Blog of Manchester Fashion Photographer Jay Mawson - Jay Mawson Fashion Photographer - Manchester

On the Art of Personal Branding for Photographers

Jay Mawson — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 13:30:21 +0000

When was the last time you looked at your personal branding? Have you ever looked at it? Your clients do, every time they hit up your website or your social feeds.

As a photographer you're (hopefully) visually literate. You can read, deconstruct and explain why an image works. However don't assume your skills extend to graphic design. Working with a great graphic designer will open your eyes to things you've probably never considered.

When I reached out to Larisa Mazilu (see Larisa’s work here) I'd had my 'branding' for coming up to 10 years and largely put it together myself in photoshop. It was starting to look dated and I felt it no longer did what I wanted or needed.

My brief was straightforward, loose and probably frustratingly vague:

I want evolution not revolution
I don't want my name written out in black Helvetica at the top of my site

Other than that, I gave her full access to my portfolio and offered her an open mind.

The first part of her process was research. What came back was basically:

Most photographers do just use Helvetica (or some variation) in black to spell out their name. I guess it has something to do with "let the images do the talking” or the fact that most website templates allow you to put your name at the top in Helvetica.
Some clearly had branding input and had invested in a strong, clear personal identity

Of the latter, the following resonated with me as really great examples of the impact of a personal brand:

After looking at Squarespace site after Squarespace site of virtually identical identities these were fresh and individual. They confirmed that I definitely wanted something 'different’. Admittedly, that still wasn’t an ideal brief for anyone.

Next came logo iterations. I saw artboards with dozens of ideas, variations and refinements. Together we narrowed down what I responded to, how I wanted my brand to reflect me.

I'm going to focus purely on the identity aspect here, but what came back blew me away.

It was strong, unique, infinitely flexible, modular and clean. I immediately felt it was 'mine'. I was excited. She'd read my mind, focused my attention and delivered everything I never knew I needed.

Let me break that down:

The basic shapes (circle, square, triangle), each with it's own typography, is distinct. I tend to shoot many different styles, not just tied to a signature ‘look’. The different fonts, weights and cases sitting together as a still cohesive whole I feel reflects this.
The logo is infinitely flexible and it's as strong on its own as it is overlayed on an image.
Each of the graphical elements can sit on their own and still convey the brand.
It's modular, in that it can be configured in a square, landscape or portrait orientation without losing any of the impact. With so many different digital media demands it means I can make it work anywhere without a struggle.
Any element can be used solid, inverted or overlaid on an image and is still perfectly legible.
The circle can be used to seamlessly utilise the full icon real estate offered by those social platforms that use circular icons.
The J A Y lettering within the circle is bold enough to be read on small screen sizes.

I'm scratching the surface there, but I’ll happily admit that I hadn't considered a single one of those aspects when I 'designed' my original logo. That thought process is all the remit of a great graphic designer. Making it look effortless - easy - is the hard part.

I’d previously stopped short at a PSD file and a few randomly sized PNG files. Now I have at my disposal a full Creative Cloud library of graphics and colour palettes of scalable Illustrator designed vectors which makes creating anything so much easier.

And that’s just a logo. That's your brand right? Nah.

What fonts are you using - how do they complement and contrast?
Which one for headlines and which for body?
Is your written collateral - your presentations, your bids, your treatments, your invoicing - all cohesive?
Does your identity flow seamlessly from social feeds to website to printed materials to the stickers on your kit case?
Are all your touchpoints up to date with your branding? Your email signature, your Google icon, your WeTransfer? Behance? LinkedIn? Pinterest? Login Screen?

Brands spend millions on their identity. They have custodians to ensure the brand values are met. Identities are engineered to engage, to tell a story and to define. Reflecting a consistent aesthetic is key. As small brands we can take something from that. We can have a look at and take control of our own branding. But - as with photography - it's best done by a professional.

The rebrand that Larisa has delivered has made me more confident in and more engaged with my own brand than I have been for a long time.

On E-commerce Photography

Jay Mawson — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 16:19:34 +0000

ON E-COMMERCE

A brief look at e-commerce photography in 2021

Everything’s E-commerce now. Ecomm. Ecommerce. E Commerce. However you spell it, it’s all ecomm.

A true child of the internet, demand for e-commerce photography has grown exponentially over the last 20 years. Everybody sells online so everything is technically e-commerce. Front. Back. Side. Detail. Change. Makeup selfie. Next. Within that simple framework a whole genre was born. But whilst the internet buckles under general critique of fashion photography, e-commerce imagery is like the dirty family secret that’s rarely discussed in public.

A brief history of E-commerce

Once upon a time, Next, Grattan, Littlewoods & M&S had art directors and marketing departments with years of experience in turning round beautiful lifestyle photoshoots driven by predictable product cycles with glossy printed catalogues and in-store POS. A lot of photographers got very rich shooting nothing other than ‘pre-commerce e-commerce’ on a beach somewhere. Herb Ritts and Yasmin Le Bon were both involved in the first Next catalogue.

The bar was set high. Initially the first e-commerce players tried to keep some quality - after all, the high-street brands were still their direct competitors. ASOS (initially As Seen On Screen) rewarded skilled, freelance photographers with a great day-rate to create their images. But eventually this was unsustainable as the number of new products exploded and the (largely Manchester based) fast-fashion revolution flooded the market. With hands-on owners involved in every aspect of low margin/high volume business models they just needed photography to be as cheap and as quick as possible. Disposable online-only images for the week-long life span of each micro trend.

If 1990’s product photography was organic free range, the late 00’s moved swiftly to a battery farm model.

The rise of in-house teams based in the corner of a disused stock room allowed one lead photographer to create a static, standard lighting set-up for an army of junior photographers. A second army of in-house retouchers were employed to paper over the cracks. You didn’t need great equipment when the largest size the image would ever be seen at was 1000px on a cracked phone screen. Very quickly nobody was using freelancers for their e-commerce and, with the move to in-house photographers, e-comm day-rates plunged almost as quickly as the quality.

If you were good enough to create consistent e-commerce images with little need for retouch then you were good enough to stay away from in-house roles. And so e-commerce photography was for over a decade the lowest form of the art. It simply didn’t need to be anything else and nobody commissioning it or consuming it could tell one end of Herb from the other.

A Maturing Market

But slowly, e-commerce photography together with the army of photographers that cut their teeth in it, has grown into itself. The ugliest of the internet’s children is finally emerging as a complex, cool & interesting teenager. ‘E-commerce’ is no longer always synonymous with ‘awful’.

I’m talking here about the actual *product* photography - the images you see on the ‘New In’ pages rather than the banners, micro campaigns and social content. Virtually every business that sells something now has an online store and that online store needs to be constantly fed with product imagery. Even Primark who famously don’t have an e-commerce platform inexplicably still goes to the trouble of creating images of all their products for their website. As a photographer in 2021, to ignore e-commerce is to remove a huge and ever-growing revenue stream. Whilst most of the large players still run in-house teams and rarely hire in freelance talent there are thousands of brands with smaller inventories or longer, more sustainable product cycles and an eye on quality that still all need regular e-commerce shoots.

But what is driving this increase in quality? As the fast fashion e-commerce players grow and consolidate the key players are flexing their profits to differentiate and create identity. Quality and creativity are ramping up across every channel. When every brand’s products looked the same and were shot the same way on the same faces something had to change. Large players are hoovering up bankrupt high street names that already come with an identity. Karen Millen, Topshop, Debenhams - their customers expect their brands to look mature (in terms of identity rather than age-group). No budget has given way to *some* budget.

After countless hours, days and years of repeating the same actions the in-house teams have grown into well oiled machines of experienced experts. There’s only so many times they could shoot the same thing over and over before wanting to change, refine and improve on it. Businesses (and their owners) who started out knowing nothing about imagery are now much more informed. They understand they can’t sell across all their channels using the same photographic formula. It’s a swift realisation that in the online world imagery is the only differentiator and will impact sales to differing degrees. If the product is at a low price point quality imagery on good models will elevate it. And for premium products, sustainable brands and micro labels the product imagery has to be of a higher quality or have a different vibe to that of the fast-fashion pack.

E-commerce as Editorial

Let’s lazily (but justifiably) take Zara as the Gold Standard. Have you looked at their e-commerce recently? It shares more DNA with high end editorials than their fast fashion peers (whilst still managing to be named the most sustainable company in the retail industry three years in a row by the DJSI). It’s still largely shot in-house across their 15+ studios in Spain. They shoot around 20 looks per day per model so a maximum capacity of around 300. Quality over quantity. They spend money on the sets. They spend money on the models (rarely using influencers). They get in Steven Klein every now and again. They understand the idea that fashion is about a vibe more than it is about clinically capturing the front, back, side and detail.

As Europe’s biggest clothing retailer you could argue that Zara don’t need to spend so much on the quality of their e-commerce photography, that it would sell anyway. Or I’d like to think that they’re Europe’s biggest clothing retailer because their e-commerce operation is so good. The ROI appears to pay off. You could also argue that I’m looking at it from the perspective of a creative rather than a consumer - but I can’t believe all that effort and cost is being expended without extensive market research to demonstrate that actually yes, the average consumer is influenced by the quality of the images.

