices in Manchester - with special guest Pattie Boyd, former wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton, exhibiting her private photos.  Being a Beatleophile, it was all I could do to stop myself from plying her with questions about the Fab Four.  She was delightful.  It felt even more like an honour when I started thinking about the six main people you think of in the lives of The Beatles: Pete Best, Brian Epstein, George Martin, Yoko Ono, Linda McCartney and... Pattie.  
 Before I go on too long ("Good old Ashley, always a paragraph where a sentence will do," remarked an old boss of mine), I'll mention the other reason I wanted to start my blog today.  It seemed the fateful day, not just because of Jason Robinson following hot on the heels of Pattie Boyd and Charles & Camilla, but because of something I read in my national newspaper this morning.  I mentioned an old Radio Derby colleague, Martin.  Also, that "old boss of mine" is Bryan Harris, the best station manager I worked under at Radio Derby.  I felt a cold blast in my solar plexus when I read a quote on the front page from Mike Bettison, my last station manager at Radio Derby who is now manager at Radio Nottingham.  He was confirming that the whole of BBC Local Radio was under threat as a result of BBC cutbacks.  700 could lose their jobs.  I suddenly thought of nationally known broadcasters who started on local radio - Kate Adie, Simon Mayo and, both ex-Radio Derby, Mike Ingham and Duncan Kennedy.  How would they have got where they are without that grounding in local radio?  I worked at Radio Derby for 22 years until the year 2000 when I became a victim of the latest round of BBC budget cuts.  The manager - Bettison - axed my post of Arts & Entertainments Producer, effectively forcing me to leave and kicking in the teeth all those years of experience, expertise and enthusiasm.  I will never forgive or forget what he put me through, though in a perverse way he did me a favour because I might not have contemplated breaking out and working for myself.  Last summer I celebrated ten years of self-employment, eight years as a photographer and I have loved virtually every minute of it.  I said I would never go back to BBC Radio Derby but it seems like it won't be there anyway in a few year's time. It's terribly sad - and rather appalling, too.  
So, this has been quite a day: the start of my blog, the end (possibly) of my old way of life...