The Signs are good ..

Time flies, and somehow it's been five days since I last blogged. More to the point it's been six months since I met with the staff at the People's History Museum in Manchester, where I'm to hold an exhibition of my Eccles photography next January, and they've just emailed with a reminder that there are only six months to go until the show! Time to start getting my act together, man! Cripes, the year is flying!..

It's racing by .. and it's getting better! There are signs of improvement out there! The Wedding bookings are starting to come in for next year and PR's starting to get more regular. The studio's seen more action than of late, too,  and one lady .. get this .. one lady ordered a whole 18x12 inch print instead of a 7x5 the other day!..

Now that, my friends, is a good sign ..

Guess it's over ..

Well, there you go! You've done it! Pat yourself on the back and get out that brochure for the new Ferrari! The recession is over! It's official - or it will be when they announce it later - so yippidy doo and happy days everybody!..

I've got to say I feel extremely pleased to be able to say I've survived yet another recession as a photographer, and I hope it means the end of having enquiries for Weddings at £200, or folk choosing ONE 7x5 inch print from a full forty-five minute portrait-shoot .. and don't even get me started on PR companies turning down my quotes for jobs! Actually, that's even more pleasing to have survived because it's involved the 'double-whammy' of the increasing use of digital cameras by non-professional camera-owners! My best example - and I kid you not - was of one company having one of the staff's mothers take the shots they wanted because she had .. wait for it .. a good camera!..

So, yes, according to one chap being interviewed on the radio this morning "There is jobs out there!" now. I can only hope that some of that extra dosh trickles down to StudioFiveFour and I can borrow that Ferrari brochure once you've finished with it...

Now will you get down to my studio and have some bloody photographs taken!!...

Image du jour : Eccles Job centre, circa 1977.. From The Archive, of course!

Having your cake ..

I couldn't find a single shot with a cake in it when I wanted to illustrate my 'cake-smash' blog yesterday but now, like buses, two have come along at once! On the left, the late great Hungarian photographer André Kertesz, celebrating his 90th birthday in Bradford, and on the right my sister Patricia, notching up what looks like her 12th or 13th birthday in sunny old Eccles! My 54th birthday is on the horizon and I'm wondering - running Studio54 as I do - if I should do something special to mark the coincidence of numbers. I just hope I get a cake .. and that I get to eat it .. but I certainly won't be putting the requisite number of candles on it!

A slice of the cake ..

I had a great shoot at the studio yesterday - the first for my £25 pose and print Summer Offer - and what a cute little live-wire she was! The old shutter-finger goes mad when you get a happy subject like this, and so her Mum will be in the - fortunate? - position of having a massive 80 photographs to sift through today. Not bad for twenty-five quid, eh?...

I've got my first 'Cake-Smash' coming up as well .. and no, I didn't know what one was, either! It's the bizarre concept of baking a birthday cake for a one-year old, and then letting the bugger splat it to bits right there in front of the camera. I'm saying nothing! I'm in business and if that's what customers want - or are being told they want - then who am I to argue? We all want a slice of the cake ..

Girls on Film!..

Yes, it's another photograph of me .. and hey, why not? Here I am, posing like Vivian Maier, except ..er, in colour, with no shadow across my face .. and without a Rollieflex 6x6 camera. Otherwise .. perfect likeness! The film, Finding Vivian Maier, finally came to Manchester this week, and I made sure I was one of the first people to see it. I absolutely love her work! If you don't know the story she was a nanny in Chicago who used to take pictures in her spare time. Lots of pictures! Thousands and thousands of pictures, which she strangely kept hidden from the world and which were only discovered after her death. Go and see the film to find out more. Highly recommended...

Some of my future brides might also be 'girls on film', too! By a strange coincidence a young couple who came to see me about their Wedding photography on Saturday asked if I was able to shoot some pictures on film for them! This was just days after I'd ordered a pack of 120 film and some new batteries to 'fire up' my old Mamiya RZ67 - a camera that uses the same size film as Vivian's Rollieflex. It was the beast on which I used to shoot all the colour pictures when I photographed a Wedding in 'the old days', and I'd already decided to start offering 'real' photos at Weddings as a special part of my packages, so was delighted when these guys asked about the possibility!..