Elevated E-commerce

So to go back to where I started - everything is e-commerce now. Just as online retail is swallowing the high-street, e-commerce photography is swallowing every other genre of photography. Whilst writing this post I had an enquiry to use an image shot on an e-commerce shoot for a billboard campaign. This highlights the not-entirely-transparent way e-commerce has evolved into a convenient synonym for any photography for an online retailer. It is often still expected to be delivered for the rates that brands became accustomed to paying for the simple white background, single lighting setup studio shots that e-commerce initially meant. But just because they’re photographs of products for a brand that describes itself as an online retailer does not automatically make it e-commerce photography. If e-commerce images are repurposed into a campaign can it still be just e-commerce? If a shoot is half a day of product followed by half a day of banners and social content is it still just e-commerce?

If you hire an e-comm photographer to shoot your e-commerce then that’s exactly what you’ll get. White wall, maxed out hard flash, hours of retouch requirements and images that are indistinguishable from any other brand. Just about anybody with basic knowledge of a camera can manage that. The rates for that style of e-commerce justifiably reflect the lack of skill required and the low barriers to entry. It’s a race to the bottom within a saturated market. But if you hire an experienced campaign photographer to shoot your e-commerce then what you should be getting is really good e-commerce for a very small premium. And hopefully that’s what you want for your brand. Really good e-commerce. Elevated e-commerce.

Ecommerce Photography Manchester

Premium Ecommerce Photography Manchester

Swimwear Photography

Jay Mawson — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 19:45:43 +0000

Swimwear Photography

The Rotherham - California Scale

Within the last year we’ve had the good fortune to visit both the Caribbean and the Maldives. I shot a small test swimwear fashion editorial in each location. I mean - you would wouldn’t you. Given the choice between filling your swimwear portfolio with a blue tinged model on a misty Formby beach or some Insta-pretty island nearer the equator it’s not a difficult decision to make. Nobody is going to panic about half a dozen extra swimsuits in the 23Kg allowance. The only advantage Formby offers is being able to take more kit and a crew to share the misery with you. When push comes to shove I’ll take my chances with golden sand and turquoise waters over somebody to hold my reflector.

Having just returned from the Maldives one thing really struck me about the islands as a location choice. Granted, I was only there for a week, but there wasn’t a single golden hour. No golden mornings, no fiery orange evenings. The best light each day appeared between 11am and 2pm. The blinding white midday sun barreling straight down onto the shallow waters creates those amazing blue hues you lust over on somebody else’s instagram feed. But the mornings - and evenings - remain stubbornly muted, the vibrant colours just gradually fading in and out of saturation. In fact, the only real useable light the Maldives offers is clean, bright light bouncing off the white sands and shallow seas softening shadows and creating a huge natural soft box. The Caribbean was the opposite - yes, it had the same midday glare, but the mornings and evenings offered the classic warm Russell James tones. I don’t think any swimwear brand is going to come away disappointed with images from any tropical paradise - but all paradises are not equal, certainly when it comes to lighting options and the final feel of the images. And as fluffy and essentially pointless as this post might be, there is no resource for this kind of information. There’s no substitute for experience. Millions of YouTube tutorials on how to use an Ikea colander as a budget beauty dish, but nobody ranking light qualities around the world. Something like a Rotherham-California scale - where Rotherham is the least inspiring light known to man and California is lighting nirvana.

In the interests of research, I need to get to Thailand, Bali and Brazil to compare and contrast. I’ve already been to Rotherham. In my mind, the larger landmass and slightly more northerly latitude of Thailand might just be perfect - lush vegetation, beautiful beaches and…a golden hour? Details of my Just Giving account below.

TrekPak

Jay Mawson — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 12:41:35 +0000

TrekPak

On Being a Photographer

I was at a party last night. A 70th birthday celebration for somebody I’ve known since before I can remember. The birthday girl’s four grandchildren were there and she wanted a photograph of them all together. Of course, I’d not taken my camera - the same way the guy who worked in IT hadn’t taken his network server and the girl who made ceramics hadn’t taken her kiln. Naturally, I was asked where my camera was and I pointed out that every person there had a camera in their pocket the same way that I did and any one of them was capable of taking a family photograph. Looking back through our own family album there’s no more sentimental attachment to photos taken on my Grandad’s Voigtlander than there is to those taken on my Mum’s Kodak. In fact, I find family photos taken at an informal gathering by a ‘photographer’ less authentic - people are aware you’re a photographer and react differently. Nobody stands around at family get togethers where there isn’t a photographer in attendance wondering how the fuck they’re going to get any images of Uncle Bob. In the end the lady’s husband took the shot on his iPhone. Nobody will look back on that shot in another 70 years and lament that it wasn’t taken by a professional photographer on a professional camera.

On the drive home it got me thinking about how - as a photographer rather than a party guest - I arrive at a job. When was the first time I turned up feeling like a photographer rather than an individual with a camera. It came down to what I’d happily argue (I’m generally happiest when I’m arguing anyway) is the biggest rite of passage for a photographer transitioning from amateur to professional - buying your first Peli case. The first time I really felt like I was a photographer wasn’t when I bought my first pro-spec camera or my first lens over £1k or my studio lighting - it was when I decided what size Peli I needed to safely transport enough kit to perform the job plus cover any unforeseen equipment redundancies.

Turning up to a job with my first 1510 was signalling intent before you’d even opened the case. You could pull a Panasonic out of it and it wouldn’t matter - in the client’s mind the photographer has arrived when the Peli case arrives. I even had mild Peli envy recently when I shot alongside another photographer who had sand-coloured Peli cases. Man, this photographer just came in straight from Iraq. Actually it was somewhere nearer Croydon - but the cases rocked.

My first case is still in service and had been joined by another two over the years as requirements grew together with the value of what they’re safely cradling inside. What did need some TLC however was the foam padding inside my main case. The ‘pick and pluck’. Rhyming slang I’m guessing. Over the years I’ve cut and pulled and plucked at it to accommodate different cameras and configurations and it’s completely plucked. So I decided to try the TrekPak system.

Pick & Pluck. Rhyming slang...

I’ve never done a proper in depth kit review and I’m not about to start now - there are people out there that do that kind of thing. Some even use video and manage to look excited. I’ll cut to the chase. It took me about 20 minutes start to finish to rip out the foam and replace it with the TrekPak dividers. You lay your kit out in the case, cut the dividers using the idiot-proof cutting tool supplied and fit them into your case. Add kit. Leave house.

That's it. Full instructions...how hard can it be?

TrekPak foam cutter

Outer bumper fits perfectly in the Peli

Laying the kit out first

Cut, Pin, Rinse, Repeat

It feels safer and more robust than the padded dividers I’ve had in the past and is more configurable than the pick and pluck stuff. If I temporarily need a larger compartment for something I can just switch the pins around. I prefer having a compartment for everything and all the compartments full - that way I know at a glance when I leave a job whether I’ve left anything behind simply by checking for empty slots. And the TrekPak actually allowed me to pop a few items into the case that had previously lived in my second case so it’s more economical with space too.

Fill in the gaps

I’ve had it in there for about a fortnight now and can’t find a downside. I mean - basically you have three options for segmenting your Peli - padded dividers, pick and pluck or TrekPak. Life’s too short to spend hours on the internet researching which option to go for as they all basically do the same thing - it’s just that the TrekPak does it that little bit better and that little bit smarter.

Filter Bubble (NSFW)

Jay Mawson — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 18:10:13 +0000

FILTER BUBBLE

Photographs of No Importance

**Disclaimer** I might just have liked, followed, commented and appreciated my way into a filter bubble. If I have, then anybody that can offer me a sharp pin would be greatly appreciated...

I guess I’ve been doing this long enough now to recognise trends and cycles. I consume enough media to distill & filter images into basic categories. If it’s a widely accepted truth that all stories are based on seven basic plots, then all the editorials I currently see are based on just one fucking story recorded on an endlessly looped 8-track. The one where a girl arrives at a photographer’s apartment, stands somewhere near a window and undresses. If the photographer is really good, they’ll have managed to live near an outdoor pool or in LA.

Rewind. A long time ago (like, 7 years. Before the iPad had been announced. Before Instagram. Back when Kardashian just meant Kim) Jonathan Leder released Jacques Magazine. It rocked, it was different to most of what was around back then (albeit wholly similar to what was around 30 years previously). It revered the 70s aesthetic and dragged it into this millennium. He shot a lot on film, got the feeling right and it was identifiably his. It was thought out in terms of styling, locations and models. At roughly the same time, South Africa based Purienne took a similar style, sprinkled it with some sun and ran with it - I bought Mirage magazine’s first issue in 2009 and fell in love. Not just beautiful fashion shoots but a whole lifestyle was laid out on those pages…cars, houses, beaches. Even the texture and smell of the paper was right. They termed it Jet Set Hedonism. It had orange Porsche Carreras. White Citroëns. Fast forward two years and Treats launched. This was my first exposure to David Bellemere. 2012 Kate Bellm shot Sara Eleri Powell against another orange Porsche for Lika Mimika’s lookbook. Cameron Hammond submits his first set to C-Heads. Jason Lee Parry hung out around some swimming pools. A genre was (re)born.

