inspirational companies

Companies, partnerships and individuals with strong business models exist throughout the world of photography and modern digital imaging and media. The companies or collaborations that I am looking at I picked because they all run in the same direction that I want to take my photography, editorial and photojournalism. Vice Media LLC, Magnum Photos and Amber Film and Photography Collective cic. are the different companies I will be looking at. They all have very different approaches to business within the creative industries, but all manage to survive successfully.




Vice Media LLC 

Vice Media is a current affairs and lifestyle media platform, with free magazine publication and a wide range of videos and documentaries filmed around the world on all kinds of issues. Vice is so successful because it is much more modern and up to date than its rivals such as BBC, CNN who's internet presence is far weaker than that of vice. Aimed at at the youth and digital savy vice has exploded, tackling a wide range of subjects from filming inside North Korea to tracking down the illegal arms dealers who buy and sell nuclear weapons. Vice has no cost to the end user, the magazines are free and the videos are posted online regularly with no cost to the user, this encourages very large amounts of people to access their material. The profit comes in the form of advertising and now a vast portion comes from licensing the airing of their productions to different TV networks. vice has moved from being the small publication it started out as and is now a media empire worth over $2.5 billion.

Magnum Photos

set up in 1947 Magnum Photos is a co-operative of photographers from around the world who aim to document the world and its events as they unfold, keeping a reference of almost all major events to have occurred since Magnums formation. Magnum acts as an agent to its members giving them access to areas and stories that would otherwise be impossible to broadcast. At Magnums core is an ethic of pure documentary that remains free political agenda and propaganda, this is one of its key reasons for formation shortly after WW2.

Amber Film and Photographic Collective cic.

I have always had close ties with this company, all my life amber has been a driving creative force in my work. My father worked closely with amber films for many years, acting in several of their films and the subject of some of Sirka-Liisa Konttinen's photography. They aim to closely document the life of people of the north east, through photography and film. They have a collection of over 28,000 photographs and 100 films. Their work is renowned around the world, the body of work "Byker" by Sirka-Liisa Konttinen, created for Amber Films was the first pice of photography to show in the British Council in China since the cultural revolution. Her narrative work and the surrounding films produced by Amber have also been added to the "UK Memory of the World Register" a compilation of documents, archives and documentaries deemed highly important to the record of British history. Amber films it's self is a Community Interest Company meaning that it exists to serve the local community and its interests as opposed to maximising profit margins.

Inspirational Work

I take my inspiration from many different photographers and for many different reasons, some of the photographers that interest me most include Collin McPherson, Chris Steel-Perkins, Yousuf Karsh, Dave Lachapelle and Jason Bell. These photographers have impacted the visual styling of my work, sending me down one creative path or another. I have tried to take on their methods and techniques by researching the photographers and their work. some of the most important information I have gained from this lies outside of the direct creative process and is more based around building rapport with models and clients. Doing this makes it possible to really understand what they want or in the case of a model to capture a moment of real emotion, something you cannot do without talking to people and allowing them to forget they are being photographed.

Collin McPherson

Collin McPerson is a photographer based in Scotland I was first introduced to his photography last year when he came to the college to discuss his work. The images that grabbed me the most were from a set called "Catching the Tide." This was his first long term set of photography which was taken over several years, but what really caught my eye was the crop the images were taken in. They are a very wide format, taken on a camera designed to take panoramic photographs. The photographs are shot on film, giving them a much more impressive dynamic range and level of tones, adding to the cinematic quality of the images. Seeing the images in such a wide format really intrigued me and I now use this style of crop regularly within my photography.

 Chris Steele-Perkins

A member of magnum, Chris Steele-Perkins is a highly renowned photographer, he has worked all over the world as a photojournalist and was educated in Newcastle. A vast body of his work is based around the Northeast and wider UK which is brought together in the form of his book "England My England." I was lucky enough to be given this book for my 18th birthday and have read it many times since, his photography is powerful, often shocking or hilarious but always contains a beautiful intimacy with his subjects. This comes back to rapport and how important it is to be able to connect with your subject

Yousuf Karsh
Karsh is one of the masters of portrait photography, capturing a true image of each of his subjects. The contrast created by incredible use of light creates imagery with real depth, showing every detail of his subjects expressions. Karsh also had a wonderful ability to make people at ease with him, whilst photographing George Bernard-Shaw he remarked  "He said I might make a good picture of him - but none as good as the picture he had seen at a recent dinner party where he glimpsed, over the shoulder of his hostess, a perfect portrait of himself: “Cruel, you understand, a diabolical caricature, but absolutely true.” He pushed by the lady, approached the living image, and found he was looking into a mirror! The old man peered at me quizzically to see if I appreciated his little joke. It was then that I caught him in my portrait. Whilst Karsh photographed some of the most influential people of the 20th century he also worked on assignments in an editorial style capturing incredible images.

