by Tim Gander

Don’t I Ever Stop?!

Even when I’m not taking business photos for clients or shooting a personal project, when I go away on a break I take yet more photos. Which would be fine except that I obsess about not taking the kind of holiday photos I ought really to be taking.

If I tell someone I’m going for a break in wherever, the common reaction is for them to suggest things I should take pictures of while I’m there. It might be the pretty houses, the beautiful landscapes, the amazing night lights by the river or whatever. The problem is, most of these photos can already be seen on Google, so why would I just repeat what someone else has already done?

I’m not entirely sure it’s a healthy state of affairs, but whenever I go away I end up treating it like some kind of mini assignment. A good recent example is when my wife Helen and I went to Kent for a music festival she was performing in. We decided to make it a weekend as the weather was glorious and we were very close to Dymchurch Beach.

So instead of a snap of a sunny beach and blue skies, I zeroed in on the detectorist who was kind enough to chat and be photographed.

And during the festival, instead of photographing the beautiful little church where the music was being performed, I honed in on the side details of the event. Which would be fine if that just meant drinking the tea and eating the biscuits, but I came over all Martin Parr and took wry, dry observational shots of tea cups, trays of mugs and helpers in the cake tent.

Just to make it even more of an inconvenience for myself, I took all my photos on expired film (yes, I still have some from my Saxonvale project).

Now you may ask what the heck’s wrong with me, but the thing is a break is about enjoying yourself and having freedom to do what you want. It just happens I enjoy shooting film (expired or not) but with the freedom to explore a subject however I want.

It might not be everyone’s idea of a break, but I fid it liberating even though there’s still a background static of wishing not to fail to get good shots.

Am I weird? Probably. Perhaps I need a break. Which reminds me, I’ve got four rolls of black and white film from my holiday in France to process.

A detectorist on the beach looks off-camera to the left and gesticulates as he tells a story.
Detectorist, Dymchurch Beach, Kent, June 2018.
Landscape view looking out to sea across the width of the concrete promenade at Dymchurch in Kent.
Dymchurch seafront, Kent, June 2018.
A bespectacled woman in a Stour Music Festival apron holds a tart for the view of the camera with the words Stour Music 2018 written out in pastry on its surface.
Stour Music Festival, Kent, June 2018.
Looking down on a table with an electric kettle and a large assortment of mugs.
Stour Music Festival, Kent, June 2018.
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 by Tim Gander

Goldfish Ate My Cat

How’s this for a blast from the past? A project from my college days, February 1991 to be precise, which involved mocking up a newspaper front page using pictures and stories I’d covered during the course. Well, two real stories at least; read carefully and you’ll notice some fake news too.

I stumbled across this while having an office clear-out. It’s pasted into the back of my first ever cuttings book, so it’s not been shredded or binned along with the eight-year-old bank statements, receipts, accounts and long-defunct business cards from long-defunct businesses.

The purpose of the exercise was to think about page layout and to get to grips with the newly-emerging technology of desktop publishing. In fact I recall this was done on something like a Mac 1 (or thereabouts). Looking at the caption for Norma Major’s photo you can tell I wasn’t all that impressed with the image quality available at the time.

The lead story about Don McCullin was clearly the one item I was taking seriously in this exercise, given the rather pretentious journalism I employed when writing it. But I still have a proper silver print of that photo I made at the time. It sits inside the cover of my signed copy of McCullin’s Unreasonable Behaviour.

Luckily no one came forward to claim the space shuttle prize and I’m afraid the competition closed in March 1991.

Scan of a newspaper design project made in 1991 at Stradbroke College, Sheffield featuring Don McCullin and Norma Major.
News front page cover design project, 1991.
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 by Tim Gander

Get Shorty

Even this short blog post is longer than the super small Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 lens, my absolutely favourite lens. It’s tiny, sometimes referred to as a pancake lens, but so sharp you could cut your thumb on the images it produces, yet costs just £200.00 new. I got mine for £90.00 secondhand.

It’s been the most-used lens through my Saxonvale project, but whenever I get the opportunity I use it for corporate photo sessions too, including portraits as well as for fly-on-the-wall work.

And in my experience it’s tough! I once slipped and fell and landed with my camera (40mm mounted) between me and a mud bank. I heard a click which I thought was the lens mechanism breaking. It wasn’t, it was the sound of one of my ribs fracturing! That hurt for a few weeks, but the lens was fine.

I wanted to write this post after seeing Neil Turner’s post about his favourite lens. Go here to find out which one he reaches for most.