The guys above are all incredibly good at what they do. They’re amongst my favourite image makers today. Bellemere IS my biggest photography crush. They’ve got the details down perfectly, defined a styling lexicon and trademark grain-laden colour palette that everybody else is too lazy or too busy to expand upon. They did it so perfectly that most images in my filter bubble are now either poor imitations or mix and match budget rip-offs. What the thousands of pale imitators don’t have generally is a finesse and an understanding of what makes these guys great in the first place. Whereas all the elements of their shoots are properly produced - location, styling, mood - the mass of ‘editorials’ clogging up the internet and instagram simply rely on models getting undressed. It’s the sole hook. A striptease spread over a dozen basically identical frames delivered to a formulaic script containing at least one of the following…

One frame with the model sucking a lollipop/watermelon/orange/cherry
Failing that (or if the previous day’s model has eaten all the bananas) she’ll stick her head under a running tap. Modelling. Thirsty work.
Model opening the fridge (presumably searching for more things to put in her mouth or a bottle of Chardonnay to numb the pain of her umpteenth shoot where she finds another contrived way to hint at but not actually show full frontal)
Something Coca Cola branded (can, bottle, teeshirt. Doesn’t matter. It’s the logo we’re after)
Slogan tee, preferably in yellow/orange and with a tongue in cheek message that ironically hints at the inherent sexism of the situation.
If they’re wearing a swimsuit, this MUST be wet and pulled right up to give themselves a wedgy whilst gazing wistfully away from the camera into the middle distance. Bonus points for tan-lines…
…naturally followed by a ’model pulling her crocheted bikini out of her ass from behind’ shot
Model playfully hiding behind her slogan tee with smiley eyes
Pool shot. Bonus points for an inflatable swan/donut/doll. Lose points if all you have is a generic shower in your rented flat. Hang your head in shame if somebody is wearing swimwear in the shower whilst drinking from the shower head. Because that never, ever happens. Ever.
Wet hair in a towel. Post shower.
Crochet bikini (full marks for making the effort of getting a Free People one)
Large round glasses
Model laughing and rolling around as she recognises the same bed with the same sheets her mate laughed and rolled around on last week
Major bonus points for a single frame of somebody wearing a wet crochet bikini with string ties undone on one side whilst sporting brown oversized original 70s Chloe sunglasses drinking Coke Classic from a glass bottle through a stripy straw whilst carrying a watermelon past an orange Porsche. Although finding frames to fill in the rest of the editorial will then be a huge challenge.
Etc…

It’s generally lazy and most examples are really, really, boring. Familiarity has turned naked hot girls into elevator music. What’s frustrating is that there are some people doing it really, really well - but their voices are drowned out by the willingness of submission-only websites to accept pretty much every naked editorial in their clamour for new and #exclusive content. One of the hardest jobs in the world right now must be the poor fucker who has to think up a new and pretentious way of describing “pretty model gets kit off in generic apartment in shameless bid for more Instagram followers” for every editorial on their website. Surely by definition ten daily exclusives amounts to whatever the opposite of exclusive is? #ubiquity

Sarah McDaniel by Theo Wenner for Playboy's first non-nude issue Valerie Van Der Graaf for Playboy by David Bellemere

It’s beautifully ironic that just as Playboy finally gives nudity the push, drags itself into the 21st Century and puts more focus on simply creating beautiful editorials, a whole raft of websites have sprung up to plug the NSFW gap. There’s a whiff of emperors new clothes (or lack of) - the photography is generic, the settings blur into one, the concepts are hackneyed - so why exactly do the sites (C-Heads - 311k followers, NextDoorModel - 401K followers, Nakid Magazine - 430K followers, Arsenic - 1m followers) attract such high followings on Instagram? Surely not just because they offer a one-stop shop of models in various degrees of undress? Y’know, the same way FHM, Nuts & Zoo did in their day until the point where being paid to undress somehow became less politically correct than undressing for free in California. None of the images I shot years ago for those publications (there's a few below) would now look out of place on C-Heads, NDM or Arsenic. Since they've all gone now, the only other mainstream genre I can think of where an ‘editorial’ is defined by multiple near-identical frames of a model slowly undressing with lazy location choices and a single styling option throughout is, erm, porn.

Zoo Magazine FHM Magazine Front Magazine Page 3 Front Magazine Zoo Magazine Zoo Magazine Loaded Magazine Page 3 Nuts Magazine FHM Magazine Nuts Magazine

I’ve noticed that C-heads in particular is getting around the fact that most of their exclusives are exactly the same by now just naming them after the model appearing in them - “Angelica by Juan Schmidt”. It’s surely easier than finding another trite way to earnestly describe exactly why Angelica from Arkansas found herself rolling around naked in a strangers flat at golden hour other than the obvious fact that she looks hot and the NSFW element will get lots of clicks thereby increasing their mushrooming advertising revenue. Given that submission is effectively done in return for the follows a featured set will generate, operating costs are limited to paying people to sift through all this shit and website hosting. It also begs the question, is the ‘draw’ in these exclusives the model or the photographer? When all the photography, styling and locations are the same then the only differentiator is the model. Shooting with an instafamous model is what makes most photographers instafamous until it reaches tipping point and the photographer is sufficiently instafamous themselves that agencies are advising their new faces to strip off for them as a quick way of gaining followers and thereby increasing their dayrate. And in turn, the model and photographer both make the curating website exponentially more instafamous to a point where the site reaches the top rung of the submission-only ladder and no longer have to put up with being “the site where photographers submit after they’ve been rejected by the really big sites”. Same way a pimp always ends up better off than their girls and boys.

But that’s getting off topic. What the new wave of natural light photographers don’t get - or just don’t care about now that they’re racking up more likes than when they tried shooting something more clothed - is that it’s the details in Leder/Bellm/Purienne/Bellemere/Hammond/Parry’s images that sets them apart and gives them real-life work. The details that ensure that their images saturate the world’s mood boards. It’s the details, the teams, the photography that keeps these photographers working for brands rather than just for likes. It’s their understanding that the amount of skin on show is secondary to the overall image. I’m hearing more and more anecdotal stories about brands hiring low-level instafamous photographers on the basis of their followers only to be surprised at how shit the results are when they’re asked to work to a brief that isn’t slogan tees, added grain and naked flesh.

So - now that you have a small insight into my mindset - it was with trepidation that I found myself with a free morning in Cape Town recently. It was the end of a campaign shoot where the client had flown home the night before the rest of the crew. The team were taking the opportunity to have a lie in and do some shopping, but as I really wanted to tryout the African light for myself I resigned myself to another early start. I had no styling. We had no makeup artist. Just a beach and two girls from Ice in Cape Town who were kind enough to drag themselves out of bed on nothing more than a vague promise of ‘something natural’.

What I ended up with is disposable. Completely unimportant images. Images that aren’t going to sell anything to anybody, except maybe Muizenburg beach as a great place to spend a morning. Images that I shot for myself rather than with an eye on submission. When the light is this beautiful, you’re shooting a mood. I realise that the only medium in which these images have any relevance at all is Instagram. A fleeting moment of sunshine on somebody’s screen as they scroll on by. And that’s okay. As long as I don’t try and ascribe some higher importance to them, or to pretend that they were hard to shoot (they weren’t) or original (they aren’t) or took ages to shoot (2hrs) or pad them out with some bullshit about how they’re expressing the model’s inner radiance (maybe they do) then we’re all good. They’re Photographs of No Importance and that’s alright by me. I loved the freedom of shooting for no purpose. They made me realise that what’s bugging me about the images in my filter bubble aren’t the images themselves (they’re just photographic elevator music), it’s the manner in which through their earnest curation and #exclusive tag there’s an attempt to elevate them into photographs of artistic importance instead of slightly more honestly admitting it’s just photographers shooting models getting naked in sunny places in exchange for likes. They’re no more and no less empowering, no more or less valid, no more or less artistic than strip joints, FHM or Playboy. And since sex sells, more and more photographers are taking the easy option of turning to this genre as their only viable way to get the level of following that is so highly prized. Since followers now equals actual commercial capital, the bubble is set to just keep on growing...

Iceland Trip Pt 2

Jay Mawson — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 10:06:53 +0000

Iceland Trip

Part 2

There are two places that I’ve visited this year that crept up on me slowly, hit me hard and now have a strangle hold on my heart and my mind. Cape Town was the first, Iceland the second. Neither place grabbed my imagination immediately. My first Iceland post below bears that out…had it been a two day trip I would have enjoyed it, logged it and left it behind. The remainder of the trip was when it became clear you just can’t leave Iceland behind. It’s been six weeks now and I still think about it daily. Nostalgia isn’t healthy. It’s about time I finished this to lay it to rest, if only so I can post about South Africa.

