It’s New Year’s Eve. And instead of attending a party with friends I am, like so many of you, sat at home. And in my case, writing my first blog entry in nearly two years (the last one was in April 2019, for crying out loud).

The studio is cold and quiet, and will stay that way until the current Tier 4 restrictions get lifted. Bookings this year have been scant — that’s okay, I’ve had other ways to keep busy and keep the lights on — and the time and energy needed to do more creative and conceptual work have been scanter still.

And as we celebrate this arbitrary line in the sand, this throwing-in-the-bin of the year just gone, coupled with unreasonable hope for what begins tomorrow, I don’t know when I’m going to be picking up a camera again, at least not professionally.

Maybe when I do it’ll be more headshots, Maybe it’ll be something more “arty” (whatever that means). Maybe, maybe, maybe…

Here’s hoping your 2021 is better than your 2020 was, whatever that means.

I'm now into my 39th trip around the sun. A bit balder, a bit greyer at the temples and in the beard (I'm starting to look as though I've eaten a badger and left the tail hanging out). A bit wiser? Maybe. One thing that I've definitely noticed over the last couple of years is that I'm less willing to tolerate having my time wasted (though I’m still perfectly happy to waste it myself).

At the start of the year I was embarking on a new endeavour: an MA in Photography with Falmouth University. I thought that it would help me find direction that I felt I’d lost, and maybe give me some of the drive to finish things that I’ve often struggled with.

Truth was, though, that the course wasn’t a good fit, and just last week I withdrew as a student. For one thing, it didn’t fit my learning style. I last studied for a postgraduate qualification back in 2002-3, and that was a very intensive course — one week of 9-5 studying, a week off for self-directed work, then another week of studying. This was a much more relaxed course and, being distance learning, I felt really disconnected from it.

I’m not the person that I was twenty years ago, and having studied photography on my own time and dime so much over the last ten years I figured that this whole distance learning approach would work for me. Turns out that I still need that intensity, taking in a lot in a short space of time, in order to be able to learn and want to learn more.

So, I’m the shortest-term MA dropout in the history of ever, possibly. I’m happy enough with that.

So what's next? April's already here, kids, there's no time to wait around.

In short, personal work, personal work, personal work. I've got notebooks full of the stuff that needs to get realised. Some of it is vastly different from what I've attempted before, some of it is projects that need to be finished lest they languish forever on a hard-drive somewhere.

All of that in between the regular work: headshots, fashion portraits, and music promo.

It's 2019, I'm Graham, and I still have no idea where the hell I'm going. Welcome to the ride.

It's 2019. And lo, everyone was thankful that the mess of 2018 was over and done with^*.

I didn't make any resolutions this year. After nigh on 38 years, there's not many New Year's resolutions that I can think of that have either stood the test of time or been particularly helpful. Most of the good stuff we do in our lives is about the forming of habits and the following-through on the promises-to-self that we make in the wee hours. So it goes.

But it's a New Year, so it's a time to start thinking about where I've been^** and where I want to go in the next 12 months.

Where I've been

I didn't create much in 2018. And that's not to say I didn't shoot much. I shot quite a lot, and although it wasn't as prolific a year as some have been, I'm satisfied enough with it from a volume-of-work-done point of view. Actors' headshots shoots have become more common, and with a bit of marketing I can see the chance for some real growth there.

But I didn't really push the boat out, creatively. I didn't do any of the crazy big production shoots that I've done in years past. I didn't do much in the way of work on my current projects — although I shot quite a lot of frames for subject|object, I didn't do anything for Celtic Gods. I didn't start any new projects and, crucially, I didn't finish any of the old ones, either, despite my intentions at the outset of the year.

Where I'm going

I've got a number of new challenges and Things To Keep Me Occupied this year. A lot of them aren't for the pages of this blog, really, so I'll spare you those. Photographically speaking, however, here are some Things:

Refurbish and relaunch the studio

Okay, technically not just photography-related, but whatever. I've had my studio space for about two years now. In that time I've shot quite a bit of work in it, but I've never been really happy with it. It's cold, because it's in an old mill. It's dark because it has no windows. It's untidy because it's mine. Etcetera. Hitherto, it's not been the most welcoming place for clients, and I've often found myself apologising for it.