   

 LaChapelle studios

Dave LaChapelle  studios are located in L.A. and is essentially everything I aspire to within my own career. Whilst I do enjoy and appreciate his images sometimes I find them to loud and garish, but his images always resonate his style and his detailed personal symbolism. But even more than this it is the way that he works that interests me. LaChapelle uses huge sets built on site at his studio to create both stills and moving image with great theatrical imagery and originality. This method of set building interests me as a direction to take my photography as I already have qualifications in technical theatre production and have built several large sets for events and productions. 

Jason Bell

Jason Bell is a High level editorial and commercial photographer, I was lucky enough to attend a lecture at the collage by him earlier in the course. He is an enigmatic character and talked us through his work in detail, explaining the ways he builds stories for his models to act in. His images push colour to its extremes with lighting and post production, but maintains a very tight colour pallet within the styling and setting of his images, usually sticking to a single major colour for the whole image or using one contrasting colour to pick out the model.

Company branding and website developement

In order to develop myself as a professional photographer I need to have modern legible branding that is in keeping with my style of photography. Before starting this project I already had branding and a website in place but it was becoming dated, so I decided to refresh my company logos and styling. 

I started with a new business card, I wanted a strong new image that reflected my current photography so I chose to use one from my shoot with Racheal Fraser as I think this is one of the strongest images I have shot to date.

I wanted my business card to reflect my own style, slightly messy and hands on but with an air of refinement and professionality. To try and encompass these themes within my card I degraded the image with scribbles and areas of very low saturation, I think this helps create a more approachable company image. 

I now needed to develop my website to match my cards, this was a relatively simple task as I use a online portfolio company called Veiwbook. This online app allows me to update my website from anywhere with ease and has a wide range of adjustable features such as the style of galleries, home pages, and navigation around the site. Viewbook is based on standardised W3C coding which allows it to be readable on all common internet browsers (chrome, safari etc.) and works well with mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.

The redevelopment of my website was mostly just basic colour changes to fit the business cards, previously my site was grey, and to update the logo. 

I also changed my home page from a single static image to a gallery of some of my best shots from the site. This allows people to instantly see a variety of images and works well to hook them into the rest of the site, a very important factor as on average a person looks at a site for nine seconds, then decides if they want to keep looking.

Incident room shoot

This was a brief I undertook for collage, we were set the task of creating an image round the title "incident room." The image we created had to show narrative and a high level of technical application.

The model is Ellen Woud -

 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203759170323549&set=pb.1347433828.-2207520000.1418057571.&type=3&theater

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This was a testing shoot. If something could have gone wrong it did, but despite this I still ended up capturing some beautiful images. The two main issues I encountered on this shoot were access and lighting, both of which are easily dealt with by means of more stringent planning. My first issue upon arriving at the discovery museum was access to the room I wanted to use. I had discussed use of one of the rooms with an employee of the museum and had been told to pop in whenever I wanted so long as I didn't get in the way of the running of the building. Unfortunately on the day I chose to shoot the museum was closing early to tidy up after a large event, after some discussion with the curator I was granted ten minuets in the room I wanted to use - perfect timing for the flash to fail. Despite this I endeavoured to shoot using available light, thankfully I had a very good model who could hold a striking pose for the relatively long exposure times needed to capture the scene. Although this was a very stressful scenario, it has helped me to understand the realities of working within a professional environment, where situations can change very fast and require you to be adaptable if you wish to get good end results. However productivity can definitely be raised by careful planning ensuring that future shoots run smoothly.

Shoot with Georgia Porja - Newcasle based musician

Georgia Porja is a local musician, she is a vocalist who produces acoustic and electronic music. She aproached me looking for promo / album artwork, this is the set of images we created.

https://www.facebook.com/georgiaporjamusic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IseWfHJDL-I

(this is a video we shot together earlier this year.)