Day 3 - Road to Vik

My expectations as we got up and packed on the second morning were for more of the same. Ksen had put the itinerary together - she’s organised, I’m organic - so I just drove where I was pointed. We left Ion behind and began the drive South towards Vic. South of Reykjavik Route 1 widens out to motorway heading down the spectacular hillside towards Hveragerdi before flattening out through the town of Selfoss (which is nowhere near the waterfall of Selfoss…) and grasslands filled with Icelandic horses around Hella before reaching the turning for Seljalandsfoss. It’s a fairly long drive - about an hour and half from Ion - but through landscape that puts you in mind of the Steppes or Prairies rather than whatever preconceptions of Iceland you come here with. Seljalandsfoss itself is one of those waterfalls you can get up-close-and-personal with. Nowhere near on the scale of Selfoss in terms of width and water, but higher, narrower and infinitely more beautiful. As we pulled into the carpark there were no coaches and only a handful of cars. Thank fuck for the Golden Circle. It was starting to make sense to me now. Keep everybody going around the Golden Circle keeps everywhere else relatively clear. We walked in and around the waterfall, spray soaking us to the bone. It was a million miles away from the viewing platforms and safety ropes of Selfoss.

Hveragerdi

The Icelandic ring road as it drops to Hveragerdi

Seljalandsfoss
Seljalandsfoss
Gljufrabui

A hidden waterfall through a cave next to Seljalandsfoss

Gljufrabui

A hidden waterfall through a cave next to Seljalandsfoss

Route 1

From here we meandered along the ring road, clear blue skies and bright sunshine. The walk from the road to the plane is probably about an hour across a martian landscape of black rocks. We managed to make it last closer to two hours taking photographs and - at one point - managing to fulfil a client request for hi-res files via 3G. I can’t even get 3G between Huddersfield and Manchester. The plane itself is a skeleton now - silver metal decaying on the black beach. It’s a most surreal sight, the only man-made object you can see from horizon to horizon.

Sólheimasandur

Parking up off Route 1 for the long walk to the DC plane

Sólheimasandur beach

Looking East towards Reynisfjara and Vik

Sólheimasandur Beach

The Eyjafjöll mountains (and volcano) on the horizon

US Navy DC Plane

The plane crashed in 1973. The crew all survived.

Plane Wreck, Iceland
Walk

The road across Sólheimasandur beach was closed in March of 2016 - it's a long walk from Route 1

Then the drive to the beach at Reynisfjara where the white Atlantic breakers crash in over the black sand. We climbed down to the beach and saw one other couple as we walked along. It’s the most serene beach I can remember.

A short drive around the next headland and you reach tiny Vik, Iceland’s most southerly town. If you head due South from here the next thing you hit is Antarctica. That’s over 9,000 miles of ocean between you and land. This fact, like everything else in Iceland, gives you a new perspective on the world and your place in it.

We found a small restaurant and ate (lamb, naturally) before driving back through the long dusk to our home for the next two nights in Borgarnes. It was a three hour drive back the way we’d come that morning, but darkness didn’t come fully until well after 11.

Reynisfjara Beach
Sunset at Reynisfjara Beach

Apparently it rains here 340 days a year. It's twinned with Manchester. Possibly.

Black Sand
Church, Vik

Last rays of the sun just catching the steeple of Vik's church

Halldorskaffi Restaurant

Lamb Lamb Lamb Lamb

Vik, Iceland

Weather beaten iron panels in Vik

Vik, Iceland

A rope against an old fishing boat in Vik

Day 4 - Snaefellsness Peninsula

The next morning we woke up in a Pinterest board. I made a coffee in the pale blue kitchen of the beautiful black timber house and enjoyed it on the veranda overlooking the beach. The house is owned by Icelandic an interior designer Rut Karadottir (http://www.rutkara.is/en/the-book) and is something of a showcase for her natural grey tones and simple warm touches. We often use Airbnb in this way - to experience amazing and unique properties - and Rut’s house was a perfect base for the remainder of our travels around Western Iceland. The warmth of her interior was a perfect contrast to the brutality of Ion’s exterior.

After breakfast in a cafe in Borgarnes we drove up Route 54 to the Snaefellsness Peninsula. The road cuts straight across glacial plains between mountains of moraine and through fields of lava. If the road to Vic had been relatively quiet, on Route 54 we passed another car maybe every 20 minutes. As the Atlantic winds tore across the peninsula I realised that in spite of (or maybe because of) the lack of singular ‘must see’ attractions that this was my favourite part of the island. It felt isolated and remote, far from the coaches and Reykjavik and the airport. The ribbon of black tarmac just continued to sweep through brutally carved landscapes with the sea perpetually in view. We drove for long stretches without seeing any signs of civilisation other then the road we were travelling on. The small towns or villages we did see were different too - lower, hunkered down against the winds that hammer the peninsula. Wherever the road hugged the coastline you were reminded of exactly where you were - a lump of volcanic rock peeking up in the middle of the North Atlantic just a few degrees south of the Arctic Circle. Yes, you have to see the waterfalls and the plane wreck and Thingveller the same way you have to visit the tower at Pisa or the tower in Paris, but ultimately these things are already familiar even the first time you see them for real. You’ve seen them your whole life already in books, on TV and, latterly, on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. You already have expectations of them. Snaefellsness is just a whole lot of wilderness which, for most Western Europeans, is something completely new and a feeling which can’t easily be encapsulated in a photograph. I know, because I tried. It’s simply about being there, and it seeps into the primal part of your brain. Even writing this six weeks later I can recall it vividly. It’s a place that doesn’t leave you.

Black church at Búðir
Lava Flows

Lava fields at Snæfellsnes peninsula

Lamborzuki
Gales
Route 574, Iceland

Road around Snaefellsness

Snaefellsnes Peninsula
Snæfellsjökull National Park
Route F570

Comes with plenty of warnings along the lines of "We built a road but strongly advise you not to use it"

Orange Lighthouse at Grindavík

Our route took us eventually to Olafsvik. There’s nothing remarkable about the small coastal town, but still we stayed there for seven hours. Because our Lamborzuki broke. I glanced at the dash to check petrol as we drove into the town and saw the temperature gauge reading maximum. We parked up outside the sports hall and rang the company. They sent a mechanic over (he lived in the house opposite the sports hall - it’s a small place…) who confirmed the radiator hose was leaking. We were offered accommodation overnight but wanted to get back to our black wooden home - and so instead we went for a meal (lamb…) and waited. And waited.

Ólafsvík

Bustling metropolis of Ólafsvík

Fishing Boats

Harbour at Ólafsvík, Icleand

Ólafsvík, Iceland
Waiting

Surrounded by beautiful but basically pitch black scenery, I give you....Ólafsvík petrol station.

The town went to bed, the sky turned dark oh-so-slowly. And then eventually a new car arrived on the back of a truck. We drove home through the darkness. I could see on the satnav we were driving over fjords and through deep passes but the darkness cloaked everything. On the two hour drive home in the early hours of the morning we didn’t pass a single other motorist.

Day 5 - Snaefellsness Peninsula and Home

We had pretty much a full day left before our flight, so we went back to Olafsvik and resumed our meandering through the peninsula. The wind was stronger than the previous day and camper vans lay on their sides in roadside ditches. Spray from lakes was carried across the road in front of us and the little Suzuki shook. Just total nature.

Route 54

The unpaved gravel section of Route 54 cutting between Budir and Olafsvik

New, Improved Lamborsuki
Fin

Kirkjufell mountain near Grundarfjörður on Route 54

It’s this that is my overriding memory of Iceland. It’s the road stretching up from Vik in the South to Olafsvik in the North West that makes me want to go back. I want to go further into the North and East - right around the ring road - because next time we know what the true nature of Iceland is. It’s the vast open wilds away from everybody else. I know, there’s a road and a car and 3G and bloggers and lamb. It’s not a journey into the Himalayas or crossing the Andes. But it’s enough for me and it’s the furthest away from the relentless pace of life you can be on this continent. You don’t need vaccines, months of preparation, visas and satellite phones. It’s simply a two hour flight out of Manchester that takes you back 20,000 years.

A Short Note on the Photography

Before I posted the two posts on Iceland I spoke about downsizing my photography kit to just a Fuji X70. All the images here (and on the previous post) were taken with either the Fuji or my iPhone. Although I shot in RAW, most of the shots I've used are straight-from-camera jpegs via Lightroom. Using a fixed focal length gives some coherence to the story (the iPhone shares the same 28mm equivalent focal length of the Fuji X70) . I know for a fact that if I'd taken the DSLR I'd have come back with far less variety of images and we'd probably still be somewhere around the Golden Circle as I set up each shot meticulously. Maybe one of the reasons I enjoyed Iceland so much was the freedom from feeling any pressure going there as a photographer. For 5 days I was just another tourist with a compact camera and it rocked :)

In fact the only frustration came with the drone. Aerial shots are definitely the best way to capture the scale of Iceland - but the wind (endless, relentless wind) made flying it impossible most days. By all means take your drone, but be prepared to either leave it in its case most of the time or risk losing it.

