The Cheshire (Cheese) set ..

The first trip to the Cheese Factory went well yesterday, although all my gear now has a light dusting of Cheddar and will need a good scrub this morning if I don't want to be followed by mice all day! The cameras took a bit of stick on the temperature front, too - working in refrigerated departments one minute, covered in condensation alongside machines steaming away at 84 degrees the next! I'll be back at the factory next week to carry on the pr shoot and have made a mental note to pack polar gear and a pair of trunks!

Portraits in the studio again today and tomorrow, and then I'm going to spend all day Sunday drinking v. strong coffee in an effort to stay awake for the Superbowl! Come on, Denver!

Have a great weekend, folks .. 

Oh, the picture? The cheese counter at Morrison's in Eccles circa 1984. It's from my book 'Don't Miss This' ..

Cheesy ..

You probably won't remember a blog I wrote in the summer, detailing the day I had just 15 minutes to arrange 200 people on a car-park into the shape of the name of their new company project, but I went back to that company yesterday to shoot some new pr stuff and ... wow! You know those moments you kinda think "I didn't charge enough!" .. ? Well that's how I felt yesterday, 'cos the image is everywhere! Two framed prints greet you in reception, it's up along the corridors as you walk through the building, it's a centre-spread in the in-house newspaper, it was the screensaver on the laptop of the key speech-maker at yesterday's event and it was projected onto the walls as a greeting to the attendees at the talk she was giving! Yowzer, where's a bloody bye-line when you need one? Anyway, you can check out the 'movie' of the whole thing here...

More pr photography today and this time I'm off back to a cheese factory in Cheshire (As opposed to a Cheshire Cheese factory) to shoot new images for their web-site update. I was there about 2 years ago and thought it was hilarious to squeal "Say Cheese" every time I took a shot! This time I'll stick a wedge in it! I don't think the staff could Camembert any more ...

The Generation Game ..

Bloody hell, here's a first!..

In 1984 I was invited over to Northern Ireland to photograph a Wedding. Hilda and Kenny! Lovely couple and I think I shot it on a Mamiya 645. Well, I've just been asked if I'll go over again to photograph the Wedding of ... their daughter! OMG! Have I been shooting that long?..

Of course I'm delighted, naturally, and it's all I can do to stop myself nipping over on the Stranraer ferry for a quick dress-rehearsal! (I'm joking, of course! I'd actually go from Liverpool!..) It's incredible, though, to think I'd already been a professional photographer for six years by the time I shot Danielle's parents' Wedding - two of those as a freelance - and though I wouldn't have been able to imagine this far ahead, it's wonderful to think I'm still a photographer in 2014! But photographing the daughter of one of 'my brides' .. astonishing! Can't wait to drop that into the conversation the next time a bride-to-be asks me "Done this long?..."

PS: Today's photograph? Aw, I just loved the generational theme to today's blog, and couldn't resist this shot of my Mum with my sister Catherine! I actually photographed Catherine's Wedding as well -  way over 25 years ago - and she herself now has two strapping lads in their 20s. I'm guessing my Dad took the shot ..  'cos I'd have been about four!

Pound for pound ..

I met a lovely couple on Saturday who decided, there and then, to book me as their Wedding Photographer. It was delightful! They didn't question the price, the package .. anything! They liked my work and know what it will cost to get it! I can't wait to be their photographer at Mottram Hall later this year!..

I mention this because it seems that everything in the Wedding World is apparently up for price negotiation these days! "What can you do it for?.." is all I seem to hear lately, and that's the subject of one of my favourite YouTube videos of all time, a video about people who want everything but don't want to pay for it! Check it out here ..

