Those of you who have followed me for a while will know that when I’m not photographering I do software development work for Canonical, the commercial backer of Ubuntu (incidentally, Ubuntu rocks, you should use it). Recently I was asked if I’d attend the Ubuntu Developer Summit for the next release of Ubuntu, Quantal Quetzal. When I found out that it was going to be held in Oakland, CA, I jumped at the chance – the Bay Area is one of my favourite places in the world, and I could hardly refuse such a polite request.

Knowing that I was going to be out there for a couple of weeks, and also knowing by now that having to go that long without doing a proper shoot would drive me mad, I concocted a plan to stave off insanity: I would offer to update the corporate headshots of my colleagues who were out there with me.

In the end I shot 27 individuals over a week and a bit, weekends not included. We kept things short; 15-or-so minutes per person. After some experimentation I found  that the easiest way to get a shot that I loved was to have a laugh and shoot the breeze with my subjects; the best shots came from the un-moments between us, the bits in a conversation just after we’d been laughing and joking.

I had a great time, reaffirmed some friendships and forged some new ones in the process. Here’s a slideshow of the headshots I made during UDS; I hope that I’ll be able to continue working on the collection as time goes by – there’s a lot of interesting characters in Canonical – but we’ll have to wait and see.

For the technically inclined, here are the details of the lighting setup:

Created with The Online Lighting Diagram Creator, http://www.lightingdiagrams.com/

I could only fly with relatively minimal gear, so I kept it simple: One speedlight on the backdrop at f/8, one through a Westcott double-fold umbrella at f/4 on the subject. I kept my ISO around 400 most of the time to save on battery power a bit. The backdrop was either a projector screen or a white canvas board which was part of the stage in the summit’s plenary room.

1. If you like a piece of work, say so.
2. Don’t, however, use the word “but.” “I like it but I wish…” is just a bait-and-switch from complement to criticism. Hearing that someone likes your work sucks you in; the sucker punch of the “but” is an unpleasant one.
3. If you don’t like a piece of work and you haven’t been asked by its author to give a critique, keep your mouth shut. If people wanted your critique, they would have asked.
4. When you’re giving a critique, be honest – brutal if that’s what honesty leads to – but don’t be mean. Critique the work, not the artist.

I guess this boils down to Wheaton’s Law, but I thought it was worth saying anyway.

I think I’ve found a methodology that would work for it… A very complex, painstaking one that would mean many, many hours of shooting and post-processing for each image.

Actually, I quite like the sound of that.

I wanted to let you all know about a project that I’m starting. Normally, when I start a personal project, I don’t shout about it from the rooftops. That’s for the simple reason that many personal projects wither on the vine, and there’s little point in me talking about them until they’ve established a foothold and actually started to grow legs.

Er, I’ve mixed up some fairly disparate metaphors there. Let’s try again.

The point is that I don’t usually shout about things until I’m well on the road with them, mostly because I don’t know if they’re even worth pursuing (but I can’t know that until I try).

The Cobbler’s Children, and All That

It’s often said that the cobbler’s children have no shoes. Similarly, photographers’ families don’t necessarily have many photographs of themselves. More specifically, photographers rarely have great portraits of themselves hanging around. How many times have you seen a photographer’s page on Facebook, only to see them hiding behind the camera in a mock shooting pose, or standing with the camera in one hand*, looking fake-smiley.

It occurred to me that I’d quite like to shoot portraits of photographers, make them look great, and get to know some of my fellow shutter monkeys in the process (for all too often we find ourselves talking about ISOs and shutter speeds when we get together, rather than what actually makes us different as artists, which is who we are).

I Shoot  You and You Shoto Me**

An added dimension to the project, which came up when I was looking for volunteers on Friday afternoon, was that if I’m going to be running around making portraits of photographers, it’s only fair that they should get to make portraits of me, too. That way, they all get to have my take on them, and I get numerous versions of myself in return. Stands to reason, and I quite like it.

And Then What, eh?

Naturally, when one’s daydreaming about a project like this, one wonders where it’s actually going to go. Here are my thoughts so far:

• The images I shoot will go online somewhere - either on a dedicated Tumblr or here, depending on volume.
• The portraits that other photographers make of me will also go online in the same place, with their permission. All photographers will retain copyright over their work, of course

So how do I get involved?

If you want to be involved in the project (and hells, why wouldn’t you?), there are several ways to let me know:

• Drop me an email at mail@grahambinns.com with the subject line  ”Photographer Portraits”.
• Leave a comment on this post.
• Send me a message on my Facebook page.
• Get in touch with me on Twitter – @grahambinns.
• Get in touch with me on Google+.

Whatever the medium, let me know who you are, where you’re from and what kind of photography work you typically do.

And it’s important to note here that you don’t have to be a professional photographer. I want to hear from you whether you shoot £5000 weddings for a living or love making Instagram images of the world around your front door***. The point is for us to meet, interact, get to know each other and maybe, hopefully, learn something from each other in the process.

So, who’s with me?

*There are exceptions to this rule. Arty self portraits, mostly.
** Bonus points to anyone who gets this reference.
*** It’s important, too, to realise that these aren’t mutually exclusive pursuits. 

