The Long lens Blog

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Found images of the Midland Hotel, Morecambe

Not so long ago, before memory cards and hard drives and RAW files and photoshop, it was possible to produce photographs without the aid of a computer.

Then, it was about rolls of film, regualr visits to Boots or Jessops and a steady trickle of cash out of your wallet to pay for development costs. I don't miss it.

However, if there had been no film there would be no shoebox in my loft. And ten years after taking these images I would not have found them again.

The Midland Hotel in Morecambe is now restored to its former glory. Built in 1933, it is a Grade II listed building that had fallen into disrepair. It re-opned in 2008 after renovation work by Urban Splash.

This is how it was.

NOTE: In 1989 an episode of Poirot was filmed at the hotel.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Blackpool's Comedy Carpet

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Created by artist Godron Young, Blackpool's Comedy Carpet is the town's latest public art project aimed at improving the promenade and changing people's perception of the town.

It features jokes, catchphrases and one-liners from over 1,000 comedy legends, from W.C Fields to Vic Reeves, and including Peter Cook, Dame Edna and any comedian you ever forgot.

Young was helped by Blackpool's comedy expert Barry Band, historian and writer Graham McCann, and on the typography and layout by graphic designer Andy Altmann of Why Not Associates. It was installed by Andrew Sawyer and Russ Coleman.

The carpet is a great effort from Blackpool Council (ReBlackpool), easily the best thing they've done since the giant mirrorball which was unveiled in 2002.

And finally for you technical lovers, hard facts about the carpet: Five years in the making. Each of the 160,000+ letters has been individually cut from 30mm solid granite or cobalt blue concrete. They've been arranged into over 300 slabs and then cast into white concrete panels.

Monday, November 14, 2011

The complicated world of self-publishing an ephotobook

Self-publishing took a turn for the better almost a decade ago.
Digital printing presses enabled shorter than short print runs – you could now print and order a single copy of your own book for little more than the price of a paperback in Waterstones.*
The first of these new innovators were Lulu, which came to life in 2004. Two years later Blurb emerged. In my experience these two have been by far the cheapest self-publishers, Lulu giving greater versatility, Blurb slightly better quality (certainly in these early days).
I first used the services of both in 2007. From experience I can tell you that converting files to pdfs for printing was not an easy process. In some ways it still is not but the process has improved.
My first and soon to be re-published book, Flashes to Ashes, was designed on Microsoft Publisher (a program never used again) and led to many hours of headaches before I finally cracked the pdf-making process. This included a couple of frantic nights were the converted pdf size was out-putting at 150gb when 150gb hard-drives were like gold dust.
I have to say the quality of printing and cut for full-bleed Lulu books was hugely variable in those days. I was not impressed on numerous occasions and had to have orders reprinted on several occassions.
But soon the printed self-published photo book will be superceded by the digital ephotobook – once the ability to produce digital editions is cracked.
And here we come to the big problem: photo books do not convert digitally anywhere near as easily as novels. The iPad, iPhone, Kindle and eReaders are crying out for photo books.
It was at the beginning of 2010 that Amazon’s digital book sales outstripped its paper versions for the first time. But photo books are conspicuous by their absence in the digital world.
Getting a photo book out there as a digital ephoto book for iPad’s iBook, Kindle (which has a colour Kindle Fire on its way) and Barnes & Noble’s absurdly-named NOOK is, to use my best English accent, a bloody nightmare darling.
So here is my what you can and can’t do digitally with photo books now (November 2011)
Blurb (since October 2011) allow you to produce epub photo books for the iPad and iPhone. This can be done ONLY through their Bookify or BookSmart software
As yet, Blurb can’t convert a pdf into an epub book.
And Blurb do NOT have the facility to sell the book for you on iTunes (although there are plans for this).
When they sort out these two issues, they will be THE place to convert photobooks.
LULU
Lulu are one of several official aggregators for iTunes, meaning you can convert an epub book with them and sell it on iTunes – but this service is not designed for photobooks. Books must be converted from Microsoft Word. Pdfs do not convert.
Other iTunes aggregators are: Ingram, inscribe Digital, LibreDigital and Smashwords. Bookwire is the only Europe-based official aggregator but those of us based in Europe do not have to use them. Which is a good job as their website is written in German.
Lulu supply an ISBN number
DO IT YOUR SELF
You can create your own iPad book but it’s very complicated. And if you don’t have a MAC you can’t create the epub file or (if you don’t have an iPad) test it properly.
There is a great guide here from Blurb.
You must buy and supply your own ISBN number.
CREATESPACE
Amazon’s own self-publishing house allows you to sell directly to their website (the world’s greatest book seller) and around the world through it’s Expanded Distribution Channel.
Their book sizes are really designed for novels only. This means no real choice of paper and they don’t have many book sizes to chose from. If you opt for one of non-industry standard sizes, these books can’t be sold around the world in their Expanded Distribution Channel.
And as an aside, the profit margins for hard copy books sold through their EDC is poor.
CreateSpace supply an ISBN number.
LIGHTNING SOURCE
Perhaps the most non-user friendly application process which involves printing out several pdfs signing them and posting them to the office closest to you (yes, there is one in the UK). Yes, sending applications in the post does still happen. On the plus side, you do get friendly emails sent by real people.
You must buy and supply your own ISBN number.
iTUNES CONNECT
You can submit your own books to iTunes Connect BUT you must pass a stupendous application process.
Just for starters you must have an American IRS tax number. iTunes support and advice in how to do this is appalling.
If you are not resident in the US this means sending a form (I think it’s a W-7 but their website and iTunes own advice is contradictory in places) by post. This process takes two months and includes getting copies of your ID (i.e. passport) signed by US notified officials. You may have to visit your local US Embassy to do this.
You cannot email the IRS or your US Embassy.
Once you’ve got your IRS number you submit to iTunes Connect. Success is at their discretion and also can only be done on an AppleMac running OS X 10.5.8 or later. I have to admit I find this stipulation very wrong and feel Apple should be forced to drop it by the Monopolies Commission, Competition Commission or any such similarly silly-named organisations in the free world.
You must buy and supply your own ISBN number.
THE END
*Waterstones is book shop a bit like the Barnes and Noble book store.
NOTE: You can buy my digital book, 6x9, for iPad from Blurb here: http://bit.ly/6x9iPad
It is available in hard copy format from both Blurb and CreateSpace – or from Amazon in the US.