The thing is, I literally had to deal with that approach last week. A chap made an enquiry about his Wedding Photography, and told me in detail what it was he wanted from his photographer. I priced it up and emailed him back. "Hmmm..." he mused "Bit out of our price range! What can you do it for?.." Well, seeing as I'd just told him, it was a little grating to get a reply like that but, being the lovely, accomodating snapper that I am, I offered him a slighter smaller package - a package without any photography in the evening. It brought the price down quite a bit! Did he book? Did he heck! "You don't seem to understand.." he said "Getting pictures of the First Dance is very important to us!"

Well, pay for it then, dude! Just pay for it... 

Whatever floats your boat ..

A well-known Garden Centre near me has just launched its annual amateur photographic competition. The entries will be hung in the centre's restaurant to be judged by the public and the winner will get a £50 voucher to spend in the store and a framed print of .. er, their own photograph! Eh? Call that a prize? Oooh, what a lovely photograph, but where have I seen that before?...

Let's not mock, though I can see that's going to have the rainbows and robins, sunsets and seashore shots a' flyin' in! Oh, sorry, taking the mickey again but, for balance, I've put up my own photograph of Carrickfergus Castle just to show you we all have our cliché moments!

Anyway, I mention this because it's exactly one year today until an exhibition of my work opens in Manchester. I'm having a show of my Archive photography at The People's History Museum, based on the premise of what it was like to be 'working class' in the 70s. I'm off there this very morning - one year to the opening day - to discuss the details, but I can guarantee you my pretty harbour shot won't get within a million miles of the walls! Still, whatever floats your boat ..  

Flare, flair, flares...

It's pouring outside, so here's something you definitely won't have a problem with today .. lens flare! Although - oh, I forgot - you can now add it to your pictures on the computer to make your shots more "interesting"! My, how fashions change! This advert for a Pentax multi-coated lens - designed to prevent flare - is in a 1972 edition of Camera Magazine, which I nicked when I was but a lad! (Well, I couldn't afford to buy it .. it was 75p a copy! Oh, and please don't tell anyone I pinched it! I've got away with it for this long .. ) It just makes me think about all the current 'trends' for 'fussing up' your Wedding photographs! Vintage looks, streaks of flare, insipid, bleached-out black and white! How out of fashion will that all look when a bride and groom look back at their photographs on their Silver Anniversary?

Amazing to think I was so keen on photography even way back then! I know I just had to have this magazine. It featured an "Iconographic Chronological History" of Photography - a whole edition full of photographs from Niépce to Diane Arbus - all names I'd never heard of at the time, but it's nice to think that - forgive me - I turned out to have a bit of a flair for the art myself. One thing's for sure if we're talking about fashions. In 1972, I certainly had the flares!..

Show me ..

I put my PR head on last night and headed off to the Imperial War Museum North to photograph their amazingly colourful Showcase Evening. Show piece dining-table set-ups, digital wallpaper displays and canapés served by ladies on stilts! (Never did quite manage to reach one, ho ho!..) In one of those fantastic photographic 'accidents' one of the 'stilt' ladies actually walked through one of my shots during a long exposure but, instead of it becoming a re-take, it turned into one of the nicest photographs of the evening. She cast a ghostly white trail through the shot - click on the picture on the right to see it - and added a certain poignancy to what, after all, will be one of the major centres of First World War commemoration later this year. Anyway, I'm now on the 'Recommended Supplier' list for the Museum but, wouldn't you know it, before the evening was out a lady had come up to me and asked if I shot Wedding Photography! Well, guess who started show-casing then ...

(Un) Cover girl ..

A raunchy police outfit, split to the waist, a glimpse of bra visible as the model coquettishly tips her hat at the viewer; a steamy nurse's uniform, all pvc and shiny, the sexy blonde leaning forwards, tugging down her zip! And then there's the shot I took! A vintage-look black and white portrait, all demure and shy and normal! Flippin' 'eck!..

This is Debby! I was shooting some new pictures of her in the studio last week when she suddenly remembered she'd not let me see how a shot from our last session had been used. It's only on the front cover of a book, isn't it? A book she wrote about her life as .. a lap-dancer! "You'll never see me in the same light again" she giggled! See? I couldn't see anything! My glasses were too steamed up!... 