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Gorgia's music is full of feeling, turmoil an love. A very honest expression of the light and dark that lies within all of us. I needed co capture this, to do so I wanted to use natural light, strong shadows and unusual poses / locations. The shadows in image I. create moody atmospheric lighting, they can also be read as bars to a cell, a metaphor for the feeling of being trapped inside ones self, music being Georgia's form of escapism from the constraints of normality.

my personal and professional developement

During my time at collage I have started to assemble the necessary skills, tools and confidence to run my own business as a photographer. This skill set is constantly growing and evolving as I progress through my learning, to give some context as to how my work has refined and changed I will analyse and assess my own work as well as the work of photographers, artists and other creative or business influences I have found my self drawn to, or attempted to incorporate within my own work. 

evaluation of past projects

Low Key

My very firs project was to shoot a low key image of a hat, we had to use continuous lighting to create a low key, black and white image of a model wearing a hat. This was a good introduction to studio photography as I had never done it before. We experimented with light, learning about its qualities of diffusion, direction and intensity. Only one continuous, incandescent light was allowed for this shoot, this tested out hands on ability to modify and move the lights, helping me to understand the studio space and how to use it best.

High Key

My second image was a high key image, to look back on this it seems easy, but I remember the stress as I was given four studio flashes and a light meter, then more or less allowed to experiment. I took my inspiration from Richard Avedon's images of miners, they show normal people in a setting generally reserved for celebrity. High key portraiture is normally used in fashion or celebrity photography so i liked to idea of juxtaposing this with the rough and ready look of this painter. It was key to my advancement as a professional photographer that I leaned these techniques, as in-between the extremes of high key and low key photography lies every photograph ever taken.

Scale

The next project we were given was based around digital manipulation and required us to shoot two images then digitally composite them together, playing with the surrealism of scale whilst staying within the scope of advertising imagery. The concept within this image is strong, based around the idea of being "lost in the words" the image was created to be used as a dyslexia awareness advert. However as I had not been at collage long my time management was not as good as it is today and I spent far to much time making the words rather than taking the photos! If I had used my time more wisely I could have experimented with different compositions, hopefully finding one that better worked for my idea.

Food

One of the best projects I did in first year was the food project, we needed to shoot a meal and accompanying lifestyle shot. Our images had to be shot in the style of a particular cookery book picked from a list and needed to adhere closely to the styling within your chosen book. This was the first project where my work took  a jump towards being much more professional and I am still very happy to have both on my website.

Little Black Dress

Working as part of an efficient and coherent design team is one of the best ways to produce high level images. For this project we were given designers to work with who had been making the quintessential evening wear that is the little black dress. Working as part of a team like this was much more demanding as it meant I needed to take up roll as project leader, guiding the styling and timescales of the soot to make sure it ran as smoothly as possible.

Hitchcock

Another project based around team work, we were working as a group of up to eight members. Our aim was to recreate a still from the Alfred Hitchcock film "Vertigo." we had to work closely with designers and graphic artists to archive the image they needed for a poster they were designing. This project was a steep leaning curve as it really showed me the difficulties of working within a professional environment.

HDR Panorama

I achieved well in this project as I approached it from a very unusual perspective, the brief is centered around using advanced digital layering techniques to create a landscape image with maximum tonal range. The image that I took is a macro image of a very small rock only a few centimeters across, I wanted to explore this unusual world of landscape in its smallest form, very different from the normal vast landscape photographs we see.  

Environmental Portraiture

this brief suited my style of photography very well, as I want to move into editorial photography it was the perfect brief for me to test out my skills. We were set the task of taking two images of unusual occupations, one indoors and one out doors. My subjects were a barber and a tree surgeon, each posed its own unique problems. When shooting with the barber the main issue I had was with reflection of the lights in all of the mirrors, as I had to use off camera flash for the portrait. this was a difficult issue to fix but I managed to alleviate the Problem with carful positioning of my light. When shooting the second portrait the main problem I encountered was the pace of work during the day as the tree surgeons never stopped meaning I had to photograph them as they worked. 

Painting with Light

in this brief I took a vey abstract approach which actually lead to a very stylised low key portrait. Light painting usually involves lots of garish colours and light trails but I had already experimented with this as far as I wanted to in my own time. To try and think of a more unique idea for an image I looked at  a diverse range of contemporary artists and eventually being drawn to the idea of stencilling. Stencilling is a technique that lends its self well to light paining as it allows you to block in areas of light and dark. for this image I used an over head projector and a handful of spaghetti.