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Oi ya bstrds you've stolen my pug picture

[gallery]At the time of writing, this photo has had 992 comments on Facebook, 1,730 likes and been shared 210 times. It’s on the Facebook page of the ASPCA, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The ASPCA did not seek or gain permission to use the image.
Using TinEye, the reverse image search engine, I found four other websites have published the image. There are probably more out there.
For any creative, copyright is crucial. It protects their work and helps ensure they earn money from it. If a photographer (whatever their level of ability or professionalism) lets any organisation use any image for free they are an idiot photographer.
They are allowing flattery – or vanity – to cloud their judgement and they devalue the commodity of the photograph for the entire industry. If anyone would like a more in-depth discussion on this then please get in touch.

That’s not to say I am draconian about my images. I have, on occasion, allowed free use of my images for what I deem worthy causes. Indeed I have allowed this image to be used by a dog blog website in Ottawa, Canada.
What I have never done is allowed commercial businesses or similar organisations to use my images for free and, believe me, I’ve had many requests.
I allowed the dog blog to use it because they asked nicely. And the important thing is that they do ask. Nicely.
The ASPCA, along with 5minute5.com, untoldenterainment.com, yazarkafe.hurriyet.com (don’t ask) and electricgrandmother.com never asked for permission to use the image. If they found it on google, they may have had difficulty discovering the author as the embedded IPTC information has been stripped out.
But that is no excuse for a failure to reply to emails when contacted about the use of unauthorised images. I emailed all four websites, asking them to contact me about publishing this image without permission. Only 5minute5.com replied, offering an apologetic email and the offer to remove the image or credit it.
I’m particularly annoyed that the ASPCA, a reputable organisation, has not replied to my email. Too busy searching for other images to steal?
I have reported them to Facebook and have yet to see the outcome of that. Don't fail me Facebook.
I took this photo several years ago at my parent’s house in Newcastle. The pug is called Arthur. The french fries are called chips.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Palm trees in the Czech Republic

[gallery]Looking up at some palm trees in Luxor, Egypt. I took this photo in 2005.
Sitting on the banks of the Nile, shielding under the trees from the hot midday sun. The image represents some sort of paradise.
The reality is slightly different. I was lying on my back on carefully cultivated grass in the hotel grounds of Sofitel Luxor. If you look closely, you can see a hotel speaker nailed to one of the trees.
A few months after I took the photo I did the decent thing and uploaded it to flickr, the amazingly friendly, hugely addictive photo-sharing website.
Six years later and it has enjoyed a modest 1,166 views. But in the last few months it has regularly been my most viewed picture of the day. I have 1,511 images on flickr.
Why is a photo, uploaded in September 2005, still being viewed half a dozen times a day? No idea. It’s an example of the brilliance and quirkiness of flickr.
What I do know is that a media website in the Czech Republic – tn.cz - stole the image from flickr to use as the cover image for an advert slideshow above a story which has something to do with palm trees.
You can see my stolen image on the screengrab (below).
Anyone who can read Czech who would like to do a translation or contact these thieving sh!ts and demand compensation, drop me a line.