Anyway, guess what! Seems I haven't booked my stand at the September Wedding Fayre at Statham Lodge! Apparently they've got enough photographers already! What does that tell you? At this rate I might have to take up pole-dancing!
Or not ...

Fayre enough ..

I had a great time at the Statham Lodge Wedding Fayre yesterday, and not just because one of the other photographers at the event said I was his favourite photographer!! (Honestly! And he was sober, too!) No, the whole thing just had a lovely vibe to it. Great visitors all day long, a lovely sunny day, free sandwiches and - pretty importantly - no Fashion Catwalk shows to take the brides away from all our other stands! I've already had a message from one of the brides I met, so I'm hopeful that good things will come of the day and I've booked my stand at their next fayre in September on the strength of all this good feeling!

In person ..

Red, forty-three! Hut! Hut!...

And so it is, with delight, that I tell you I've managed to get tickets to see the Dallas Cowboys against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley next November! Phew, that's a weight off my mind! I've been a fan of 'Gridiron' since it started on Channel 4 back in the 80s, so I'm thrilled to be able to finally see one of the 'star' teams in action. Of course, I've photographed the game in the past, but watching the Manchester Allstars play American Football at the Willows Rugby Ground in Salford wasn't quite the same thing, bless 'em!..

I'm having a 'day of domesticity' today. Well, I'm supposed to be! I'd planned to start building some new units for the kitchen but I'd only managed to get some bits out of boxes before I was distracted by other things! I have quite a collection of signed photography books, and somehow I started rearranging them all and putting them into polythene bags to keep them clean. Of course, that then entailed actually looking at them and so, before you know it, half the morning'd gone! I've got some cracking autographs, though! André Kertesz, Mary Ellen Mark, Don McCullin .. even David Hockney, if you count his collages - and why wouldn't you? These are are people I've met, by the way! They're not just books I've bought, pre-signed! That's the equivalent of watching The Allstars when you really wanted to see The Cowboys ..

PS: David Hockney's autograph? You'd swear to God he's written 'Gary Lowry' ..!

Bin! Keep! Keep...

Blimey! Remember my blog about slow news days? I wrote about the times I used to have to go out and 'find' stories for the paper because there wasn't a lot going on after Christmas, and I mentioned the story about the guy in the bath on the water-park! Well, I found the cutting! It's in an old scrapbook of MEN photographs I kept in my office. I told you I never throw anything out!..

I've got an interesting photo-shoot this afternoon. Funnily enough, a lady's bringing along an old photograph that she wants to recreate. I've not seen it yet so, at the mo, I haven't any idea how to set up my lights or the backdrops, but it's along the lines of a 1950s boudoir photograph that she's kept in a magazine. Cripes! She mustn't throw anything out either!..

Scrapped Ferrari ..

There were 151 readers of my Blog yesterday, though for the life of me I can't think why! I was only talking about taking square photographs! Nevertheless - among other places - I had one reader from Indonesia, eight from China and another from Venezuela, and I can't help wondering what they made of me talking about Statham Lodge Wedding Fayre? I mean, there's your worldwide audience right there, and I was busy rabbiting on about local old Lymm! Perhaps I should think more globally! Hey, the last time I was in Brazil ..

(Actually, the last time I was in Brazil I spent a week sailing on The Amazon out of Manaus, so I do know what the England team are going on about when they talk about heat and humidity. Diddums...)

I was reading an article yesterday about another photographer who regularly writes blogs with the aim of promoting his new work, and he said he was taken totally by surprise when one of his missives suddenly went global. Well, come on .. it was about Sky Ferreira! Like, OMG! (She's an American singer-songwriter, don't ya know but, don't worry, I had to google it, too! And I apologise! Scrapped Ferrari was as near as I could get to her in my archive!) Anyway, this photographer had a two-day shoot with her for a major hair-care manufacturer, so his blog got picked up by Vogue and MTV and loads of other New York 'style' websites! Who'd have thought, eh? Me? I'll just have to keep ploughing on with my detailed descriptions of cutting-edge life in Culcheth.

