Archive for January, 2009
Glazed bricks and Mick
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I went back to the town I grew up in today, Hertford. My mother still lives there, but on the outskirts, so I usually just brush by the place via the town’s ringroad. Today though I was there upon the request of the secondary school I’d spent seven years at, to take some photographs for the new business manager, a post I don’t recall from my youth in education. Adding up the years, it’s easily two decades since I last visited my old school, there, age me if you will. Plenty has changed in Hertford as a town. It will sound a little cliche, but Barclays where my father had banked all his life has become a fancy wine bar. The town’s established newspaper that had graced my Friday paper round bag each week during my teens with hugely over paginated copies that felt like a leaden weight, has turned into an hotel. Woolworths has gone, obviously. The Addis toothbrush and bucket factory has turned into flats and offices. The penny sweet shop is some kind of fancy kiddie boutique. The stationery shop is now a tanning centre. The smelly pet shop has turned into a Toni and Guy’s. The town’s department store called Gravesons, there since money had been invented I’m sure (every town has one) has become Accessorize. Many an hour had been spent with my mother in the habadashary department there, pulling at her handbag to move on to a far more exciting shop. But yes equally, there were small pockets of the town where I truly believe Father Time had forgotten to visit. I remember a barber’s shop called Mick’s which my late father used to take me to; kind of place where the adults would exchange jokes and knowing winks while their offspring wondered what was funny and why grown ups seemed so weird. That’s still there. And when I peeked in through the shop window, there was Mick. Mick as I remembered him. Mick hadn’t changed. And so it was with my old school. It was lunchtime when I turned into the driveway and there were blue blazered boys playing football and knocking lumps out of each other with hockey sticks. It’s odd, but I felt a sense of melancholic nostalgia. It was as if I was watching a scene from my youth on a telly. The only thing that didn’t fit, were the cars. The car park was full of new metal, double parked new metal. Not a Cortina in sight. I was itching to walk the old corridors. They too, didn’t disappoint. The sight of reddish brown glazed brick, which seems to be a feature of pre-war school hallway construction hit me like the proverbial, well, brick. And you must remember exam halls? Rows and rows of uniformly spaced single occupancy desks? My first photographic task was to photograph from the back, a hall full of boys about to start their written music exam. As I focused for my primary shot, I felt transferred back into the 80s, with all the noises, the smells, and the ambiance about one’s past school life. For that moment, I longed to be back in a blazer with all the dreams, hopes and naive expectations of a young man who hadn’t yet met the weekly shopping bill, slower metabolism and self assessment. I’ll return next decade and the decade after. I hope Mick will still be cutting hair in the town. I hope he’s found a pocket of Hertford that will continue to remain unaltered. Glazed bricks.
High and Mighty meets… Shoreham
Saturday, January 24th, 2009Shoreham by sea, not the warmest of locations during the midst of a cold snap for a fashion shoot depicting high summer fashion – but that’s where I found myself last week. The shoot, for High and Mighty, featured two seasoned male model pros; Remco and Matt (below). Most of the shoot was based outside a house overlooking the beach. We’d slide open the patio doors, brace ourselves as we prepared to depart Planet Central Heating, and think warm thoughts as we beat back the coastal ‘breeze’ that chilled each of us to the core before we’d even set up a single shot. To be fair, the boys were sporting the summer fashions, I was more than happy to sport a baselayer, thick T, and North Face fleece. Toasty.
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Happy accidents!
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009If ever I write a book about photography, and I don’t mean to build my own part here, I would entitle it ‘Happy Accidents.’ It occurs to me, that whilst I return from a wedding hopefully happy in the knowledge I’ve captured all the sections and moments I had planned or promised to, there will inevitably be a file of shots that were captured as the result of something happening that leapt at me quite unpromised, unplanned and untethered. Take this one below… it remains one of my favourite album shots ever; bride caught by a blast of wind, if you’ll pardon the expression. We were setting out for the church and had a minute or so to capture some shallow depth of field shots of Bentley in foreground, bride in background. I was setting up the shot, when in front of me, Emma, the bride, pointed at something that had caught her by surprise. As she did so, woooof, in shot a blast of breeze on an otherwise calm morning, hoisting her veil horizontally and balancing the shape of an outstretched arm. For me it was a kind of weather cock moment, and certainly not a pose or position I had been planning, or one that I could repeat quite so dramatically. Some of my peers would doubtless say they planned this event, in much the same way Michael Fish had known the true danger of an impending storm in ‘87. I’ll level with you, true observational wedding photography is as much about so called happy accidents, as it is about a well planned shooting schedule. And long may that be the case.
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Indulge me, just for a moment…
Thursday, January 1st, 2009I couldn’t let 2008 go by without a simple indulgent review of some of our favourite family moments of the year past. It’s been a fabulously eventful nine months since the birth of our son Jack; certainly our busiest as a business, and undeniably our busiest as new parents! Thank you to our clients, all of whom we count as new friends. It may sound disingenuous, but when you spend your working life covering peoples’ wedding days, you really do feel privileged to be a part of something so personal and special. It feels like the start of a journey to me, as I steer the course of documenting their lives as husband and wife, and then for many, mother and father. Here are a few of our 2008 documentary moments with my warmest wishes for a fabulous 2009 (despite what the BBC and media would like to drag us in to!)
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Jack, above… during what will become the annual Sunflower contest. His mother and I have one each, Jack has one, and then Grandma and Grandad have one each also. It was all a bit competitive. Mother-in-law won.
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Just a little grab shot on my compact Leica. In the old days, luggage netting was used aboard trains to store brief cases, holiday luggage and grumpy seven month olds.
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“Not now Daddy, I’m too busy being camera shy.”
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This is perhaps my favourite from the year. Just cute. Butter wouldn’t melt… and so on.
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I saw this red car when I was Christmas shopping with Sam in Winchester. I had a green car when I was Jack’s age, and I have the rather faded picture to prove it. Kind of historical significance for me.
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A sleepy boy and it’s not even lunchtime on Christmas Day.