NOTE: How did I find out about the use of my images by tn.cz? I used the fantastic reverse image search called TinEye.
A free online search tool, you can submit one of your images and TinEye will search for it and modified versions on millions of websites around the world.
It was the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. It's very clever.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

The Curious Action of the Vernacular Hand or can academia come to the aid of photo books?

Subversive
Super imposed typography
Visual narrative
Equivoque
Visual sharing
Appropriating photographs
Domestic landscapes
Vernacular architecture
Detritus
Re-purposing
Deskilling
Continuum
Literary photograph
Eschewing
Visual singulana
Oscillation
Sub-text
Ephemerality
Prosaic in content
Visual lexicon
Printed page as an empty signifier

These are some of my favourite words and phrases used during the Photography and Artists’ Book Symposium in Manchester (October 21, 2011).
But do they offer any help to the working photographer?
The Photographic Essay, Photographic Novel and other Narrative Form
The Symposium, at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Special Collections and run jointly by the University of Salford and the MMU, examined the role of the photo book in photography. Or something like that.
The Symposium, held in a hot-house auditorium revealed some fascinating practices from some of the artists who presented their work. It was well run and included some fascinating points.
German Elisabeth Neudorfl from Folkwang University in Essen, presented a well-thought out book of photographs taken on a road in Manilla. David Penney from MMU presented a very personal work, hand-bound and too precious to him to actually be sold.
Each presentation by the nine speakers raised more questions for me than answers – and mainly in the area of sustainability, marketing and saleability (saleability might not be an actual word).
Can these artists’ books be produced with a view to making money?
The long answer includes observations that the photo book as an industry is almost unsustainable, hardly any photo books actually make a profit and photo books are do not have profit as their primary function. I won’t go into this for now.
But it became apparent very quickly at the Symposium that the books by the academics were books for academics, and perhaps more specifically books for the academics who made them.
The speakers at the Symposium fell into to categories: those whose artists’ books supported academic theory and those who produced items for public consumption.
This latter group – whose publications had public consumption in mind – consisted of only two speakers, Ian Beesley and the double act of Adam Murray and Diane Smyth.
Beesley presented his excellent book on Yorkshire miners called The Drift. It is professionally published and available for £15. Interestingly, several of his other books were published with the aid of grants.
Murray, the pioneer behind Preston Is My Paris publishing, and the British Journal of Photography writer Smyth talked about various Preston Is My Paris publications.
Despite being an admirer of Murray’s work and his desire to promote photography to a wider audience, I disagree with him strongly over his ideology in how to do this.
Murray believes in giving his work away for free and scorns those who either aim to make profit or gain self-promotion from zines or short-run publications in, say, news print.
All but one speaker at the symposium (Logan Sisley from Dublin Art Gallery) are funded by Universities. None – except perhaps the most accomplished photographer on show (Beesley) had produced their work entirely independently.
I don't think any of the other books on show would exist without an academic salary.
This is not a poor business model, it is a non-existent one. Murray’s insistence that his work should be given away for free could be seen as commendable but in reality it devalues the work of other photographers whose sole incomes come from editorial work, or magazine and zine production.
Editorial photography in all its forms has been hacked away at from all angles in recent years. The photo book in a self-published form has offered a glimmer of hope that long-term projects can become sustainable in the future. The coming of the ephotobook further enhances this prospect. But that reality is still a long way off for most photographers.
But to give work away for free – and essentially in publications paid for (or at least backed-up) by the university day job – is not how I would like to see academia helping my profession.
If all academia can offer the photo book genre, and photography as a whole, is naval gazing and cross-university back-slapping then it is failing to fulfill its wider role in society. Photo books, promoted so well by sites like Self Publish, Be Happy, face an uncertain future. How do they survive is the crucial question.
The next symposium should be The Photographic Essay, Photographic Novel and other Narrative Forms as a Sustainable Business Model for Professional Photographers Financing Long-Term Projects in Socio-Economic Structures Without False Aid from Academic Sources. Or something equally snappy.
NOTE: The Curious Action of the Vernacular Hand was my favourite phrase from the symposium. I believe it was spoken by Tim Daly of the University of Chester.

