Thoughts behind an image promoting a Blue Mountains B&B

In Sydney it was 26 degrees and gloriously sunny and with perfect weather there was nothing stopping an ideal shoot for Bilpin Springs Lodge, a terrific self-catering hotel in Bilpin catering for families. But as we drove closer to the blue Mountains, the weather turned - 11 degrees, cars had pulled off the road to shelter under trees to hide from the hail - the nets above the apple trees in apple orchards along the road were weighed down by hail. In other words,  a typical photoshoot that always presents challenges no matter how much you plan.

The photographic brief was to photograph interior shots including two family rooms, two bathrooms and some exterior shoots so initially I focussed on interior shots such as the image below to allow the weather to improve.

Normally I avoid shots like this when photographing restaurants and hotels - I call them Marie Celeste shots - beautifully empty rooms - my reasoning is if I saw an empty restaurant I would never go in so why do restaurant and hotel websites never include people in their images? However, bathrooms and bedrooms can be devoid of people, common areas such as hotel foyers and restaurants should never be.

Finally the weather cleared so I was able to work outside- the client wanted an image of the back of the lodge to show guests there was lots of grass for kids to play on.

I could have settled for the photo below.

But it lacks life though it does show green lawns and a car nearby to placate any guest who feared they would have to walk miles from the carpark.

To inject life, my client acted as a model.

This photo adds lots of value to the brief of showing the lawns behind the lodge. It shows that the lodge is dog-friendly, that cars can be parked nearby, there are horses but they are safely behind fences and that the proprietor is friendly.

But the photos is not without flaws since it was a spontaneous image taking only minutes to set up. There is light on the horse's foreleg causing the viewer to look there and not just on the happy (i.e. friendly) proprietor. The dog is in shadow, the man's forearm is too bright, the jeans and base of the shirt are illuminated, the horse's face is a little too dark, the fence post is intrusive, there is too much emphasis on the car, there is a distracting light on the porch and worst of all, the proprietor looks a little apprehensive and this is a bad message for if the proprietor is wary of the horse, maybe it would be too dangerous for families to stay there?

So with a little bit of photoshop, the image has been enhanced and the client can guarantee increased bookings for his lodge!

Why portraiture is usually superficial

A Macedonian christening in Sydney - lots of family and friends, a peaceful and kind family gathering.

 Until  the brother-in-law flips, maybe the booze, no one really knew.

A tragic event that bounded everyone present including me, the photographer. Consequently, the commonality of experience between me and the family gave rise to portraits like this one of the godfather.

I didn't create this portrait. The circumstances did.  

I also didn't create the portrait below which was taken when the christening was still an innocent gathering.

One of her nine year old cousins took this photo - I set up and then held the camera (a 2kg beast) but that was it - so the image is about the relationship of two girls who have known each other for a lifetime.

To sum up, most images I take at family gatherings are superficial  (how can they be anything else when I know nothing of the subjects) but occasionally they have meaning. To minimise superficiality, I avoid direct portraiture and focus on the relationships between key players at the family gathering, whether it be a wedding, a christening or a funeral. Possibly my greatest insight as a photographer is to understand portraits have true beauty when they reveal character and only rarely can my relationship with the sitter be of sufficient depth to bring character to the surface.

pro bono work

It's nice to do good. The cards below have photos on them taken during an afternoon in West Bengal. If you want to buy them, they are available at Kolkata, a fair trade shop in Brighton, England.

With many images to choose from, it helped enormously to decide the six cards needed a common theme to make them greater than their individual components. So I settled on the theme of joyful play and hopefully, they will do much to raise money for Suchana (www.suchana-community.org).

wedding album design - how to determine the size and number of images on a page.

One wedding, three pages showing three layouts. 

When an image is very strong, it needs no additional images.

 But sometimes it's fun to have a record of images leading up to the large image.

In the last page, the images are weak in their composition but strong in their emotion so there is no one dominant image. The images are placed to emphasis the diagonals to lead the viewer from, for example, the bride to the groom.