It's never too late to be what you might have been

I've been in a reflective mood of late. Questions like "what am I doing with my life?" and "will I ever be able to shift this last 10Kg?" and "who am I as a photographer, what is my voice?" keep popping into my mind, especially late at night, when fatigue overwhelms me. It's been a tiring month, April, for one reason or another.

It's very easy for me to fall into that way of thinking when I'm tired. The ease by which I convince myself of the futility of what I do sometimes staggers even me — it certainly staggers those around me.

So I've resolved that 2018 should be the year of relaxing and finding real joy in photography again. The simple joys: of a great composition, or great light, or the fortuitous happenstance that makes for Cartier Bresson's "Decisive Moment" (or as near as us mere mortals can reach, anyhow).

I want to shoot landscapes again. I'm not a landscape photographer, never will be, but there's something about the purity of a landscape photograph that attracts me. I have enjoyed in years gone by shooting landscapes which deliberately included people — because people are the core of my work — but just shooting landscapes for landscapes' sake would bring me great joy, too, I think.

I also want to conquer my fear of street portraiture. People around here are friendly for the most part, and more than willing to let you make a portrait of them. Who knows: if I were to carry an Instax printer with me I could even give them a copy. This is not an original idea, but it's one that I've been held back from trying for fear of failure.

So, more joy, less fear. That's the motto for the rest of the year. What's yours?

Do something, do something different

Without wanting to put a jinx on it, I think we're finally coming out of The Winter That Would Just Not End. Maybe. It's time to start doing something. Anything would do, frankly. It's also time to start making new stuff and updating promos and sending stuff out and making people aware that I'm alive.

Which is the most exhausting thing ever and something that I'm really not all that good at. In fact, putting it bluntly, I absolutely hate the self promotion aspect of photography. (If there's anyone out there who wants to become my marketing consultant in exchange for free corporate headshots and the occasional pack of Jaffa Cakes, do yell…).

Thankfully, it's also the time of year for the stuff I'm good at: shooting pictures. As the winter weather starts to turn to spring I can finally get out of the studio and start shooting on location, and refresh my portfolio a bit. Or at least, that was the plan.

I put out a call for folks to shoot with on Instagram and Twitter (my general loathing for Instagram does not extend to not using it when it's useful, it turns out). Leona replied, and we quickly set up a test shoot. We wanted to shoot entirely on location, but in the end, thanks to the Manchester weather, that didn't work out. Leona had also wanted to shoot something in her red suit, so once we'd brought the shoot into the studio I set about trying out a couple of ideas that were in my head.

The first — at the top of the page — was to shoot the red suit on a red background with some kind of over-the-top facial expression. The second, below, was to shoot the red suit on something close to a complimentary colour so that the red really popped.

Looking at my portfolio page, there's not a lot of bright colour there. I tend towards darkness and shadow, even when I'm using coloured light. I want to expand my range a bit, so pushing myself to use bright colours is a nice change. The portrait-on-colour-with-silly-expression has the potential to be a portrait series, I think — maybe I'll shoot some more of those just to get a consistent set of looks that doesn't completely clash with what's already in my portfolio. I love that red-on-red image, but it doesn't fit with the rest of my work right now.

Creating more stuff that doesn't fit in my comfort zone is one of my goals for 2018, so this shoot is a good start.

Looking for Muses in and around Manchester

It’s that time of year, where I’m trying out new ideas, scratching my mental itches, looking forward to my next portfolio of work.

And so I need some subjects to work with. I want to try out lighting scenarios and locations and ideas and stories that are in my head. And sure, I could hire professional models for that, but I want a more diverse set of subjects than going to modelling agencies or networking sites will get me. I need everyday people, not people who know how to work in front of the camera.

If you're in or near Manchester and you're interested in helping me make some interesting images, hit me up — on the contact form, by email at hello@gmb.photo, or on Twitter or Instagram. I don't know what I'll come up with, but I'll come up with something (I have a notebook full of ideas, so no fear there).

What will you do with the images?

I'm going to start sharing some of this self-commissioned work here as I shoot it, along with behind-the-scenes, idea-to-final-print and so on. My goal is to get all of these images finished before I start the next one, since one of my worst habits is not finishing what I start. Once I've got a final print together I'll happily give you a copy.

How does this differ from your 15 Minute Portraits?

My 15 Minute Portrait shoots are all about doing something new and unique in a very short space of time. They're necessarily studio bound — because I don't have time to be setting up and tearing down between shoots.

These images are far more experimental. I might ask to just turn up and shoot with you with absolutely no definite ideas about where I want to start. I might shoot a picture in which you're mostly anonymous. I might shoot something in which you're only in the distance or in which you're super close-up.

Whatever we end up shooting together, I aim for it to be amazing. I can't wait to get started and work with you!

550 days of evening.camera

I've been shooting for my evening.camera project for nearly a year and a half now. In that time I've amassed some 530-odd (and growing) images, of which I've managed to post, pretty much on time, one a day.

That's quite staggering for someone like me, who has issues with actually getting stuff done sometimes.

Beyond posting the images to the evening.camera blog, and Twitter, and Instagram every day (you can receive those by email, you know, if you don't want to have to follow the project through social media — just fill in the form on the evening.camera page), I don't really know what to do with them all. It feels like I should make a book or a magazine or an exhibition of them, but honestly I don't quite know where to start with all that.

One thing that I have noticed, looking at all 500-odd images zoomed out in Lightroom, is the colour palette of the project. There's very little black-and-white in there (a deliberate decision), and so you find these repeated fades from blues to golds, pastels to vibrant colours, as the night draws in and contrast increases. It's also affected by the seasons, because "evening" is lighter in the summer months than the winter.

I'm going to keep shooting for the project, of course, I'd be silly not to. But it's time to start something new as well, because evening.camera is more like visual pushups for me rather than a mountain that I must climb. I need a new mountain.

I also need to finish the stuff I start. But that's a separate blog post.

Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley, California

I Made a Thing

Late last year, just before Christmas, I shot The DeeVees' first ever show, at the Castle Hotel in Manchester. I'd had the idea in my head for a while — after it was suggested during a portfolio review — to shoot a small documentary book about a band's first gig, just as a way of promoting the fact that I exist.

Well, today that book — actually, a one-shot magazine — is finished and available for sale on Blurb.com!

It's been a fun little project to do. The hardest part was figuring out how to lay out the images that I shot. Is this going to be a new promo mailer for me, as I'd intended? In the, no. It's too much of a documentary and not enough of of a portraiture piece, and portraiture is what I do best. I did shoot a couple of promo images for the band — I'll talk about the technique I used in a later blog post — but that's not the point of the magazine.

Here's the thing that I'm trying to learn this year: it doesn't matter how much you miss your target by, it doesn't matter how hard or soft you feel like you've failed. Everything is worth trying, everything is worth doing. Sure, you've got to be discerning: would I do this project again? Probably not. Was it immense fun to do? Absolutely. But the point is that I tried, and I succeeded in making something, even if it wasn't what I'd intended.

My greatest thanks to The DeeVees for having me. If you're near then when they're playing and you fancy hearing some "filthy Manchester trash punk," you should check them out.

The DeeVees

By Graham Binns