Now I just need to dig out my old Duran Duran album ..

Getting shirty ..

Now I'm not exactly Richard Branson, but I am a bit of a one for self-promotion. You may have noticed! Anyway, some geezers were flogging off these shirts on an online Photographers' group, and I just knew I had to have one! Keep calm and let the photographer handle it! It should be my mantra for any new Wedding bookings. Especially for the brides who worry I may not have been shooting them long enough! Thirty-six years long enough? Oh, that reminds me : I'm meeting another new bride at the studio this morning. Better crack on! Now, what shall I wear?..

Sad ..

How awful is the news at the moment? I normally tend to fight shy of writing about the goings-on in the world, but it's pretty hard to ignore all the terrible things that have been happening just lately. One of the ironies of my love of air-shows is that I never forget what those planes and missiles are actually used for! No-one ever designed an F16 jet just to make a few nerdy anoraks go "oooh" in the middle of a Gloucestershire field. Those wonderful whizzy machines? They're built to kill people! End of! My thoughts are with all those who left the world in a violent manner this week...

So what do you add to that? Today, I think, nothing ...

Bits and bobs and bookings ..

The world would be a boring old place without its characters, and I couldn't help but be curious about this guy, snapped at the air show over the weekend. He looked Japanese - and, with 3 Canon lenses and bodies, obviously a pro .. or a very keen snapper - but he kept retreating under this towel and falling asleep, only to jerk awake when different aircraft began their displays. Still, at least he didn't sleep through the displays, like the people I wrote about yesterday!..

On another outing 'darn sarf' last month I found myself in Oxfordshire. Very nice, lovely little market towns, plummy accents! I picked up a local 'What's On' magazine from one of the shops there, and read it whilst I was sitting in the sunshine yesterday. They had a feature in it about one of the Estate Agents in their area, a big time boy whose houses go for up to 5 million quid. But I almost spat out my 'g and t' when I read they were .. and I quote .. "just as adept at selling homes for as little as £250,000" .. !!! .. I won't be moving to Oxfordshire any time soon ..

Anyway, back to photography and I was absolutely thrilled yesterday to get not one, but two, confirmed Wedding bookings in one day! I can now add Rookery Hall and Great John Street Hotel to the list of next year's Weddings. The thing that pleases me most is that neither bride wanted the all-pervasive current 'trendy' photography of stupid poses and sickly vintage colouring. Looks like 'sticking to my guns' is paying off ..

©Martin O'Neill 2014

Sleep well ..

Ok, so when I said I'd photographed an Apache helicopter raid .. it was, of course, at the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire! Well, you didn't think I'd gone to Afghanistan or anything, did you? Heck, I had a Wedding on the Saturday. Who's got time to go covering wars?..

Still amazes me, though, that people .. quite a lot of people .. spend over forty quid, travel to a super-large airfield in the middle of nowhere and .. go to sleep! The snoozer in the montage was shot in the middle of the Red Arrows display, and I've got shots of a man lying zonked out as the Tornado did its stuff, two women fast asleep during the Typhoon display and even a guy reading his Kindle as an F16 went through its paces!..

Still, I'm only jealous! I was somehow talked into camping overnight on the evening before the show - the first night I've spent 'under canvas' since 1976 - and the trouble was, we managed to pitch the tents right next to the noisiest snoring I have ever heard!! Nine hours solid of snorky, rasping grunts! So, for me .. Sleep? At an air-show? Oh, if only!..

Check out my chopper ..

What? Too busy to blog? I know, I know.. that pesky work keeps getting in the way, but I'll get back to you as soon as I can. In the meantime, here's a shot from an Apache Helicopter Gun-Ship raid I've just photographed ..

More to follow ..

Summertime ..

I seem to have been taking it a little easy this week - work's not exactly been stretching me these past few days - and then there's been football, nice weather, Stella Artois, gardening, gin and tonic..