And in other news today, Martin O'Neill changed a poster in the window of StudioFiveFour.

Come on, US Vogue! I'm waiting for your re-tweet!...  

Squaresville, Arizona ..

My Fuji X10 camera has an option on it that allows one to shoot square images and so, suitably inspired by Vivian Maier's 6x6 self-portraits, I've decided to try and shoot a few of my 'snaps' in a square format for a while. (By the way, how do you make the symbol for 2 and a quarter on a keyboard?) Of course, I'm well used to shooting square photographs, as I shot all my Weddings on a Mamiya RZ67 and I've used a Yashicamat for years, but it's nice to rethink one's framing techniques again after a long time with a 'normal' camera, and these four pictures are good examples from the last three days.

My next Wedding Fayre is on the horizon, and this one is the first opportunity to really push The Culcheth Collection in person! Both myself and Decadence Wedding Carriages will be at Statham Lodge in Lymm on Sunday - the Car and Camera parts of The Collection - and we'll be promoting a special offer whereby if any of you lovely brides book us both you'll receive an added 'extra' from each of us! Be there or - ho ho - be square!..

Fleeting ..

Last week I was given a photograph to retouch. A lady, smiling, sitting at a table in a restaurant. Possibly from the 80s. (Not this photograph! This is a shot from my own archives. For illustrative purposes only, as they say!) Anyway, the occasion was obviously one of those 'special' times when you had a snapshot taken - out on a 'do', dressed up, looking nice. The picture itself is out of focus, the 5"x3" print bent and ripped but, don't worry, it's come up alright and I've just printed out a nice 10x8 for the customer. Now, I don't know why this particular photograph needed copying but, of course, you assume the worst, unfortunately, and it occured to me that this lady - her generation - must surely be the last to have so few photographs taken of themselves. I mean, this scratchy, blurred one-off 'capture' (To use the modern term! Ugh...) is patently the best her family can come up with by way of a memory, and I find that really sad. So, get your phones out, folks! Get snapping. Take those selfies! Shoot those parties! Just don't lose the bloody memory cards...

 

Looking back ..

Today's what the old newsrooms would call "A quiet news day" and so - you know me - I'll grab any opportunity to put out yet another photograph of .. me!! There I am, looking back through a chemist's window - circa 1979/80 - all Deirdre Barlow glasses and scruffy jacket, working hard to become a famous Street Photographer (Still working on that bit, by the way!) I found this image in a folder on the desktop called "To Do" .. images I've yet to make up my mind about, though I think this one's grown on me enough now to gain inclusion into my archive (And no, not just because I'm in it!)

January of old was always like this. Nothing going on yet still a newspaper to fill. You could go out as a freelance and set up photographs with the most tenuous of stories and they'd be snapped out of your hands and put in the paper before you could say 'My other camera's a Hasselblad'! I remember going down to a grey gloomy lake on a chilly day in 1983 and finding a guy paddling about in a bath-tub! (I cannot for the life of me remember why but I think he was in training for some weird kind of forthcoming charity event) Well, cue 'January Sail' photo and the cheque's in the post, thank you very much! Ah, those were the days...

What a pair ..

Twiddling my photographic thumbs last year, I idly started to pair up images from my archive. Dogs with prams, shopkeepers, people waiting for buses .. and so on! But then I thought it might be one way I could display the work when it goes up at The Peoples' History Museum next year. Added interest and all that! I know I've got almost a year to think about it but, as I say to every bride that books me to shoot her Wedding .. it'll soon be here!