So, new year, new space. Except I'm not going to move — partly because I don't want to spend the extra money on rent and partly because right now I've got all the space I really need (if not all that I'd really want, but see point 1). Instead, I'm refurbishing the space that I have: new floor (laminate wood instead of painted concrete), new furniture (at the very least a couch upon which clients can chill rather than the old office chairs I've been using for the last while), new lights (some reasonable IKEA wall lights rather than the horrible fluorescent overheads which are currently in use).

I'm part way through the project right now; the floor is down at least, and I've put shelving in to house all my equipment so that it takes up less floor space. Already it feels new and exciting, and I like being in it more than I did.

Ideally I'd like it to be more than just a photo studio space. I already use it for musical jams with a group of friends. I hope I'll use it for more things still — there being other forms of visual art besides photography.

Shoot more conceptual stuff

This last year I've shot a lot of portraits. I like shooting portraits; it's my comfort zone. And like all comfort zones, sooner or later, it can get boring.

Once again I find myself with a notebook full of ideas for more concept-driven images with wildly different visual aesthetics. I'm finding myself inspired by Alexia Sinclair, Tim Walker, Gregory Crewdson, John Keatley and others. And I'm in a position where I need shoot the images in my head or get off the proverbial pot.

And here's the thing, as ever: the only thing that's holding me back is me, and how much energy I can bring to the creative process.

FINISH STUFF

I'm terrible at finishing stuff. Absolutely, demonstrably awful. This year, I'm going to finally finish subject|object, and at least get the ball rolling on an exhibition for it.

I've got more Celtic Gods shoots in my notebook than I can shake a stick at, and yet I've done nothing with that project for nearly two years now — and the stuff I shot two years ago once again languishes unfinished.

For subject|object I simply need to go somewhere other than Manchester for a few days and shoot there, because it'd difficult to get ethnic diversity I want in this town, believe it or not. London is a much likelier place to find the folk I want to work with for this last phase. They say the last 10% of the work costs 90% of the efford, and that's definitely what I'm feeling right now.

TL; DR

2019 has to be the year of shooting or getting off the pot for me.

End.

^* Except for those people who see January first as an arbitrary boundary, and believe that all of existence is in fact just one long rolling shitshow from one day to the next. To each their own.

^**Okay, technically this should have been done at the end of 2018. It's a few weeks' difference; I'll live.

Okay, let’s get this out of the way: Yes, it’s November. Yes, it’s not actually Christmas yet. And if you get me started on the fact that the Manchester Christmas Markets are already being built then you’ll have to hand me a beer and let me rant for a few hours.

Doesn't mean I’m above marketing my services as a Christmas present, however. So, on to the meat of the message!

Fifteen-minute Portraits are back for a second year!

Last year I started a Fifteen-minute Portrait service, which was a roaring success. The basic premise (which I shamelessly nicked from Jeremy Cowart), is this:

Here's how it works: the sitter comes to my studio in Manchester, we have fifteen minutes to shoot and chat. We pick a few favourite frames together, then we're done. The selection of the final portrait is mine, and because I'm limiting the amount of retouching I'm doing, the sitter should have their image within 24 hours.

This year, I’m not just offering the option to book a session with me. I’m also offering gift vouchers. Want to buy your loved one something quirky and different? Buy them a Fifteen-minute Portrait voucher.

The vouchers are valid for up to a year, so let’s make something cool together!

I've shot quite a few actors' headshots over the years, along with bunch of more corporate headshot work, but I've never officially offered actors' headshots as as service; those shoots have always been on an ad-hoc basis.

But headshots are right in my wheelhouse: simple portraits that have to connect with their audience whilst allowing the subject to express a range of expressions. And I love working with actors: they're such versatile subjects, and are used to taking direction.

So I've decided it's finally time to offer a headshots service specifically targeted to actors. You can read the full service page to learn more about what I'm offering, but it breaks down to three packages:

• Express session — 45 minutes, 1 final image, £74.99
• Two-hour session — 3 final images, £179.99
• Three-hour session — 5 final images, £249.99

I can't wait to start working more with local actors and actresses, and making amazing headshot portraits with them.