Iceland Video

Everything I've already shown you, but with more movement and waving.

5 Day Road Trip around Iceland

Iceland Trip

Jay Mawson — Mon, 16 May 2016 18:26:23 +0000

Iceland Trip

Part 1

Very soon there will be a new class of tourism. You’ll be picked up by the self-driving Uber and driven to the airport where the self-piloting airplane will fly you somewhere that allows you to hire a car from 2016 and have the pleasure of actually driving yourself. That ‘somewhere’ will be Iceland. A ring of smooth black asphalt runs around the entire coastline feeding a network of gravel arteries that run deep into the varied wilderness. Driverless cars are a solution to the hours lost to endless gridlock in badly planned city centres. In Iceland you can drive for half an hour without passing another car. It doesn’t need Googlecars. You might be headed towards somewhere in particular, but when you get there you just want to keep on going. The journey itself is the the destination. At least in summer. In winter I’d imagine even the shortest journey is terrifying. Especially if the car is driving itself.

That should give you some idea of whether you’ll love it or hate it. But if you need more convincing then read on. Just remember that I’m not a travel blogger so it’s more a stream of consciousness and some photographs.

5 FACTS ABOUT ICELAND

I’ll happily admit that I thought I knew about Iceland. I knew it was fairly small and I could probably get round it in a day or two maximum. That it was permanently under a layer of ice and snow. That it was flat, rocky and barren. That it had shit coffee. I was right about the coffee.

1. Iceland is Europe’s second largest island

It’s 25% bigger than Ireland. So you can forget about getting round it in a long weekend. All that space and only 320,000 people living there. Definitely enough room for the 1m+ foreign visitors that come here annually. For the moment.

2. Iceland is warmer than it should be

Given it’s latitude, Iceland is actually relatively mild. That doesn’t mean it’s warm - even in summer it barely reaches 15 degrees - but the Atlantic currents keep its average temperature well above that of the Scandinavian countries.

3. It has a total prison population of 147

And most of those are in low security or open prisons. 15% of them are foreign prisoners anyway. To put it into context - there's 45 prisoners per 100,000 people. In the UK it’s 148 per 100,000 and in the US it’s 737. There was very little graffiti. There was no litter. We didn’t see any homeless. It just felt…calm. People seemed happy. And you’re 70% less likely to be murdered than in the UK. I have no idea what that means, but it definitely sounds like a good thing.

4. Only 1% of Iceland is covered by trees

You really notice that there are hardly any trees. By comparison the UK is 12% forested plus Zayn Malik. Most of mainland Europe is around 37% forest. But that doesn’t mean Iceland isn’t green - there’s lots and lots of grass. I’ve never been to the prairies but I bet they look a lot like Iceland does in places.

Route 1, Iceland

5. Iceland produces the most bands in the world per capita

And some of them are even good. I have no idea how you’d even begin to measure this, but it struck me that I could name more Icelandic bands than from probably any other European country. I mean the Swedes are still banging on about ABBA for fucks sake.

Day 1 - Reykjavik, Blue Lagoon and Ion Hotel

From what I’ve learned from bloggers it’s customary here to say how cool Reykjavik is and how amazing Blue Lagoon is. Reykjavik is possibly the least interesting capital city in Europe. On a ‘things to do’ scale it’s right up there with Wolverhampton. If you’re going to Iceland just for Reykjavik then I’d recommend you go to Stockholm instead. Or even Helsinki, which is saying something because I didn’t particularly find Helsinki that interesting either. Go to the church (Hallgrímskirkja) - a magnificently bleak piece of post war architecture that perfectly reflects the brutal natural landscape. Have the eggs benedict at Kex. Then leave.

Hallgrimskirkja, Reykjavik
Kex bar, Reykjavik

The Blue Lagoon is just genius marketing. It will almost definitely be on your ‘go to’ list if you’re visiting Iceland through the sheer weight of social media content. You might even have found yourself arranging a trip to Iceland just to go to the Blue Lagoon without really knowing why. Their marketing strategy really is that good. In reality, it’s like an episode of The Walking Dead set in a pool. Lots (and I mean LOTS) of disembodied tourists lurching aimlessly around the post-apocalyptic landscape in a pale fog waving GoPros, their faces appearing to fall off as mud masks melt. Yes it’s quite novel to get veruccas outside rather than inside, but basically it’s a milky pond full of people whose hygiene levels you know nothing about. Iceland is generally very expensive, but Blue Lagoon creates a whole other level of WTF when converting ISK to GBP. It took me three attempts in Google before I finally believed that yes, it really was about £120 for two people. And that was only a ‘Comfort’ package. There were two full levels of optional extortion above that. It seems Iceland’s unemployed bankers found a fun new way to screw the world.

Blue Lagoon, Iceland

From there we drove to Ion Hotel. I love a good hotel, and Iceland is woefully short of them so spending at least a few nights at Ion was a given. From Reykjavik we turned our rented Suzuki with 150,000km on the clock along a short cut onto a road with a friendly sign warning us that imminent death was highly likely if we carried on. So naturally we carried on. This is what holidays are for. The road (Route 435) basically followed a large menacing pipe for mile after mile across a flat moonscape as far as the eye could see. We hadn’t passed a single other car, house or person on the 30km route. The only sign of any human existence at all was the pipe. Towards the end of the road - when we were beginning to quietly beginning to relax and congratulate ourselves on successfully negotiating what was basically a very straight road with a very well maintained surface - the mountains started to loom out of the fog. Big, grey and covered in snow. They were much closer to us than the hotel meaning that we'd have to go over them. The words from the sign were burned in my mind. To add to the fog it was getting dark. The road started to climb. Steeply. Ice and snow encroached across the perfect tarmac. Walls of ice at each side and a ceiling of thick clouds. It started snowing. New roadsigns indicated vertical ascents with equally vertical sheer drops to each side. We inched up the pass feeling tiny in the presence of so much big. As we reached the top Iceland once again opened out below us on a vast scale. We pulled over, took some photos then dropped down the final 2km to Ion.

Route 435, Iceland

The next morning we noticed the sign at the end of the road had been removed. It was 1st May and apparently the road was only dangerous until 30th April. Not knowing this the day before had made it the best non-event ever. We'd felt like Scott of the Antarctic but were probably about as close to any real peril as Lenny of the Premier Inn.

Ion had a certain charm. It looks like the best prison in the world. If you go, make sure you have the cauliflower starter. It is to carnivores what bacon sandwiches are to vegetarians.

Ion Hotel, Iceland
Bedroom, Ion Hotel
Spa, Ion Hotel
Spa, Ion Hotel
Spa, Ion Hotel
Northern Lights Bar, Ion Hotel

Day 2 - The Golden Circle

The Golden Circle is basically how the Icelandic keep most of the tourists from cluttering up the rest of Iceland. Four or five natural attractions all handily accessible from a tarmac loop that takes roughly a day to get round with its own Trip Advisor page. Think the M25 but instead of a Welcome Break every 25 miles you get a geyser and a waterfall. The end result is similar though - big car parks full of tourist coaches getting off for a wee and a photograph. Lots and lots of people buzzing up and down well defined pathways into ‘nature’. Not knowing any better at this point, the Golden Circle was nice enough but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was on the Small World ride at DisneyIceland. A taster menu of geological phenomenon that appear elsewhere on the Island on a much grander scale but with the trade off of being less accessible. Iceland lite. Still - we took a lot of photos of waterfalls and geysers and lakes. Everybody took a lot of photographs. People stood in long lines taking photographs. I took some photographs of people taking photographs because to be honest, it was more real than a geyser with a rope around it and lots of people creeping into the frame. Trying to make each attraction on the Golden Circle look ‘remote’ is really hard work given the fact that half the population of Florida is stood just out of shot on a layover to Europe. If you’re wanting to shoot Iceland properly you need to be there early. Or, in summer, very late after the coaches have gone as sunset is after midnight and the golden hour is four times as long as anywhere else.

Thingvellir National Park, Iceland
Splendid isolation
Unspoiled natural beauty. And a WC.

Einstok Icelandic Beer
Geysir, Iceland
Gullfoss
Gullfoss
Icelandic horses
Golden Circle (Route 35)
Secret Lagoon, Iceland
Kerid crater
Route 35, Iceland
Sja nana church on Ulfljotsvatn

One highlight of the Golden Circle is the Secret Lagoon - it dispenses with the gloss of the Blue Lagoon and gives a much more relaxing hot spring experience for a quarter of the price. It had locals in it when we went - in fact the locals have been using the spot since the early 1900's. I think the most local person we met in the Blue Lagoon was from Alabama. It's probably secret because they don't have wifi and it's resolutely unphotogenic. Nobody wants to waste their time at somewhere they can't share.