It's Quote City round these parts at the moment. I had three offers to quote for work yesterday, including a day shoot at Excel in London, a corporate job in Manchester and a request to have some of my archive work used on the website of an advertising agency! Looks like I won't get much chance to twiddle my thumbs this year ..

The Bigger Picture ..

I had a lovely meeting yesterday with a young lady who owns and runs an Events Company in Cheshire. I went across with the full intention of talking about corporate work, only to find out she has - guess what? - a 'Wedding Planner' side to the business and organises high-end Weddings all over the North West. You'll know which topic dominated the conversation! I feel a great working relationship has begun!...

I'm liking these quieter days after all the hoo-ha of the holidays. I treated myself to a couple of photography books at Christmas and am finally finding the odd moment or two to look through them. The first is a book of self-portraits by Vivian Maier, a film about whom should be out here this year, but the second is a book of photographs that is as far from my style as is possible to get! It's a book by Tim Walker, who shoots great fancy fashion tableaux for Vogue and other swanky mags! Think camp-sites set up in Stately Homes and pale, lanky models surrounded by Zulu tribesmen! Bonkers, I know, and I doubt I'll be able to use much of that in my Wedding photography, but you never know where the inspiration might come in handy! Horizons! Broaden! Etc., etc., etc...



 

It's all about the numbers ..

Twelfth Night, and there's Christmas .. back in the loft again! Speaking of The Twelfth, there have been some other interesting numbers in my life of late. Amazingly, I've had 220 hits on my StudioFiveFour website in the so-called 'quiet' days between Christmas and New Year, and I've also had a fantastic 1,706 'reads' of my blog in December! (Thanks, Mum!) Then there's the 10% I'm taking off all bookings - be they PR, Wedding or portrait - made in January, regardless of when the shots are needed. The best figure of all, though, is the number 2! That's the number of Wedding enquiries I had in the first two working days of 2014! Now that makes me feel 100%...

Life's a gas ..

A lovely shot from the Wine Cellar at Peckforton Castle just before Christmas. A lady 'pinned' one of these Wedding photographs to her 'board' yesterday, which was nice of her, 'cos it finally lets me know that at least someone has been looking at my photographs on Pinterest! God, sometimes I despair of all this 'Social Media' mallarkey! You join Facebook to be told you need to be on Twitter; you join Flickr to be told you need to be on Tumblr; you post on Pinterest to be told you need to link it to a blog...

And does any of it work? Does it??....

Anyway, as I said, I now have one of my photographs pinned to someone's cyber board, and very glad I am, too! I guess it's yet another example of digitization, and I'll probably no longer see young brides lugging around a huge scrapbook of cuttings from bridal magazines. Just think of all the paper that won't be needed in the future. After all, I didn't use any to print the shot, did I? All those spared trees! All that extra oxygen in the air, replacing all that nasty C02! It's the end of global warming! We're saved! Oh, joy ...

Calm down, Martin ...

Rubbish!

And so, with January in mind, I begin the process of throwing things away! This morning alone I've  filled two bin-bags with the rubbish that's accumulated in my desk draws. It's no wonder I couldn't find my bank statements when I needed them! Next I'll attack my shirts. I mean, who needs 25 stripey shirts? Are they still even in fashion? Were they ever? Oxfam here we come...

Another thing I'm getting rid of this month is my price list. I'm offering 10% off everything I shoot as long as it's booked in January. Weddings, PR and portraits! All with ten percent off for this month only.

Ps: Hope you like today's photograph. Shot outside Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry on Monday! What do you mean, it's rubbish?

Virgin!

Ah, 1.1.'14! Hasn't it got a lovely ring to it? Yes, here we are - a whole brand-new, untouched 365 days to have a go at. Let's hope they're good for us all..

First resolution? Keywords! Must add more keywords to my blogs! #Wedding, #Portrait, #PR, #Photography, #Photographer! Hmmm... doesn't make for an interesting read, does it? Second resolution? Sod resolutions!...

Happy New Year Everybody!!.....