It's been a year. That went quickly. A year since people, just out for a good night at a gig were killed or maimed or mentally scarred by a coward. 22 dead, all of them far too young. More than 800 injured. And let's not beat about the bush here: for those that were there, the road to recovery, mental and physical, is a long one.

And this city is, as it always has been, resolute in the face of the bastards and the cowards, the monsters and the maladjusts who would try to bring it to it's knees. My adopted hometown is going to fall silent today to remember the lost, and think of the wounded. And there will be tears, and sorrow, and grief. Wounds like that heal, but they leave scars.

But this is Manchester. We do things differently here. This is a city that's faced down worse in its time, and stood with its head held high every single day.

I'm reminded of how Japanese Honey Bees defend their hives against hornets: they form a ball around the invader and, well, cook it. Mancunians — whose symbol has, for 175 years, bee a worker bee — gang together too, but with love and kindness and understanding and a togetherness that's a wonder to behold.

I love this town. I love its people. I love the staccato of the northern voices in the streets, the rumble of the derby days and the gentle susurrus in the city's squares on a sun-drenched* summer lunchtime. I'm proud to be one of its residents, one generation removed from being an actual Manc as I am.

Anniversaries like this are awful, and sad, and hopeful, and full of love. And there's no love like Northern love. Not anywhere in the world.

Peace to you all, Manchester. Chin up, r kid.

So come at us again, and again if you must,
Time after time we'll rise from the dust,
You'll never prevail, not against us,
This is Manchester, our Manchester
And the bees still buzz
~Ryan Williams

*Sometimes just drenched. It's Manchester, after all

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wes Martin, guy most of you never knew, a guy that I didn’t know brilliantly well, has passed away.

When first I met Wes, I knew him as a musician. He played assorted folk instruments and even put out a solo album. I met him at a meeting of the Lancaster Twitterati in perhaps 2009/10. I remember then thinking what a warm and funny character he was. 

We lost touch a bit since I moved away from Lancaster. I knew that he went through a breakup and that he’d reinvented himself as an artist. He painted scenes from the Lancaster and Lakeland countryside that were so achingly evocative that you could almost feel the crisp winter air (or — this being Lancaster — the driving summer rain). 

When he put out his solo record I emailed him and asked if he’d like to collaborate on making some images inspired by tracks he’d written. I remember him being intrigued and cautious, but also enthusiastic and, I hoped, pleased. We never got around to doing it, of course. I moved away, and life went right on stealing away the time you think you have, as it always does.

in more recent years Wes and I had corresponded on Twitter or Instagram from time to time. He always had encouraging comments to make on my evening.camera pictures. More importantly he would often give me encouragement when I posted about the voice in my head that tells me to give up, to jack it in, to stop trying to be an “artist”.

I miss Wes. I wish I’d known him better. I resent the loss of opportunity to collaborate together, and I’m sad that I’ll never get to see more of his beautiful work — and that I never got around to buying one of his paintings from him, since I love them so much. 

We only have the time we have. It’s tiny and insignificant and fragile, and we can miss out on so many things just by getting too busy, or telling ourselves that these always tomorrow.  The truth — being very zen for a minute — is that the past is just an unreliable memory, and the future is solely in our imagination. The perfect time is now, and we need to make our art and say what we need to say before we don’t have the chance any more.  

So long, Wes. Even those of us who didn’t know you well will miss you.

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

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

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

What will you do with the images?

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

How does this differ from your 15 Minute Portraits?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The DeeVees

By Graham Binns

It was 2015 when I started the subject|object project. Or maybe it was even 2014; I don't really remember. All I remember was coming up with the original brief:

Each subject is photographed twice for the project: A head-and-shoulders portrait (“object”) and a full-figure nude (“subject”). The two images will never be displayed together; there is no link between the “object” and the “subject”.

With the “subject” are displayed the subject’s details: their name (or pseudonym), age, profession, and their thoughts on the objectification of people in the modern world.