.. although, when I think about it, I have been quite busy! I've been manning the studio, doing my accounts, calibrating my printer - so much so that I've used up all me bloody ink! - shooting a commercial portrait, booking a couple of new shoots, spotting pimples off a portrait of a teenager - and fake tan-coloured arm-pits off another! - meeting new brides, contacting PR companies, adding new images to my archive - see above -  .. and now I'm gearing up for Saturday's Wedding!
See? There's always something to be done when you work for yourself!
So - actually - I think I am due a little more me time in the garden!
Laters..

Spot on ..

Now and again I'll wake up with a spot on my chin or my nose and think 'Brilliant! I'm still young!' .. and I laughed at that thought this morning as I ploughed my way through a photoshop zit-fest, trying to remove all the purple unpopped pimples from a shot of a pasty-faced teenager!
Ah, memories! I must have kept the Germolene factory on overtime when I was growing up!

That particular portrait is one of quite a few that have suddenly dropped into the lap of the studio this past fortnight, giving me a good run of really fun shoots and topped off with an email that came in last night from two of the sitters. "Absolutely delighted!.." they say "The photographs reflect what a lovely morning we had" ..

Now that, my friends, is spot on..

Getting it off my chest ..

Lesley loves to watch programmes about those crazed nutblob kinds who can't throw anything away! 'Hidden Hoarders', 'Obsessive Compulsive Hoarders' .. that kind of thing! Hoarders, anyway! Trouble is, she then goes bananas when she looks at me! She thinks I'm on the way to getting my own show! Hey, it's not my fault I can't throw anything away! Magazines, books, records, t-shirts, cassettes, ticket stubs, my old toy cars and, of course, every single photograph I've ever taken - be it on film, transparency or digital. I just can't throw 'em away! They're too important! This is my history and, whilst I'm still around, I want to wallow in it! Don't get me wrong  .. I'm sure as a regular reader you'll know I'm pretty forward looking .. always searching for new ways to shoot, or new styles of music and so on .. BUT I don't seem to be finding anything that turns me on! I find 'new' photography so plastic and bland, so digitized and desaturatedly lack-lustre. Same with music! So I'm staying here! Circa 1979! It's lovely here! You'd love it!..

Glad I've got that off my chest ..

God bless America ..

Today's theme? It can only be America! Go, USA! Man, if you didn't see last night's World Cup match between the States and Belgium then you missed the game of the tournament so far! Boy, did those yanks battle!..

Coincidentally, today I've entered this photograph into an American magazine's Wedding Photography contest. I'm not normally a major fan of over-photoshopping an image but I've decided to 'go with the flow' and drop some effects onto this picture. It seems to me that most photography competitions these days are more about the 'effects' than the message so I hope this shot gives the judges a nice example of both, and they rightly reward me with huge financial gain, praise and my choice of  top-end Nikon cameras!..

Independence Day beckons Stateside, and I remember once being in Houston on a hot, sticky Fourth of July. My friend there had just had a baby boy, and I can still recall the embarrassment when she told me his name. "Willy..?" I giggled "Don't you know what that means in England?.."

I was young, dear reader! Our friendship continues ..

Posing the question ..

Trumpets! Fanfare! Mucho celebration! My studio's been open for a year! Hurrah! I made it! I'm really pleased!..

With today's anniversary comes the end of the 'Free Portrait Shoot' promotion that I was running, and I'd like to thank everyone that took advantage of it. I'll confess it wasn't a exactly a rip-roaring success - the floodgates didn't exactly open - but it was worth the effort and there are just that many more people around now who know about the studio.

I do feel that it's time for some kind of a reality check, though. When I opened the studio a lot of people told me that portrait photography was dead. The camera-phone is king, and all that! Hmm ...  what to say to that? Well, I think it's got a slight cold, that's all. Portrait photography is feeling a bit yukky but, once its nose has stopped running, it'll be back. Stronger, fitter .. and looking for a great acrylic framed black and white image for the front room! That's what I think! Eventually, and as the economy improves, it'll dawn on people that the camera-phone just doesn't cut it. Actually - re-wind - the camera-phones these days are bloody good, but the lighting and scope for posing that a studio offers are always going to be better than anything you can do on your Samsung. That's when I'll be ready, Nikon in hand, and with the confidence that a year of running a studio has brought me. Will I still be here in another year? Now there's a question! Happy Birthday, StudioFiveFour!...