I’ll conclude the trip in my next post. If you’ve got this far you deserve a rest. And I can drive more traffic with two posts about essentially the same event. I’ll explain why Iceland is on of my favourite places on the planet and why I feel homesick for a place I’ve only spent 5 days in. To do that we need to leave Reykjavik, The Blue Lagoon and The Golden Circle in the rear view mirror.

On Travel

Jay Mawson — Mon, 09 May 2016 18:23:48 +0000

On Travel

Dragging your camera around Europe

I can’t speak with absolute certainty, but I’m fairly sure that when your dentist takes her annual vacation she doesn’t pack her drill. That your favourite barista leaves their Gaggia behind. The Uber driver parks his Avensis at the airport. I can’t think of many other professions where leisure travel involves you choosing to take along your entire arsenal of work tools.

Photography is as much observation as it is light and composition, and the chance to observe and record unfamiliar horizons, cultures and architecture always outweighed sacrificing my entire hand luggage allowance to camera bodies, lenses, chargers and laptops. Memory cards, flashes, adaptors, filters. “Any electrical items in your hand luggage sir?” “Yeah, I’m a mobile fucking Currys”. I pity the busman queueing behind me at the security check. “Any electrical items in your hand luggage sir?” “No, just this bus”.

To lump together everything shot overseas into ‘travel photography’ in the first place is to overly simplify. Most photographers just take a break from their commercial work and kick back into travel mode - simple snapshots but with too many pixels - but lots also make a living from travelling - McCurry will single out the faces, Parr will look to the tourists themselves, Salgado will change your world, Adams chased light across landscapes and bloggers…blog. For most of us though it’s a holiday in the sense that there’s no client and therefore no pressure. Right? Wrong. There’s a new client. Everybody you ever met. Everybody-in-the-sodding-world. Instagram.

You’re a photographer, so chances are you have social media accounts. As much as you’d love your feeds to be simple personal accounts of artisan coffees carefully framed to appear like they’ve not been carefully framed, and behind-the-scenes shots of unfathomable lighting setting ups and huge crews, they’re probably not. Your streams are a part of your shop window and you’re achingly conscious of this even when you pretend not to be. Shit holiday photos are not an option. Going overseas is too big an opportunity to simply not shoot, but thanks to the wonders of geotagging you’re entering a worldwide photography competition every time you point your camera at a tagged location. And everywhere is tagged. Usually more than once. So you’re not even sure if it’s the Eiffel Tower at the top of the list, or the third one down 5,000 miles away that some fuckwit tagged from their dorm room in Connecticut.

Somebody taking a selfie and probably hashtagging a #sunset on a #vespa in #sicily

So now you’re measuring yourself against the whole world. Think about it. Somebody will have been wherever you’re standing when the light was perfect. Somebody will have been stood there when lightning struck or Elvis happened to pass by holding hands with the Pope. Somebody was stood there before the eternal scaffolding went up. Somebody was there with better photoshop skills than you making the lines in the locals’ faces even deeper. Somebody actually lives where you’re stood and can take a different image every day of the year. And probably has. “The Drop Coffee 365 Project”. You? Well, you’re just there for 15 minutes before your partner moves you on to the next culturally significant boutique fromagerie that somebody cooler than you blogged from. It’s not a lonely planet. Everywhere is mapped out according to bloggers. There’s a perpetual circle of them spanning Europe from Iceland through Stockholm to Santorini, back across to Milan, Como, dipping down to Marrakech, up to Marbella. I know Santorini intimately without ever having been there. I know which hotels to book in every European capital without referring to Mr&Mrs Smith. I know because the same bloody lobbies are perpetually showing up on my feed. Nothing is waiting to be discovered because somebody discovered it for you and helpfully made sure you’ve already seen it from every angle. The Blue Lagoon provides free Wifi so you can check in and post to Instagram. There’s a blogger lane guaranteeing you jump the 30 minute queue to stop you blogging about the 30 minute queue (I made this up, but only because they probably haven’t thought of it yet).

Everybody finding that unique angle at the same time

It’s nothing new and it is something I’ve been casually thinking about for a while. So when we booked our last trip away to Iceland, I made a change. To travel to the most incredibly photogenic landscape imaginable I decided to leave the DSLR at home and just take a point and shoot. I looked at mirrorless systems, got seduced by the various retro-modern Fuji and Olympus offerings, turned my nose up at Panasonic and Samsung (they make phones and TVs) toyed with investing in the latest Sony Alpha (okay, so they make phones and TVs too) then took a step back - mirrorless interchangeable meant that before long I’d build up a whole new kitbag of lenses, bodies and accessories and be back to hauling another full system around with me. So I narrowed it down to the Fuji X100t or the new Fuji X70. Fixed prime lenses. All day battery life. Pocketable. Small RAWs and decent jpegs. Jpegs that you can transfer easily and painlessly to your phone and edit from the comfort of the Yale campus Eiffel Tower. Back to basics. I bought the X70 and reclaimed my onboard flight allowance. My pre-holiday packing checklist halved in size. I sailed through security. I took more varied photos than I ever do with the DSLR. And the images were different - looser, more personal. Having one focal length makes you think about what you’re shooting more but also lends a coherence to the images. And because they’re quicker to download and sift through* I actually bothered to make an edit - so many of my holidays are sat untouched in folders because the thought of going through 100 near-identical frames of some vaguely photogenic mountain became a chore. The video on the X70 sucks, but then I had a GoPro and a drone with me for video. I’m not totally letting go. If I can sacrifice the DSLR and not miss it in Iceland, I’m pretty sure I can do it anywhere.

A Fuji X70, a tea and a bun shot with a Panasonic flat screen TV

So, for the time being at least, the DSLR will only fly when I’m shooting for clients overseas. No compact, no mirrorless system (with the possible exception of the Sony) will ever give you the quality and options that a great SLR with a judicious lens selection will. Unless it’s for a social media campaign. But then they’ll probably just hire a blogger anyway.

Over the next blogs I’ll post my last few getaways. Clear down those gigabytes of mountains (or mountains of gigabytes). Give me some memories to look back on. I’ll start with Iceland and the Fuji. By the time I’ve finished, I’ll probably have something from Santorini.

*In theory…but not quite in practise. At least not in Lightroom which seems to have a major case of the crawls with Fuji files.

Lady Diamond in the Sky - Manchester Fashion Photography

Jay Mawson — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 12:21:13 +0000

Lady Diamond in the Sky

70s Editorial Test

There are a few things I really really need to do...

Update my site...a years worth of great images to select from since I last had chance
Blog more...editorials languishing on my hard drive and thoughts burning my brain
Step away from the 70s...

But in the meantime - here's a seventies flecked fashion editorial from a few months back

Photography & Styling - Jay Mawson
Hair & Makeup - Lauren Alice Phelan
Model - Ksenija @ Industry

Glam Slam - 70s Fashion Editorial

Jay Mawson — Fri, 09 Jan 2015 13:43:39 +0000

Glam Slam

Fashion Editorial

I'm not going to compare fashion editorials to buses. That's too obvious. But here's another one shot in the last days of 2014 in Manchester's Northern Quarter...

Great team, chilled shoot. Here's the photographs...

Photography Jay Mawson
Styling Natalie Armin
Hair & Makeup Martin McClean
Model Lily @ J'Adore

Manchester Fashion Editorial - Sports Luxe

Jay Mawson — Tue, 06 Jan 2015 12:48:58 +0000

Sports Luxe

The last few months of 2014 were fantastically busy - lots of new clients and great new work being built with existing clients. All of which meant little time for personal work and no time to blog. I guess you can't have everything...

I'd been wanting to do a sports based fashion shoot for a while mixing high street with high end, so below is a fashion editorial shot at Loft Studio in Manchester towards the very end of the year.

Photography & Styling Jay Mawson
Makeup Paula Maxwell
Hair Vera Mai Ha
Model Ksenija @ Industry

Manchester Beauty Editorial

Jay Mawson — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 19:04:38 +0000

Beauty Editorial

Athena Style

In my mind there's two types of beauty photographs. The first type is ubiquitous - when they're well done and perfectly retouched they look great - but you struggle to remember them. They all look the same, all blend into each other. Ultimately, they're the same shot taken over and over. The second type are basically any beauty shot you can actually remember. Beauty doesn't mean you can't have emotion and impact.

So when I was approached with the concept of creating images based on eighties Athena posters (anyone under 30 might need to Google them...) it sounded interesting...I can remember Athena posters after 30 years...so chances are the photographs would be...interesting.

There were taken on a characteristically wet Manchester afternoon sometime last week...