The “object” images are displayed alone, to allow viewers to have their own thoughts on the person in front of them

Since then I've photographed 35 people, and I'm getting to the point now where I'm getting ready to put the project out there in the wild. At the top of this post are some of the "object" images — the portraits. I haven't yet worked out how I want to display the nudes, at least on the web (though you'd think I'd have figured that out after a couple of years).

Overwhelmingly, the people I've photographed for subject|object have so far been white. I really want to change that before I wrap things up and start preparing for a gallery show. Britain is a wonderfully diverse country, and I want to photograph way more people of colour before I call the project done.

So, if you're a person of colour, and you're within reasonable travelling distance of Manchester — or you know someone who is — please don't hesitate to get in touch. I'd love to photograph you for this project. If it's going to be about the way that we, as a society, objectify each other, then it should be made up of a representative cross-section of our society, don't you think?

That's not to say, by the way, that if you want to be part of the project and you're white, I won't welcome your participation — I absolutely will; I just really care about this project being as diverse in its participants as possible.

You can get involved with the project by filling in the form on the subject|object project page.

Until very, very recently, I've never entered a photography competition. Well, that's not actually true: I entered, I think, one competition at the Lancaster Photographic Society some part in the last decade. But nothing national, or international, or indeed particularly outside my little bubble. Partly because failing was scary, but mostly because I was absolutely convinced that there was nothing in my output that was competition worthy.

If there's one thing that I've finally started to learn this year, it's that you've got to do the stuff that scares you. If you don't, it will continue to scare you, and you'll never know if you could have done it. Fear will have won, and all you'll be able to do in the future is make some excuse about not giving it a shot — "I didn't have anything that was a good fit for the competition," for example, which is just code for "well, I was too scared to try." If you're really honest with yourself and the people with whom you're talking.

So this year, I decided to throw my cap over the wall this year. And because I'm a lunatic and I don't like to do things by halves, I decided that the competition to enter would be the British Journal of Photography's International Photography Award.

Yes, I am that mad. I've got no illusions that I'm actually going to win anything. After all, I'm just a guy submitting some work. Maybe next year I'll do something more considered. Photo competitions like the IPA are about getting your work in front of the judges, and about making sure that people know you're alive. Other than that, it's pointless caring about winning — there are so many great photographers out there and so many stunning images.

I entered two sets of photographs this year: one of character studies — partly drawn from my Fifteen Minutes Portraits project, partly from stuff I'd shot on other commissions — and one of evening.camera images. Because after 400+ images in that project, why the hell not? 

Here they are for your enjoyment: hope you like looking at them as much as I liked making them.

I have an inner dickhead. An imaginary frenemy. He likes to try to make me miserable; as far as I can tell, for his own amusement.

I have decided, just now, to call him "Jeff". Important note: Jeff is not real. Except to me.

Jeff doesn't think I'm very good at what I do — as an artist, anyway. Tech, code, building devices that do interesting things over networks, sure. Jeff says I'm good at those. Art? Jeff thinks I suck.

And Jeff not only thinks that I suck. He thinks that I suck so hard that everyone has noticed, but that all the people who have noticed, all the people I've ever worked with, are just far too polite to come out and say it.

Jeff tells me that everyone who ever congratulated me, who ever told me my images were good, was lying or a fool. Friends, loved ones, professionals. All of them, Jeff says, are either full of shit or empty of brains. And if someone doesn't congratulate me — if a client, say, isn't overflowing with adoration for the work we did together — it's evidence that they, too, think I suck; they're just keeping it to themselves to spare me the embarassment of having to face my failures.

I think Jeff has been with me for a long time. I can remember him not being there — or at least I think I can. He wasn't there when I wrote plays at school that were largely Star Trek rip-offs, and got my friends to star in them, and filmed them, and made props for them.

But he was there when I was meant to solo in the brass quartet that I played in back then. And when I hit a bad note, he shouted at me as I played. On stage.

Jeff is the art teacher who told me that my self portrait was pretty rubbish, actually. He's the boss who told me that I wasn't shaping up, and asked me where my pride was.

Jeff's a shit.

Jeff will happily take anything that I'm happy with and turn it on its head within minutes. He's why I procrastinate about looking at images from a shoot — because I know Jeff will pipe up. He always does.

