Category Archives: Musings

On positivity

Musings

A terrible thing happened in Woolwich yesterday. Most of you reading this already know what I mean, but if not, the tools are there on the internet for you to find out.

The response on social media was predictable but no less alarming. Again, you probably know what I’m talking about so I won’t go into detail.

And there was an additional response; a swathe of posts decrying the racism, xenophobia and islamophobia that ensued, including links to pages which had Twitter and Facebook screenshots all over them like a festering sore, while we read the vitriol that we had voluntarily sought out by clicking on the link,  becoming ever more outraged with every senseless proclamation.

Negativity is easy. I see it as like falling into a pit; letting gravity do its work, you fall in, with nothing but the pit and negative people in sight, wallowing in the outrage. I see it all over – look at these AWFUL wedding photographers, and these HILARIOUS poor people at Wal-Mart. Yes, it might raise a smile, but the overriding feeling is one of negativity, almost celebrating the fact that we are not one of these people. Yet how do we know that these photographers are not happy, making a living doing something they enjoy, regardless of what we think of the results? Or that the people in the aisles in Wal-Mart are at ease with themselves enough that they feel the can go out shopping in those ill-fitting clothes without worrying about being judged?

Positivity is different. It takes an effort, rather like climbing a mountain. Surrounded by the all-pervading gravity of negativity, it’s a constant uphill fight until you finally reach a peak. The view from the top of the mountain is amazing – you can see so much more and it looks beautiful from up there. Those poor people you see below you in their pit of negativity have no idea what you can see. There is so much that’s great in the world, you just have to find the right vantage point from which to observe it.

This is not to say we shouldn’t help where we can. LGBT people and women are still persecuted in so many countries still, and denied the same rights afforded to the rest of us in even more. People are employed on a pittance to work in factories that are structurally unsafe, resulting in the kind of tragedy we saw in Bangladesh recently. I’m not saying we should ignore these issues.

But I still think it’s important to celebrate what’s great about this world. Don’t give the racists the oxygen of social media infamy that they crave, don’t report every last action of the Westboro Baptist Church as though it were headline news rather than the misguided actions of a tiny minority. Positivity brings hope, and a belief that things can change for the better – a belief that can be channelled into more action to improve the lot of those who have inadvertently fallen into the pits dug by the negativity of others.

O positive

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Moving away from photography for a second to one of my other passions: Icelandic music. Bloodgroup have been around for a while but this year released a new album, Tracing Echoes, that has just blown me away. Occasionally I find some music that I just can’t stop listening to; this is one of those releases.

You can listen to the track ‘Lines’ below which should give you a taste of what to expect; alternatively follow the link in the above paragraph to stream the whole album at Icelandic music store Gogoyoko (currently offline), and even buy it if you want!

Harris + Hoo-haa

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Over the past few weeks I’ve been working closely with my local branch of Harris + Hoole, who are currently exhibiting a selection of my photographs in their shop. Harris + Hoole is a new chain of coffee shops that has started rapidly expanding in London and the home counties, backed by a significant chunk of investment from Tesco, the British supermarket giant. Naturally, my interest in this chain of coffee shops has led me to read up about them, and the reaction to Tesco’s investment in the company has been baffling.

First of all, I don’t buy in to the idea that a company that is big is by its very nature a bad thing. This seems to be a curiously British phenomenon: that you’re allowed and encouraged to be successful, just not TOO successful. Tesco themselves were one a small independent company, but people liked what they did, so they were able to do more, and grew to the size they are today on the back of continuing to provide what people wanted.

Secondly, Tesco don’t own Harris + Hoole. They have a minority* stake in the company, which means they can bring money to the table, but they don’t have a majority say in how the chain is run. This is crucial – H+H are free to run the shops how they want, and they way they do this is by providing excellent coffee in a friendly and relaxed environment, eschewing heavy branding, and supporting each store’s local environment, by employing local people and, in Rickmansworth’s case, supporting local artists such as myself and others. A company accused by many of killing off the high street are now being criticised for trying to breathe new life into it.

And finally, much of the criticism is that H+H do not openly advertise the fact that Tesco have a large stake in their company. The flippant response would be: well, given people’s reactions on finding out, are you surprised? Seriously though, why should they? If they hadn’t gone to Tesco, they could have gone to a bank instead for funding – would you have expected every local coffee shop to state “Proudly funded by Barclays/RBS/HSBC”? They have no obligation to publicly display their shareholders when it’s already in the public domain, and it’s not ‘underhand’ or ‘sneaky’ if they don’t.

As far as I’m concerned this is a non-story. A chain of shops has opened which provides people with something they like, opening on the vacant former premises of companies such as Clinton’s, the soulless indentikit chain of meaningless platitudes that didn’t provide people with what they wanted. They are creating local jobs, supporting local artists, and listening to local people. Thankfully, given how busy the place gets at times, it seems people are voting with their feet anyway.

Now, I need to go and remind everyone to boycott the Tesco-sponsored Race for Life.

*Not 49% as I initially reported, but less, according to this Telegraph interview with co-founder Nick Tolley.

Hard sell

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I know there are several people who like my photography; the Facebook ‘like’ button shows me there are at least 112 of you. But I’m in this business to make money, as otherwise I won’t be able to spend the time I do taking photographs, and there will be less stuff to like. I’m not going to beg – that is undignifed and unnecessary. I’m not going to chastise you – that would be counterproductive. But I am going to point a few things out that may not be immediately obvious.

If you want to use my photography on your site, that’s fine, but please get in touch and we can agree a price. The chances are the people who use your site are not there to buy photographs, so even if my photos are seen by thousands of pairs of eyes on your hugely successful site, there is no direct mechanism to convert those views to sales, nor any incentive, so a credit and/or a link to my site will not be enough. In fact a credit is the minimum I’d expect for even a paid photograph.

If you want to share my photographs with others, that’s fine by me. I don’t have a problem with people coming to my site to see what I do, as it increases the chances that someone will buy something, or hire me for a photoshoot. However, I reserve the right to decide by which mechanisms you share my photographs. Sadly there is little I can do to prevent Tumblr being used to reproduce my images en masse, however you may notice that you can’t use Pinterest to share an image from this site. Similarly, several of my images are available on Flickr, where there is a link to licence the images from Getty, so I have an (albeit small) incentive to share my best work there as widely as possible.

But you probably already know all this (however if you didn’t, I hope it’s been useful to know). As it is, I do have one final request to make, and this goes out to those of you who are also photographers. Please, please, please, DO NOT undersell yourself as a photographer. If someone wants to use one of your photographs for a website, or a magazine, or some other commercial use, don’t assume that by getting your name in print they are doing you a favour. As I mentioned above, this will not raise your profile as a paid, serious photographer – the people who see your photograph are not necessarily going to be the same people who would want to buy it; your customer is the person who uses the image. In fact, if someone DOES request the use of your photograph, you can quite reasonably argue that merely by their having found you, your ‘exposure’ is good enough already, and does not need the mythical boost that such people promise. The more photographers demand to be paid for their efforts, whether amateur or professional, the harder it will be for us to be exploited, and the less ‘acceptable’ it will be to try to obtain photography for free.