So if I’m ever on a job for you and I put this dinky lens on my camera, check out the smile on my face.

A very close side view of the Can EF 40mm f/2.8 lens showing the Canon logo, lens name and auto focus switch.
Barely big enough for the AF/MF switch that sits upon it.
Side-portrait of a young business woman at night in London, her face illuminated by the iPad she is holding up to read. City office block lights illuminate the background.
Creative portraits are fun with this dinky whizz.
A woman sits on a metal staircase framed by its graffiti-covered rails, holding a camera, wearing glasses and a grey sweat top.
Perfect for documentary projects too - From Saxonvale.

 

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 by Tim Gander

On My Hobby Horse

When a professional musician isn’t gigging or recording, they’ll be practicing; running up and down the scales, trying new techniques, working on pieces they may have to (or would like to) perform some time. When they do this, we don’t consider them to be indulging in a hobby, it’s just part of being a professional.

Professional photographers also need to practice between gigs. Of course we can’t sit in a room or studio and just run up and down the shutter speeds on the camera for an hour or two. We have to find pictures to take, pictures which stretch our abilities and keep our brains photographically sharp. That’s where the personal project comes in, at least for me.

I’m not very good at just going out with a camera and taking random photos. In particular I’m not very good at photographing pretty scenes just for the pleasure of it. I have to find a theme and work to that, but sometimes when I’m doing this I’m told “It’s nice you still have photography as a hobby.”

View of a drilling rig reflected in the water used to keep the drilling pipes lubricated.
From the personal essay Saxonvale: From The Waste Up

Ok, I’m not massively irked by this kind of reaction. It’s understandable when photography is such a hugely popular hobby. I’m even aware of people who think that being a professional photographer is simply a case of translating one’s hobby into paid work. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy meeting people and taking pictures for businesses, but I’m not sure I’d spend a day taking head shots against a white backdrop just for the giggles.

However, this mode of thinking ignores the possibility that a personal project has the potential to turn into something with a value beyond just being practice between gigs. Currently I have a number of projects on the go which pay nothing up-front, but about which I’m hugely excited and I hope will excite other people too, once they come to fruition.

The problem could be in the term “personal work” or “personal project” which implies I’m only taking the pictures for my personal photo album, but it’s the term most widely recognised by photographers and publishers to mean a project which is exploring an idea without having a defined end point or deadline, or a pre-determined place for publication.

For now at least we have to stick with the term, so perhaps I should just get off my hobby horse and await the day when the terms are more widely understood and photography between gigs is recognised as having a value.

It’s fair to say that over the last year or two, my actual hobbies (cycling, playing guitar) have been rather squeezed out of my life by my personal photo essay work. It’s up to me to re-adjust that balance, but photography is definitely not my hobby.

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 by Tim Gander

It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over

An above view of a shoebox of various expired Kodak, Ilford, Fuji and Agfa photographic film.
More expired film arrives

Just when I thought my Saxonvale project might come to an end it seems it’s not over yet.

My original plan was to shoot the project until either my original stock of expired film ran out, or when the site got cleared or developed. Well the site got partially cleared and I’m down to the last few rolls of film, so it would have made sense to bring the project to a close.

However, the site is still accessible and the story is still developing as a couple of “tenants” have moved onto an area which has yet to be cleared and secured, and so rather than reaching a conclusion, the story has simply evolved.

Because of this I took the decision that I wasn’t prepared to let my film supply run out just yet. I put out a plea on a Facebook group for photographers and one in particular, a notable veteran of documentary photography David Hoffman, came forward with a very generous offer to help. This morning an intriguing mixed box of film arrived which should keep me going for quite some time yet!

There’s a freezer drawer at home which was starting to look rather empty, well it’s about to get indigestion.

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 by Tim Gander

The Film Fad

When I started shooting film again I thought it might just be an itch that needed to be scratched, but Im enjoying it so much that the current project on the Saxonvale area of Frome really is building into something interesting.

If you’d like to see all the images so far you’ll need an Instagram account where you’ll find me as @takeagander, but in the meantime here’s a selection of recent posts. All shot on expired film, all the flaws and colour-shifts are a result of the age of the film used.

And no, this isn’t just a hipster fad for me; I love shooting film and the way it makes me slow down and think. Wherever possible it’ll be my medium of choice for all my personal projects from now on, so sorry if I keep banging on about it.