The worst thing of all, though, is that Jeff is a part of me. And so by hating him, and getting angry at him, all I am doing is hating and getting angry at myself. Which makes Jeff all the stronger — he feeds on that kind of thing.

The only ways to combat Jeff are:

1. To accept that he's there, and give myself permission to sulk, and hope he'll be gone by morning.
2. To tell him I don't have time for his bullshit right now, and to get on with what I'm doing.

I haven't really tried #2, if I'm honest. I really ought to. Because I often don't have time for Jeff's BS — but I give it to him anyway.

If Jeff had had his way, I would have thrown all of my camera equipment, and hard drives, and negatives, into the Manchester Ship Canal years ago. Sometimes, Jeff likes to have me think about doing this from the top of the Barton Bridge (he always neglects the fact that there's no hard shoulder there, so it would be impractical and inconvenient and would get me arrested).

Jeff is, I know, the scared part of me that doesn't like doing something he's not used to doing (or at least not used enough to doing yet). He's got my best interests at heart, but unfortunately he's a complete cock-end about actually trying to look after me. He's the cruel-to-be kind voice of friends who half want to not see you hurt, and half want to hold you back because if you get happy, they'll have to look at their own lives and realise how much they don't have themselves.

I could say that I hate Jeff, but I don't. That'd be like hating my left kidney, or my nostril. I don't like him much, either. But I do have to live with him.

So some day, if you're with me, and I'm seeming a bit glum, don't worry. It might just be that Jeff's jumping around and throwing a tantrum because I'm doing something cool and scary. He'll go away again.

He usually does.

Except for me.

One of the biggest joys in making portraits, I find, is getting to meet interesting people. And the truth is that everyone is interesting in some way. I've yet to meet a truly boring person in my career as a photographer.

But here's the thing: when you work a lot with models and musicians and people with a media profile to project and maintain, you encounter a lot of artifice. Not always deliberately; there's rarely a moment that a person decides "I shall pretend to be someone else in front of the camera," but often: The band who want to look like hard-core rockers, and who are completely different when the camera is off them. The model who is painfully shy until the camera points their way.

For my latest project, I want to do something different. I want to work with people who don't regularly sit in front of a camera for a professional portrait. And I want to push the boundaries, creatively, of what I'm able to do: with lighting, with sets, with props. I want to make portraits that are weird and wonderful and different.

And because I like to make my life harder, I'm giving myself only 15 minutes per sitter to shoot a portrait. 

Here's how it works: the sitter comes to my studio in Manchester, we have fifteen minutes to shoot and chat. We pick a few favourite frames together, then we're done. The selection of the final portrait is mine, and because I'm limiting the amount of retouching I'm doing, the sitter should have their image within 24 hours.

For all of this, I'm charging just £30 per sitter. That's a fraction of what I'd normally charge for a shoot. Why? Because I honestly believe that people want interesting and different images of themselves, and £30 is not a high bar to clear for most of those people.

If you're in North-West England, come and be a part of it all. You can read a bit more about the project and book a session over on the 15-minute portraits page.

I can't wait to work with you!

If you've been paying attention then you'll already know that I've moved gmb.photo/grahambinns.com to Squarespace, because I was fed up of trying to make Wordpress perform the way I wanted it to.

Today I've finished moving evening.camera from a custom Wordpress deployment to this site — you can find it at its new home here. https://evening.camera will redirect theretoo, too, and all the old URLs should redirect correctly, if I've done the necessary magic correctly.

Why am I bringing everything under one site? Well, because I'm fed up of maintaining multiple Wordpress installs, which is a pain in the arse. I've also run into a bunch of social-media crossposting annoyances that I know I can solve with the Squarespace platform… and which solving with Wordpress plugins would just be horrendous.

And also, I want to show this stuff off on my site, frankly. It's different from the other work that I do, but it's still worth showing off, no? I've got further plans for evening.camera now that it's passed its first birthday. I'll keep you posted.