Monday, October 17, 2011

An interview with Garry Cook

[gallery]

Garry_cook_photography_manchester_station

Garry_cook_photography_london_underground

You interviewed four paedophiles in Holland - what drew you to that and how did you find it?
Paedophilia is a very difficult subject and because of that it is hardly ever discussed. The media has a role to play in this area and, in this country, it has failed to contribute to managing the problem. How many people know if paedophilia is a disease, is hereditary or just a choice by one person?
We need to know more about the subject because the present system of dealing with it – which is led by the media, particularly the printed press – is to condemn the perpetrator, expose them and hound them out of their homes.
But these people have to live somewhere and surely it is far better to try and manage them in society rather than force them underground where the situation can, and often does, worsen. In Holland there are politicians and individuals willing to speak about these issues and the media reports on some of this with some intelligence. It is a hugely different way of thinking to here in Britain.

You've done a photo project of Hebden Bridge, a quiet and picturesque town in West Yorkshire which is quite at odds with some of your more gritty work - why did you choose it as a project?
Because part of my work aims to attract more people to photography as art, projects like my Hebden Bridge images are important. It is a simple set of images documenting a town, its people and their way of life.
I am applying the same principles to this kind of project – to document and record, but am including less people and more landscape imagery. This traditional subject-matter is more accessible to people who don’t live and breathe photography and these are the people photography as in industry needs to attract if it is to survive as a profession.
At the moment photography – and I’m talking of documentary, editorial, street photography and social issues photography – is struggling because there are so few avenues for it to be seen and to be sold. The Hebden Bridge project is part of the Love Town series and will soon be published in issue three of the Love Town zine.

How did you get involved with Control and how have you found it collaborating with others?
The two exhibitions we have put on this year, in Liverpool ad London, have been superb. In Liverpool we got ourselves a very rundown warehouse and put on a show without electricity but with free running water – down the walls. It was a spectacular success, even hosting one of the big corporate events during the Look2011 International Photography Festival we were part of.

In London we have Oxford House, a quiet stunning venue in Bethnal Green. I don’t think we would have got the venue or been part of Photomonth, the East London Photography Festival if it wasn’t for one or two members of our group, particularly Pablo Allison and Ann-Marie Conlon who new the venue and had contacts within the festival. It’s these kinds of things which makes collaborating a joy.
But collaborating with others is not always easy. I put on a show in Blackpool this summer in less than two weeks, working with just the curator, Tom Ireland. It was fast and easy. With Control we give ourselves six months build-up to each show we do and at times it can be confusing to keep track of what has been decided and slow to agree to a proposal.
Somehow we ended up launching the show several days before the preview night which means two trips to London inside a week. I couldn’t tell you why this happened but it’s one of those group problems where the majority rule sometimes over-rides common sense.
There are usually nine or ten of us involved in Control. We have been lucky in that we are a placid lot but when people don’t reply to your emails – and often you feel you don’t need to reply because you agree with what’s been proposed so don’t feel the need to comment – it can be frustrating. I’ve been on both sides of this scenario and no-one is really in the wrong but it can make you wonder why are you putting in the effort but are getting nowhere.
Of course, come showtime everyone is delighted and these problems are distant memories. We keep up-to-date via an email group but so much information can get lost very quickly. The problem is we haven’t found a better way of communicating. Someone suggested Blackberry messaging but there was nearly a riot.
Control is a fantastic exhibition, examining the theme of Control in people’s lives through some hugely diverse styles of photography and subject matter. For my strand, Women and Alcohol, you get to see images of women getting drunk. It’s one of the more light-hearted projects in the exhibition.

Anything else you'd like to add?
I’m really keen to put on an exhibition in Preston during the Guild 2012 celebrations. I’m looking at documenting Preston’s diversity. For this I’m hoping to work with community figures to help me reach out and find inspirational and people to photograph, and also want to involve local business to help finance the project.

Control: www.thephotogroup.co.uk
More photographs at www.gazcook.com
The Love Town zine is available to by at www.lovetown.eu
The love Town podcast is available to download for free on iTunes at http://bit.ly/lovetownpodcast

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Or Alcohol and Women at Control at Oxford Hosue Bethnal Green

[gallery]

The exhibition, part of Control by nine of us photographers, is wrapped up with the East London Photography Festival, otherwise known as Photomonth.