A cat strolls through the disused Saxonvale site towards the camera. A green cast is the result of being out-of-date film.
The remains of a swivel chair base, one leg snapped off and missing.
From the Saxonvale Project.
The hand of a graffiti artist casts its own shadow on a wall.
Discarded spray pint cans on a wall, highly degraded film results in black blobs and lines on the film.
A wrecked push chair resembles a broken robot.
A smashed bicycle wheel hangs on a metal fence.
A colour photo of a blue plastic toy tractor and a blue bleach bottle on a pile of twigs.
Three young men sit on a concrete platform, their backs to the camera.
Youngsters walk through the Saxonvale site with bikes, skateboards or just on foot. Dumped wood and litter fill the foreground.
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 by Tim Gander

Expired Film Teaches Me A Lesson

I’m meant to use this blog to talk about nothing but corporate photography, hitting those all-important keywords, shoehorning them into sentences until Google says “I get it, you’re a corporate photographer shooting portraits and other corporate communications images for businesses who care about the quality of their image and the values it conveys, so we’ll put you at the top of the listings whenever we think you’re what the client is looking for.”

Thanks Google, you’re doing a grand job and I should apologise that I don’t always make it easy for you by writing instead about magazines I like, exhibitions I’ve launched (actually, singular exhibition, but hey I’ll keep working on that), or my return to shooting film as a way of working out new ideas and pursuing my passion for telling the stories of ordinary people.

And this week I’m not making it any easier as once again I’m on the subject of film.

My return to film has been a bit stop/start but it continues. More recently I’ve been working with expired film, that is stock which is well past its use-by date. Yes, film has a use-by date because the light-sensitive chemicals which react to light start to break down.

However, I managed to source a large, mixed bag of film; 35mm, medium format, colour and black and white and I’ve been working my way through it with various trial projects and one project which has been fairly fruitful, that of a series of photos documenting the derelict site in Frome known as Saxonvale.

Saxonvale is an area of the town which has been left partially cleared for many years now while the various landowners and interested parties take their time working out how to make the most money from its redevelopment. You might say I’ve used derelict film to record a derelict site, recording not just the waste discarded there, but also sometimes the people who pass through or visit for their own reasons.

Some of the film stock I’ve used has been in such a poor state it barely rendered an image. One trip was wasted because the film was so utterly degraded it was blank when I processed it. All part of the project and a useful reminder to me that the film is the boss on this one.

In due course I’ll be updating my main website with some of these images, but in the meantime here’s a mini gallery to give you a flavour of the Saxonvale project. If you want to see more of it and some of the other film images I’ve shot lately, head over to my Instagram account where you’ll find me as @takeagander.

Ground-level view of a discarded book fans its pages in the wind as it lies on the ground.
From the Saxonvale Project
A family, mother, father, son and daughter walk through the derelict site.
From the Saxonvale Project
Weed seed heads garland a locked mesh gate to the Saxonvale site.
From the Saxonvale Project.
Dark, grainy portrait of a young man who visits the site to explore and make youtube videos.
© Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
A towel is hung from a chickenwire fence.
© Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
A small discarded plastic doll lies naked amongst scattered stones and other rubbish, her hair awry.
© Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
A man and his dog leave the site after exploring the rubbish for any valuable materials such as copper.
© Tim Gander 2017. All rights reserved.
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 by Tim Gander

Routes in the News

Yes, Routes has been dominating my blog lately, but this has to be one of the most important projects I’ve worked on in a very long time, so I hope you’ll indulge me a little longer.

This is just a round-up of where we are with the exhibition, donations and stuff.

I’m pleased to say I’ve had some really positive feedback about the exhibition from people I’ve met in the street, through Facebook and twitter, but what’s even better is that Sarah, the Routes centre manager, tells me people have been donating on the strength of seeing the pictures in Cafe La Strada.

We were a little worried that the cost of getting the pictures printed and framed wouldn’t be met, but with a local grant and donations from individuals we’ve covered that now. Phew!

Now it would be valid to ask why Routes spent money on an exhibition when the centre so desperately needs cash to keep going, but the fact is the portraits and case studies and the exhibition itself have generated a great deal more local awareness than could otherwise have been achieved, especially in the few weeks they have before the funding expires.

Take a look at the local press coverage just this week. Imagine what it would cost to buy a full-page advert in a local paper, yet this week we made the front page and a full-page spread inside. This is in addition to the coverage we had in the last couple of weeks on the launch of the exhibition in both local papers as well as an online article in one of the most popular photography sites on the internet.