Instagram. You're expected, as a photographer, to be on the damn thing these days. And for a long while I was. I would try to post daily, to to be "intentional" with my feed — though I'm not really sure what that means, if I'm absolutely honest. And then, earlier this year, I decided to ditch my Instagram account, just like I'd ditched my Facebook account some years ago.

I am quite definitely measurably happier. Not necessarily better off, professionally — we'll come to that in a bit — but happier? Sure.

My loathing of Instagram boils down to precisely two things, when I come to examine it in the cold light of day. There are other reasons — it being owned by Facebook, for one thing, and its ridiculously puritanical attitude towards the female nipple for another —  but the point is that even if those other things were not true, the following would still lead me to shut my account down:

1. You can't automate Instagram
2. Looking at other folks' social media streams can be an intensely depressing experience.

The second of these is, I admit, my own weakness rather than a weakness in Instagram itself. I realised that the more I looked at Instagram — especially during the time when I wasn't making pictures but instead was off doing other things — was bringing me extraordinarily low. And yes, yes, I know: don't compare your life with other folks' highlights reels. I get that. But it was inevitable that I would do just that, and the easiest way to not do that was to turn off Instagram. Point 1.

By far and away the thing I hate most about Instagram, however, is its utter lack of automation.

Consider Twitter (but not for too long, because it's a cesspool). One of the things it did right, very early on, was to have an open API that allowed you to make posts from any manner of Twitter client. They locked it down later because they believed that the proliferation of Twitter clients was hurting their bottom line (whether locking it down actually helped or not I don't know; Twitter still gives me the impression that the senior management hasn't yet figured out what their business model actually is). Facebook too allows for automated posts.

For someone like me this makes a huge amount of sense. I like to keep control of the stuff I create. I post it in one place (evening.camera, say) and then I use IFTTT or similar to post it to Twitter and elsewhere. Back when I used Facebook, I did exactly the same thing there. But you can't do that with Instagram, because it offers no public API by which to create posts.

There are ways to sort-of automate Instagram. "But use Buffer," some will say. Well, yes. And for a while I did. Buffer is a brilliant (and monetised) solution to many of the problems faced by those with social media streams. But the trouble with using Buffer with Instagram is the workflow:

1. Something adds the image to your buffer queue.
2. Buffer sends you a push notification when it's time to post. If you ignore this, the photo goes into another tab in Buffer, and it's a bit more clicking to find it again to post it.
3. You open Buffer, which copies the caption for the image into your phone's clipboard for later.
4. Buffer opens Instagram for you. (If you have more than one account you need to make sure you're logged into the right one).
5. You fiddle with the image in Instagram. If you just want to zoom out so that your whole image is posted rather than a square crop, you sometimes have to do some fiddling around and then cancel it and do it again.
6. You paste the caption that Buffer put into your copy/paste clipboard and do any necessary hashtagging.
7. You post.

I. Cannot. Be. Bothered.

I can understand some of Instagram's reasons for not having a public API for creating posts, but for people like me who want to keep control of their own stuff (let's ignore that Instagram can use your pictures for advertising, etc., yadda yadda) and who don't want to have to faff around with each and every social media app in order to be able to put stuff out in the world, it's a complete and anger-inducing waste of my time.

Instagram is great for consuming stuff. It's great for interacting with other people who've put their work on the site. But it's dreadful for actually putting your stuff out in the world in any kind of organised fashion. I guess that's because it was built for sharing stuff on-the-hop, and we're mis-purposing it a bit. But Instagram has positioned itself so that it's the place to share images if you're a visual artist of any stripe. And if you want to do that and have time to do other things, Instagram is bloody awful.

(Of course, I maintain my right to change my mind about all this at some point.)

After 12 years and well over a thousand blog posts, it's time to move away from Wordpress and do something new. A new site, focussed wholly on my photography. No archives going back a dozen years to when I was just exploring blogging in public.

I've moved the site to Squarespace, for various reasons. I've got a half-written long-and-wordy post explaining the whys and wherefores for those who are interested. Basically it boils down to: I don't have time to be a sysadmin, and I need to simplify my life a bit.

So a new site and a new blog, which I'll try to update more often than the old one. The year's two thirds done; it's time to forge ahead and Make Things.