This is Sam Rowlands. She’s a local musician, and she very kindly lent me her camera when I was shooting the video for Scarred I.D’s Hell No. I figured that I could repay her with a photoshoot.

It was an interesting experience for me, after several months of working only with pro models, to come back to working with someone whom I needed to direct a lot more. It felt a lot like having to learn things all over again.

But we kept the shoot nice and simple, sticking to an editorial kind of feel. I find myself wanting to do lots of concept work, so keeping things simple leaves me champing at the bit somewhat. But you’ve got to walk before you can run, right?

… except that I already know I can run. Never mind, forget that analogy.

A few people have asked what kind of images I want to produce now. Well, the one above is a good place to start. It’s not about clothes, it’s about the person. It’s also about the experience of being freezing cold on a summer’s evening for the sake of a test shoot.

Gradually getting to work on stripping my book back to where I want it to be; there’s going to be a certain amount of rebuilding to do, but that’s okay. Probably about time that this place got a spring clean and a re-theming, too, come to think of it.

Oh, and according to WordPress, this is my 1,000th published post on this blog. Hurrah.

It’s been a weird sort of week this week. The kind that looks like it’s going to blast past you and then turns at the last minute and hits you with the force of a freight train.

I’ve been thinking for a while of refining the direction in which I’m taking my photography. It started after my most recent fashion shoot, which had a number of problems and which I didn’t enjoy as much as I should’ve. Talking it over with Sarah, I said then that I wanted to stop doing studio fashion, at least for a while, because it didn’t excite me. That’s pretty much where I left it.

This week I spent some time in That London, partly to visit my dear friend Kat who was over from Australia from a short time, and also to shoot some images of her for an upcoming project of hers. Kat has changed her life radically over the last year or so, and over a cup of tea was explaining to me how important it was to do what you love in life and to not get hung up on other stuff that might come along. The whole conversation reminded me a lot of Zack Arias’s Edit: Transform video.

What are you doing with the time you have right now? When you’re pushing 80 and you’re flat on your back with no way to speak a single word? Shutter speeds? Cool locations? That portrait series that was printed in some magazine that no-one remembers the name of? So why’s all that so damn important now?

~ Zack Arias

This morning I was looking at my schedule for early March. It’s looking a little bare, apart from a couple of client meetings and some pre-production work for a commercial shoot in April. I wondered why I hadn’t made an effort to book more fashion shoots.And then, watching Zack and RC’s conversation on D-Town TV, it hit me like bolt out of the blue: Because I didn’t actually want to shoot any more fashion.

From now on: characters.

~ Zack Arias

Don’t get me wrong; I love working with models, and I’ve been lucky enough to work with some great ones. I like shooting in cool locations, too – and even, on occasion, in the studio. But I really struggle to focus on the the objective of fashion photography, which is to make the clothes look amazing. I’m much more interested in the person, or in the story, or in the story about the person in that particular location. The clothes are just part of the character of the image. And that all adds up to me not being a very good fashion photographer. I’ve shot some beautiful images (some of which are interspersed with the text of this post, lest I never show them ever again), no doubt about it, and I’m very proud to have shot them. But they aren’t a great foundation for a fashion portfolio and I know it. Moreover I’m not exactly living in the fashion capital of the world up here.

The funny thing is that every single time I’ve talked about photography recently I’ve talked about the joy of photographing someone and bringing their character out in the image. I just didn’t listen to myself very much, and because of that I’ve spent nearly a year of my life and 14,000 or so shutter actuations on finding out that fashion just isn’t for me.

So, no more fashion for fashion’s sake. More commercial work, lots more editorial work, some commercial stuff, and lots more working with people about whom I need to tell a story.

And yes, it’s entirely possible that I’m making a huge mistake, and that in another year I’ll look back and think I’m ready for a second crack at fashion. I don’t know; that’s part of the excitement. But I’m sure as hell not going to spend any more time doing something that isn’t exciting me every time I pick up my camera.

You may remember a few posts back (you know, when I was updating regularly…) I talked about working quite a bit with a local band called Scarred I.D (whose guitarist, Ben, is seen above).

A little more recently the band asked for volunteers to help them shoot their first music video. I’ve always fancied doing video work, so I immediately threw my hat into the ring.

There was talk of broadcast-quality cameras and multiple camera operators, but sadly most of that fell through. Instead, we shot the whole thing on two video-capable DSLRs: a Nikon D7000 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, and a Canon 600D, kindly loaned to us by one of the support acts. I’m not a Canon shooter, but I found that 600D a joy to use (except for the autofocus, which I switched off). I shot the image at the top of this post with that 600D, and it’s one of the best live images I’ve ever made, which is proof, once again, that gear is good but vision is better.

Here’s the full video for the band’s first single from their “Ground Zero” E.P, “Hell No!”:

And, partly because I wanted to say thanks to everyone who helped out, but mostly because I was enjoying playing with Premiere Pro too much to stop, here’s a credits roll for the video:

And yes, I did invent “High Flying Badger” as a name for a production company. Might even have registered highflyingbadger.com for future use, too…