You can see and read more about it here.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Preston Bus Station versus the Nazca lines, a short essay in history

[gallery]

One of my favourite historical sites, Preston Bus Station and Car Park, has been listed as one of the world’s most threatened cultural heritage sites.
Which of these two sentences are correct?

The answer, of course, is both.

The mysterious Nazca lines have for a long time held a great fascination for me. However, I see a lot more of Preston Bus Station.

The 1960s brutalist masterpiece is the city's most iconic buildings. For years it has been on the list of buildings to be demolished as part of an unfinanced plan to redevelop one of Britain’s wettest cities.

But the non-profit World Monuments Fund have included it in a list of 67 treasured structures in 41 countries that are in danger, either through erosion, tourism or, in this case, a huge steel ball swinging from a large crane.

It’s fair to say that Preston Bus Station and Car Park – it is the latter which forms the most striking part of the building’s design – is as equally despised as it is revered.

For me, this concrete concourse with complimentary car park is now a beacon of 1960s design. It was built in 1967 by Keith Ingham for Building Design Partnership, with Ove Arup and Partners taking care of the weight-bearing structural curves on the upper levels.

As with all fashions, the building was hailed as revolutionary when it was built, then despaired of when tastes changed and now is revered as a design classic - by some people anyway.

Like Gateshead Car Park and, to a lesser extent, the now demolished section of Blackburn Shopping Centre, it has become an iconic building, its uniqueness battling with its ugliness for public acceptance.

The Secretary of State turned down an application to make it a Grade II listed building several years ago when a development company called Grovesnor applied to pull it down. Their plan has subsequently stalled.

Friday, October 07, 2011

euston train station

queue to get in the British Library

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Picadilly train station, Manchester

Picadilly train station, Manchester

travelling to London for the special preview opening of control

[gallery]

travelling to London for the special preview opening of control

train

travelling to London for the special preview opening of control

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Journalists and photographers witnessing atrocities and world events. Or why you never hear the world photojournalism anymore.

Sky News are running a great set of ads on their channel at the moment. They feature their own journalists whoa re based in various parts of the world, such as Holly Williams, speaking of their dedication to storytelling and responsibility to tell the world the events they have witnessed.

Then there’s this talented photographer called Yuri Kozyrev. Born in Moscow, he now works for Dutch agency Noor, covering major conflicts around the world.

In the last nine months he’s been in Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt and Libya. He said of the 2011 uprising in Yemen ‘it was important to be there and witness what was happening’.

He produced some amazing images which were on display at this year’s Visa pour l’Image. They won the Visa d’Or News award.

What Zozyrev and the Sky reports have in common is a huge desire to tell the stories they witness. They often risk their lives to do so, as photographers Tim Hetherinton and Chris Hondros proved when they were killed in Misrata, Libya, earlier this year.

But it’s not enough. Not enough impact. Not enough to risk your life for. Modern-day life hardly allows for any consideration of other people’s lives. Too many people show too little interest in what’s happening in their own country, nevermind in Yemen.

For example there has hardly been any public outcry over the atrocities currently taking place in Syria. In Libya, the revolution has hardly been the subject of office debate. Not in my office anyway.

Yet these journalists and photographers are passionate and dedicated to their jobs.

We just don’t see it. We don’t see it in their three-minute news reports on Sky. We don’t see it in the images of photographers like Kozyrev – mainly because these image-makers struggle to get their work seen at all.

Should these people be writing down their experiences? Would the written word make a difference? If Kozyrev thinks it is so important to witness important world events, why doesn’t he write about them also? Doing so would increase the impact of his work. He would immediately be doubling the possible media outlets for the vents he has covered.

But more important than that his words would serve as written evidence when events are digested at a later time. They will become historical evidence, ultimately enhancing his imagery.

There is little doubt that people like Williams and Kozyrev and their equals are witnessing world events or covering important stories. But, with a Sky News report, blink and you’ll miss them. With a set of images you’ll be lucky to get the chance to see them. There are way too few outlets for documentary photography.

This is a major problem. And with all the new outlets for photography and video: websites, blogs, iPads, tablets and mobile phones, there is still one major problem.

And that is no-one, absolutely no-one, has found a way to make these outlets pay.

Adding text to images or a diary to a news report infinitely enhances the importance and impact of a piece of work. But there will be no financial pay off in doing this – just a moral duty to document what has been witnessed for all to see.

Is that why photographers and news-makers don’t write down what they see? Is this why you never hear the term photojournalist anymore?

NOTE: Hetherington tried this diversification technique with his documentary film Restrepo. It ended up being nominated for an Oscar. It possibly made more impact than any of his photos.