Photography - Jay Mawson

Hair & Makeup - Paula Maxwell

Model - Ksenija Selivanova

Male Underwear Shoot

Jay Mawson — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 18:05:16 +0000

British Boxers

Underwear Shoot

Commercial Photography in Manchester

A few weeks ago I had probably the busiest period of photography since I picked up a camera. Rattling up and down the M6 between London and Manchester I think I shot somewhere in the region of a dozen commercial shoots in just over a fortnight. This is the job that started the first week - working in Manchester with a great team for a proudly British brand, British Boxers (you can read their story here). A beautiful lifestyle shoot showing their new range of male stretch trunks and Double Dapper nightwear on the envy-inducing physique of Boss Model's Gavin Fawcett. Art direction came from the charming Josh Taylor, the lovely Hester Brodie made sure the garments looked perfect and grooming was expertly taken care of by Ms Paula Maxwell.

Then - shoot wrapped - it was early to bed before the red eye to London. The next day's shoot was something quite quite different - but I'll come to that one when it's released...

The United States of Manchester - Fashion Editorial

Jay Mawson — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 09:31:14 +0000

United States of Manchester

Fashion Editorial

Once in a blue moon I get to post my photography before anybody else. There's lots of reasons why this never usually happens. For commercial work it goes without saying that you wait for the images to be released, but for personal work it just slips out there. During the shoot the team will Instagram behind-the-scenes shots, previews or 'sneak peeks' get trailered onto Twitter and blogs, models want to use the images in their books for a 'last minute casting' and before you know it the shoot is old news, fragmented parts of the whole drifting around cyberspace in a digital fashion jigsaw.

So this time I'm going to post this first, in it's entirety, as it was meant to be seen. A Friday indulgence.

It's a compliment to Manchester's diverse and vibrant businesses that I was able to shoot this all within 5 minutes walk of my flat. A little corner of the USA in M1. And for that, thanks are due to Gorilla (Manchester's best brunches bar none), Black Dog Bowl (bowling dragged into the 21st Century via twisted 1960s Americana), Bauer Millett (Corvettes, Camaros, Rollers & Alfas? Like a fantasy garage) and Harry Hall Cycles (for the beautiful mint green frame with white wall tyres...).

You might want to pop a pair of shades on...

Photography - Jay Mawson

Styling - Kerry Saxon

Hair & Makeup - Emily Clarkson

Model - Ksenija Selivanova @ Industry

Bridal Editorial in Manchester

Jay Mawson — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 18:15:09 +0000

Bridal Editorial

I just don't get enough time to do proper full blown bells-and-whistles tests. The exciting ones - full team of people, cool location & great styling. It's a good thing. As much as testing should always remain something every photographer should be doing, if it's the only thing you're doing you start to worry. Come to think of it, there's generally a lot of worry involved in being a freelancer.

Anyway. We were lucky enough to have access to Artisan for a morning to shoot this - and had three hours to shoot which made it a race against time to get wrapped before they opened. Nothing like a bit of pressure to keep you moving.

The beautiful bridal gowns that Ksenija wears were from Jean Jackson Couture - Rebecka and Flic were a total pleasure to work with from planning through to arranging the venue and styling the gowns on the day. The main man himself - Reuben Wood - from Reuben Wood Hair & Beauty Salon created the fantastic hair with assist from Steve, and Karl Collins provided photographic, moral and emotional support. The beautiful bridal makeup was from Caroline Shuttleworth.

I didn't want to shoot a standard bridal shoot - not on my day off and not when I had the opportunity to get creative on a test - I wanted something to emphasise how strong, beautiful and sexy bridal wear actually is.

This is a picture post - so enough with the preamble.

A Guide to Social Media Credits for Photographs

Jay Mawson — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 18:19:18 +0000

Tag Me

Image credits on Social Media

Adding effective image credits to photographs on social media

It's 22˚C outside. Sticky city hot. But no sun because this is, after all, Manchester. I have a coffee (always), a new table to work at and 30 minutes downtime to put some thoughts down.

As my blog posts often do, this relates to test shoots and is less relevant for commercial work. It's about the currency of credit rather than that of Her Majesty.

Basically, we all test for three main reasons. Creative itches, speculative pitches and maintaining social visibility. The first is easily satisfied. The latter is easily frustrated. So here's a handy cut-out-and-keep* guide to how to do the small things that keep everybody happy and feeling warm inside. Because believe me - nothing creates quietly festering resentment in somebody like giving a day to creating something beautiful and then being socially erased from the end result. Rarely will the person actually say anything incase they come across as a diva. They'll just remember it next time you ask them.

It's largely just education - people aren't maliciously omitting credits. It's equal parts a product of the speed of social media and people underestimating its power. Post it directly from your phone, wait for a few likes, move on. Rinse & repeat.

My process for a test generally goes something like this…

Find a free weekend ➝ Choose a concept ➝ Arrange a like-minded team ➝ Shoot ➝ Retouch ➝ Think about submission ➝ Decide against submission ➝ Distribute images to the team…

Revolutionary, I know.

When the images are distributed that's it - they're out there into the wild. No longer under anybody's control. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Pinterest. Tumblr. Behance. Flickr. Google+. LinkedIn. Okay, so maybe not the last two.

Why Credit The Team?

Why not? Basically, social media is driven by links, nosiness and followers. Followers are legitimate currency. Quality links are, at the very least, SEO currency. Image credits are as close to bona fide real 'credit' in social media terms. Retweets, repins, shares...a great image will spread organically. An amazing image will spread like wildfire. You never know who will end up seeing your photograph, your styling, your makeup, your face. Which brand. Which art director. Which creative agency.

As the owner of the images - it's up to us to educate on why full and proper credits make sense. Nobody else is going to do it. The number of people that will post your images is quite significant - and each one of them that doesn't credit the team is letting down the whole team. Even for a 'small' test the people that might post the images to (multiple) social networks include...

The Photographer
The Stylist
The Makeup artist and...
...their agent
The Hair stylist and...
...their salon
The Model
The Model's agency
Any of the brands that the stylist might have pulled from, and
...their PR company.

On larger tests you can add in art directors and assistants to each of the above...that's a lot of potential social media exposure that can be absolutely worthless if nobody bothers to credit.

There's nothing worse than an orphan image (there probably is - like famine and stuff - but lets pretend). How many times have you seen comments like "Amazing Hun - who shot it?" or "Love the makeup - who did it?" or "Who's the model?". It becomes anonymous - public domain - far more quickly if there are no credits at the source, never mind a dozen reblogs down the line. That's the key. At source. Here's why...

Facebook

Image credits on Facebook

Yes, Facebook has had its day. We've been saying that since 2010. But I bet 99% of people reading this still have a profile or a page. The odd few will be busy being an 'odd few' and making a personal statement to sound cool at dinner parties by 'not being on Facebook' but most people in the industry will at least maintain some kind of business page.

The easiest way to attribute is to tag the people in the image. That way Facebook automatically puts a "With X, Y & Z" note into the comment. Doesn't tell you what people did, but it does at least add in some credit.

But the best way is to tag them in the image and also give proper written credits in the comment...

Photographer: Jay Mawson http://www.jaymawson.co.uk
Stylist: Natalie Armin http://www.nataliearmin.com
Hair & Makeup: Paula Maxwell http://www.paulamaxwell-makeup.com
Model: Ksenija @ Industry People http://www.industrypeople.co.uk
Etc...

Then copy & paste it into each image you upload. Yes, it takes a couple of minutes to check people's links etc, but it takes a lot less time than was spent retouching, pulling garments, organising props, designing makeup looks and going to the gym to keep in shape.

Facebook will automatically create a hyperlink from any full URL, so you don't have to worry about that. Links from Facebook are ignored by Google rankings (apparently) so it's useless in SEO terms but it at least takes any prospective clients or interested parties to the right place. To your shop window.

The order people are credited in is fairly standard as above, although I always struggle with which order 'hair' and 'makeup' should go in when there's two people involved. Sometimes the stylist will go at the top of the list, but that's usually reserved for superstar stylists or superstar egos. The order frankly is the least important thing if you're actually making the effort to credit in the first place.

By having these details alongside the image then whenever anybody shares that image to their page all the details are shared along with it. If you add them in a comment below, then they stay on your page and everybody loses out on any additional interest that the share might generate.

And - best of all - everybody feel appreciated. Good vibes. Karma. Shalom.

Instagram

Instagram Tags

Again - most people in creative industries run some form of Instagram. Even if they never post to it. Instagram differs significantly from Facebook for the moment in that images are not shared - they're just enjoyed. Nice and simple.

There's two subtly different ways to keep everybody visible:

The first way is to follow everybody involved so that you can easily tag them in the upload. People like the image, click to see who was involved and then go and check out their pages too. By just posting the image with no other people tagged is saying "hey, I created this all by myself with nobody else of importance present". Doing it this way also adds the image to the 'Photos of 'X' tab on people's profiles, which is nice.

The second way is to '@' everybody involved in the 'write a caption' field before you post. This actually seems to drive more people to the other people's Instagram stream than tagging them in the photo (it's more visible when people scroll - they don't have to touch the little icon to 'reveal' who's involved) but it doesn't add the image to the 'Photos of 'X' profile tab.

Either way works, and again, warm feelings and world peace ensues. And breath.