Frome Standard cover showing the portrait of Mona Vaas.
Frome Standard cover
Full-page spread of photos and case studies in the Frome Standard.
Frome Standard full-page spread

With that in mind, I have to give full credit to Sarah for having the foresight to suggest the exhibition.

The latest news I have is that grant funding for at least a proportion of the running costs is on the cards. Fingers very much crossed that this comes through and for the balance to be covered by other funding bodies, but in the meantime if you would like to donate, you can do so by Texting MEND41 an amount from £1 to £10 to 70070, or by a cheque made payable to YMCA Mendip to ‘Routes’ Drop-In Centre, 1A Palmer Street, Frome, BA11 1DS. Donate online by clicking on the BT Mydonate button at http://tinyurl.com/j9jukt9 and select Routes as your chosen project.

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 by Tim Gander

Portraits of Brexit Britain

Overview of the call centre at Leave.eu's office in Bristol where fundraisers took pledges from the public. A large Leave.eu sign is on the wall at the back of the room as call handlers sit at desks, watching computer monitors and wearing telephone headsets.

Leave.eu call centre, Bristol. Photo © Tim Gander 2016

Sometimes I see a fellow photographer reveal a new personal project and it really interests me, which is why I’m sharing Steve Franck’s post with you here this week.

Steve is a London-based photographer working mostly for commercial and corporate clients, but he’s also pretty inspirational in his personal work too.

The plan for his latest project is to do a series of post-EU Referendum portraits, one each of 100 people (52 Leave voters, 48 Remain voters), in their own homes, examining their backgrounds and reasons for voting the way they did.

And the reason I’m posting this here is because Steve needs volunteers from a range of backgrounds and situations in order to capture a broad section of society. So if you’d like to be photographed (and receive a free print for your time), head over to his project page to find out more and to make contact with Steve.

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 by Tim Gander

Crossing Borders

Happy New Year to all my lovely readers, I hope you all had a fun Christmas and that 2016 brings nothing but good stuff.

Photographically I had a pretty hectic Christmas because I’d decided that since my travels would take in Austria, Switzerland, France and Germany, I really should make the most of this and come up with some kind of mini photographic project to share on my return. Besides the inevitable holiday photos, I already had a couple of mini projects lined up, but these were for clients and I wanted something I could work into a narrative post.

Taking in four countries didn’t mean huge distances were travelled, we (my partner and I) just happened to start in Austria and then went to stay with friends in a corner of France which converges with Switzerland and Germany.

In fact the border area on the outskirts of Basel in Switzerland is so complicated that I quickly turned my attention to this as the focus of my project. I only had a few hours to get the project shot, but here’s a flavour of what I found.

Basel itself is a pretty city with historic winding streets, a handsome waterfront and grand public buildings, but I’m not so drawn to photographing obviously pretty places, and I was more intrigued by the area we were staying in; Huningue in France and Weil am Rhein in Germany.

One feature of this district is a huge shopping mall where Swiss residents take advantage of the cost of living differential by making a tram trip from Switzerland (incredibly expensive) to Germany (cheaper), their destination being the Rhein Centre where they shop for food, clothes and electrical items without the Swiss premium.

Please click to enlarge and view the gallery:

Swiss/German border
Tram arrives from Basel
The Rhein Centre
Inside The Rhein Centre
Dreiländerbrücke
Border on the bridge
Shopping without borders
The Rhein
Towns and countries
"Bulgaria" was all she would say

The tram passes through Swiss/German border controls without let or hindrance thanks to the Schengen agreement between European countries. Though there is a border station there it seemed mostly shut for Christmas and I don’t imagine border guards check passenger passports very often.

Even more open is the border between Germany and France which is literally a few hundred yards down the road from the Swiss/German border. A bridge (Dreiländerbrücke / Passerelle des Trois Pays) joins the two countries and hundreds of people cross by foot or on pushbikes every day. It’s rather like any bridge in any town except it has a plaque and a pair of flags to denote the joining of the countries.

In this segment of Europe a walk in the town or countryside will involve crossing various borders with often little more than a small sign on a metal post to let you know which country you’re in. There were times when I lost track of which half-remembered language I was supposed to be speaking, but I don’t think I embarrassed myself too badly.

This is an area I’d be interested in returning to as there seems to be more than one story quietly playing out against the domestic and industrial backdrop. Youth culture, poverty and the social mix would all be interesting subjects given enough time to cover them. In the meantime, I’d best brush up on my French, German and Swiss-German at the very least before I go again.

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