John Woods Photography

Leaving New York

February 16th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Bit of an experiment with film footage and stills. Shot on a Canon G12 and Fujifilm X100. Processed in iMovie with a ‘harsh light’ effect to give it a Super8 retro film look at the beginning and end

In the Mid-1950s there was a book published of photographs taken in New York by photographer William Klein. The book often goes for large sums on money on Amazon and Ebay.
The grainy, stark, high-contrast black & white and sometimes blurred photographs capture the urban chaos of New York in a graphic way.
On a trip there last week I tried something similar – here are a few of the results

Snow!

February 5th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

The wether forecasters sometimes do get it right and it did snow a little for Melanie & Adam’s wedding on Saturday. We think it added to the day.

SWPP Convention 2012

January 18th, 2012 § Leave a Comment

Apologies to anyone that came to my studio last week and found it closed with a sign on the door saying I was at a conference. I’ve picked up the answering machine messages and hopefully got all the emails (despite Novotel’s ridiculously expensive Internet service .Apparently the thing to do was stand outside the Starbucks across the road to check your messages!) I’ll be replying to all answer messages tomorrow, so thanks for your patience.

I thought I’d write a small conference report while it’s still fresh in my head, add a few photos and provide a few links to websites of photographers I’ve met and seminars I’ve sat in on, basically as a way of giving some idea of where my business is heading this year.

As with last year myself, Neil, and Simon were the first to arrive and probably the last to leave on Tuesday morning. I’ve started writing this on the train on the way back home.

If you are interested in photography at all, I urge you to click on the links as they all go to great sites by great photographers.

The conference is the SWPP annual photo convention in London which has been running as an event for 10 years. There are thousands of photographers in the Societies. I’ve been with them quite a while and have helped out at the Conference for the past 2 years.

The first 2 days was the business school hosted by Catherine Connor of Aspire Photo Training, apparently we’re all supposed to become Elvis! She introduced 8 speakers all talking about different aspects of marketing, branding and promotion.

Carl and Michelle Amess talked about their schools photography business giving facts and figures to all the delegates. Sandy Puc from America talked about branding and a ‘marketing calendar’. Melissa Love designs beautiful websites and talked about pinterest.com which I’d never heard of before and looks (pin)teresting. A link came through today from Catherine Connor. I also made a note of a website called showitfast.com

Julia Boggio & James Derbyshire, who run one of the fastest growing studios in London, talked about getting the marketing mix right. Charlie Kaufman owns The Click Group and that is something I may be looking at this year.

On Wednesday Jonathan Coleman gave a great talk about facts and figures, overheads and break-even points, something which a lot of photographers spend little time on. He runs a small studio in Chester. Kate Trujillo also spoke about branding.

After 2 days in the hotel without any fresh air it was good to get out on a location shoot with an American photographer from Orange county, Chris Becker ,who brands himself with just a letter [b]. We’d booked a room in the Chesterfield hotel for the seminar, but also took the opportunity to wander around the neighbourhood and into Hyde Park with models Zak and Viv.

Chris [b] Becker (centre) in action

I’d heard about the London police stopping people taking photographs in the capital, so when a couple of armed members of Her Majesty’s finest approached us, as a group of photographers, with cameras everywhere we were expecting the worst. As it happened we very politely explained it was training seminar and they were absolutely fine. Which was nice. Swapped cards with Tom Handbury from Bingley whose work I like.

I had semi- arranged to go out on a nighttime location shoot with Kevin Mullins, another x100 owner. Unfortunately the lure of the bar was greater, but we did catch up later, along with Neil Redfern and Anurag Sharma.

It was nice to meet again Kevin Casha, Joe Smith and the Maltese photographers as myself and James went to their convention in 2010 in Valletta. I didn’t stay up till 3:00 in the bar that night. Simon & John Denton did..

Thursday was a morning with the great Gordon McGowan. I love his style of photography and approach to weddings.I don’t know if asking the groom to lay on the altar after signing the register shot would go down well in Huddersfield, but if any of this year’s wedding couples reading this would like to give it a go, then I’m all for it.

Gordon McGowan in showing how to pose a groom on the altar

In the afternoon was a talk from Louise Sumner who has a great wedding website and had some great ideas for photographs.

Saturday started off with Shane Miller who runs the English Boudoir Company He very kindly he laid on tea, coffee and biscuits for all the delegates. Then there was some free time to see the trade show.

Sunday was an early morning start with Gary Walsh from Stockton. It’s a shame I didn’t get to speak with him afterwards as we seem to have a shared love of music. He was over the moon because he’d just bumped into Glen Matlock from the Sex Pistols in the National Portrait Gallery the previous day. Maybe next year.

After Gary was a seminar with Andrea Barrett and Mark Jordan from just down the road in Leeds. They were talking about Wedding posing. Martin Oliver ,who I saw at Focus last year, gave another talk on his environmental portrait shoots for families and children

Haven’t managed to get to a Stuart McIntyre talk yet, but we kept bumping into each other. Maybe next year. Also didn’t get to see Jon Jenkins and Richie Walton this year. They gave a great talk last year. Congratulations too to Richie on his Fellowship award.

Sunday night was the awards dinner presented by Phillipa Forester. The winning image of the year went to Ian Hardie for this fantastic portrait. Congratulations to Ian.

Image link to Ian Hardie portrait photograph on SWPP website

Viktorija Vaisvilaite seemed to collect quite a few awards for her work this year too. Along with Christopher Azzopardi. We sat at a table with Catherine Mackenzie and her husband who, unfortunately, didn’t win any awards but as they’d come all the way over from Northern Ireland I thought I’d give her website a plug!

This is a picture from last year. I think we were in focus a bit more then

2011

2012 (same table)

Wine bottle placement courtesy of Mr Mark Jordan

Myself with a highly emotional Mr Bristo - winner in the Traditional Wedding Photographer of the Year category. This is how we do ‘overjoyed’ in Hull.

His winning image

Image link to Pete Bristo photograph on SWPP website

Adam Alex and Nick Ghionis were speaking on the last day to a packed house. A talk on marketing and phototoshopping. They are two photographers that are at the top of their game.

By 5:00 we had everything packed away and that was it for another year.

I think I’ve only really scraped the surface of what was going on at the conference. There was a trade show on 2 floors as well as demonstrations and talks over the weekend. Time now to put all this information to use!