Twitter

Image credits on Twitter

Twitter used to be a bitch. Fitting everybody in 140 characters is excusably impossible so. But now Twitter lets you tag up to 10 people in an image. Problem solved. Excuse removed. Next...

Pinterest & Tumblr

The whole point of Pinterest is to pin - and share - images. And Tumblr images get reblogged hundreds of times. So why wouldn't you put full credits? Again, it takes a little bit longer than just posting the image itself - but it's worth it. And you have to do it on upload - because as soon as it's repinned or reblogged then that's it - game over. Everybody who repins or reblogs from that person does so without any attribution. And if they have significantly more subscribers than you then off the image goes into the ether with a hundred wasted opportunities.

I've covered the main social media sharing sites. The rest are largely more industry based (Behance, Flickr, LinkedIn) and so users are usually better informed in etiquette. But it's broadly the same. Take a moment to credit, and make sure you credit fully.

I said at the beginning this relates to tests. Most professionally run magazines will run full credits against an editorial. Most commercial work would look ridiculous with a full rosta of credits against it...although again, there's no harm in putting the credits on if you post your commercial work to social media.

There are other benefits - with the rate at which images are stripped from social media for commercial usage it makes it easier for the more scrupulous to find out the image's origin and formally request usage rights. It helps to mitigate against the implications of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

And the exception? When you have a bad day at the office. Or when somebody in the team does. The internet remembers. Everybody is haunted by a fully credited image they dislike that pops up via search engines at the merest hint of your name. Usually near the top. Luckily, most social media allows for you to untag yourself, or control what appears on your timeline. But then there's the whole other dilemma of offence by pretending a shoot you took part in simply doesn't exist. The social equivalent of closing your eyes, sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting 'lalalalalala'...

So next time I distribute the final images from a test, they'll be accompanied not only by the usual 'No filters please' statement, but also a short summary of this post. Hopefully it'll make a little bit of difference and take back a modicum of control of our work in the digital realm. Everybody wins.

* Please don't cut your screen.

Editorial Fashion Photography - Manchester

Jay Mawson — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 19:24:28 +0000

Random Filters

Cokin

Recently I've been more and more seduced by everything late 70s/early 80s. Beautiful warm colours, soft edges...I don't know, blame Instagram.

It's something I don't think you can produce in post. Nothing authentic anyway. But can you capture it with a digital camera? Well, nothing to stop you trying.

Filters (the real ones, not the Instagram variety) are kind of out of favour at the moment. Everything has to be sharp. Clean. Very...digital. Which means that you can pick them up for next to nothing in most second hand camera stores. Or from pretty much anybody who owned a camera more than 10 years ago.

Same pile of filters...

So, armed with a pile of random filters - tobacco grads, star filters, prismatic filters, fog filters - and not an Amaro, Sierra, Toaster or Hefe in sight - I set about a test with the beautiful Caroline B from Boss and the ever amazing Paula Maxwell from, well, Manchester.

Prismatic

The test was an editorial beauty shoot. Self publish, Be Happy :)

Photography & Styling - Jay Mawson
Hair & Makeup - Paula Maxwell
Model - Caroline B @ Boss Model Management

Boda Skins

Jay Mawson — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 15:22:16 +0000

Boda Skins

Legends in Leather

This month I was delighted to work again with luxury leather label Boda Skins and see how much the brand had grown and matured over a short space of time. Their classic takes on a wardrobe staple are designed in Manchester and traditionally crafted in the hills of Turkey , so it was fitting that we shot the campaign images under Manchester's characteristically grey light...

We worked with two great Manchester models, Charley Rose at Nemesis and Kattreya at Next plus the charming US men's fashion blogger & creative director Adam Gallagher. Hair and makeup was taken care of by the fabulous Paula Maxwell. Here's a small selection of photographs from the day...

Model Agency Tests

Jay Mawson — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 19:16:37 +0000

Agency Testing

Model agency tests in Manchester

There's two types of tests. The one where a model turns up hoping to hell that the photographer/MUA/stylist has some clue and doesn't completely waste their day (or days) with some half-baked 'concept' shoot, and the ones where they turn up with cash in their hands in return for some images that will freshen up their agency page. I haven't had time for the former this year - but love doing the latter.

Yesterday, Colours Agency in Glasgow sent down three not-so-wee laddies and a wee lassie to refresh their books. Manchester - as usual - gave us various shades of grey. These are some of my favourites from the day...big thanks to the models for making it painless, and especially to Jade as it was her first proper test & she did great.

Models: Jak, Jason, Jordan & Jade at Colours

Then, because it had been a fairly quiet day, we took a few frames of one of Colour's other models...more to come of these when I get chance...

Ksenija Selivanova by Jay Mawson

On Desperation

Jay Mawson — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 20:32:11 +0000

On Desperation

The ethics of test shoots.

If you read any previous posts you already know my thoughts on providing work to commercial entities for free, and on submissions. I came across a beautiful example this week of how both these areas can collide in a car crash of exploitation.

K found out this week that a test shoot she had recently given her time to had been used commercially. Did she find out from the photographer? No. From Facebook. Her image used on a front cover. Cool right? No. Totally uncool. Epically uncool. The shoot had been given to the magazine 'because they liked it' and presumably because the photographer Tracey Gibbs was so flattered by this that any self worth went right out of the window. Totally understandable….

The magazine is Cheshire Resident. It's billed as 'The Most Luxurious Magazine for Cheshire' and published by Archant. Archant is one of the biggest media companies in the UK. Their last annual accounts show a turnover in excess of £130m. Profits were reported at £6.3m. This is not quite a registered charity…

Archant publish - amongst other titles - Cheshire Life and Lancashire Life. Looking at the press pack for Cheshire Life the list price for a DPS advertisement is just over £4k. A single page advertisement £2,260. It's odd then that the price they appear to value the cover at is £0. You'd think that would be the most important page, as without a strong cover image sales would be limited. But no - that is the exact price that the cover image, the time, the experience, the effort - is valued at.

I've worked for enough commercial magazines to understand that photographers get paid. Models get paid. Makeup artists get paid. Of the 50+ covers I've had, absolutely none were donated for free. Yet here, everybody's time and effort has been valued by the photographer at precisely fuck all in order that they get themselves a cover image. You can't really blame Archant - they're getting their photography for free simply by asking. Although they do risk damage to sales of one of their other titles - Professional Photographer - because hey, there won't be any left to buy it. Their interim statement states "Profits Rise Despite Falling Revenue". It doesn't take a genius to work out that if they're not having to pay for photography but still taking advertising revenue then profits will indeed rise. If I stopped paying models for commercial work then my profits will also rise. And when my clients stop paying me for working because Tracey is happy to give them images for free, then their profits will rise too.

I love to have a nosy through the T&C's of media companies. I found this in Archant's…

"By submitting any material to Archant, You automatically grant Archant the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, edit, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such material (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed for the full term of any rights that may exist in such content. You further agree that by submitting any material to Us, You also waive all Your moral rights in such materials"

I'm guessing this is the clause that allows the image to already be used on the front page of Archant's group website. The *really* commercial one. The one where the investors and shareholders go.

Most 'local' or freemium magazines - the ones without the huge resources of Archant - will at least put some money towards production of their editorial be it via a location, or simply organisation of the team. And the end result is always explicit from the outset - that the team is working unpaid for a commercial entity. That's fine. I get that. Everybody can make their own choice in that scenario. When the beneficiary is putting at least some resource in, it often gives photographers and models the opportunity to create something they normally don't have the time, resource or contacts to create. It's a business transaction that all parties are aware of. But when it's simply a test shoot one minute and then on a commercial magazine cover the next, then boundaries blur and people understandably get bitter. Especially when the story keeps changing. One minute Cheshire Resident is a freemium magazine only (i.e. freely distributed with no cover price), the next it emerges that yes, there is a cover price of £5 but only a few will be sold. Ah. So it's only a little bit commercial. The cover price is actually an irrelevance - magazines such as this exist on advertising revenue, not cover revenue. That's why magazines such as Shortlist are some of the most profitable in the UK despite being given away for free.

There's no legal crime here. The photographer owns the images and can give them to whomever she wants on whatever terms she sees as reasonable. So if Tracey views the work as worthless, then it's understandable that nobody else will place any value on it either. Agency standard practise is that models are provided for test shoots as long as there's no commercial usage - but that's down to each individual agency's policy. Tear sheets are good. Paid ones are better. And ones where the team are given the simple respect of being made fully aware of what the end usage is going to be are best of all. The image itself is actually quite beautiful - it certainly stands out amongst the rest of the shots from the day - but then again, it remains a beautiful image regardless of whether it has 'Chesire Resident Magazine' across the top.

You can find the mag's Facebook page here. If you're lucky, it'll appear through your door for free. Or if you're not a Cheshire Resident, you can pay a fiver for it here.

And in a neat circle of events, here's a cover for another of Archant's titles I spotted this week in a BP station. From a commercial shoot I did which included rights to use the image commercially. Granted, there's no photographer attribution in the masthead, but that's another post…