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British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP) 2009 Conference
Anyone that knows me will tell you that I’m not a morning person.
In fact you usually have to be up early to catch me before I go to bed ;o)
The BIPP 2009 conference and semenars were held on the 7+8th September in the RAF Museum in Cosford. A fantastic venue, but fantastic enough to get up at 05:30 for?
Definately
So I dragged my butt out of bed and lobbed it in the general direction of the shower. 30 minutes later I’m checking emails and munching on some breakfast and swigging strong coffee. I consider throwing the coffee down my pants to wake me up as I’m still half asleep, but 5 minutes later it kicks in and and the brain ticks into life without me jumping around the room swearing randomly
While packing I decided to make a small picture diary of the day. I’d already planned to take some reference shots during the semenars, but I decided to take a broader account of the conference and make them into a small video (below)
Bags packed, camera ready and off I go
Day 1
The day started with registration and a welcome speech from the president and then we all went straight into the day’s courses.
My first session of the day was Hair and Fashion with Jack Eames who is based in London. This short session was mainly about model interaction and the use of props in your session. At the end of his session he was presented with an LBIPP qualification as he wasn’t going to be around for the main awards ceremony in the evening. Happy daysThe afternoon double session was ‘It’s only an Iron” with Jonathan Beer. He’s an amazingly talented product/still life photographer based in Manchester and he talked us through a basic product shot.
Jonathan says he has no photographic talent and that he’s 100% technician, but his understanding of texture, shape and attention to detail over a couple of hours was truly inspirational. He’s way more than a technicianBack to the cheap hotel booked from booking.com
Turned out to be a service station motel, but a welcome rest. Didn’t bother going to the evening BBQ and awards ceremony as it was a long drive this morning and I wanted to be alive for day 2. So I puttered around the bland hotel room and grabbed a couple of frames to add to the diary before heading to bedDay 2
Back to the Museum for the morning session with Steve Howdle on Professional Lighting. This tied in with Jack Eames’ session, but was all about the lighting where Jack’s was more the feel and mood of a shoot. Both had very different styles of working and was an interesting contrast.If anything Steve’s session was much more like Jonathan Beer’s as it was very technical (right down to 1/10th stops) except the model was the ‘product’
Steve’s model in the morning session was Ivory Flame and she appeared again for the afternoon session with Dave Hunt on the human form im fine-art images.Dave has worked with Ivory Flame quite a few times in the past and you may notice that there are no images of this session due to the content, but the bare(sic) lighting setups were as expected.
I have friends that’ve worked in this style of art, but I’ve never been present during those sessions and so it was interesting to see some “behind the scenes” of how Dave worked with Ivory Flame. Particularly when they role-played the differences in working with a professional model Vs a client coming to you for this style of image.
Then a long drive home, tired, but happy
At some point in your photography, you need a kick up the butt
I know which direction I want to move my photography and with that in mind I started looking for workshops that would broaden my experience in the disciplines that interest me.
Bert Stephani is a Commercial and portrait photographer based in Belgium and has become well known through his videos on Youtube and workshops where he openly shares his knowledge and experience. He also co-founded the LIME project with Pieter Van Impe, a Belgian Wedding Photographer, and the ethos of LIME is Learn, Inspire, Motivate, Experience.
Bert occasionally gives 2 and 5 day workshops in Belgium around his busy schedule, but I was unable to attend some earlier in the year due to some bookings, so I dropped him a mail about doing one in the UK later in the year. He said, “Sure, you arrange it and I’ll come over”
Fast forward 5 months and I’m standing in Heathrow Terminal 5 with my girlfriend on a cool Sunday evening holding a sheet of A4 scrawled with “The Varnisher” in black marker. Meanwhile a 6’6″ Belgian wanders out of Arrivals with a big grin and a 50mm f/1.4 mounted 5DMkII slung over his shoulder and shakes my hand with one of his big paws.
Bert is in the UK.
For 2 sunny hot days in early September, Bert guided us through one of his Location Lighting workshops “Seeing the Light”.
Day 1 was indoors where he covered the management of light within composition and talked us through the process of making images from editorial and advertising assignments which the group thought up for him.
We used the Richmond RACC Drama room as it was spacious enough for the group and had lots of props and clothing which we used in the assignments and for goofing about in the breaks.On day 2 we were running about Richmond by the towpaths, bridges and in the parks in groups of 3 with a couple of models and a make-up artist while Bert gave us assignments. Although the workshop ended at 18:00, Bert and a few of us headed into Canary Wharf for some food and then we did some night shots around the unique architecture that Canary Wharf provided.
Apart from being approached by Canary Wharf Security, where a copy of our permit sated his questions, the workshop seemed to go pretty much like clockwork. The people that signed up for the workshop were a relaxed and creative crowd and that helped to make the workshop a great success.
Wednesday came and a relaxed Bert headed back to Terminal 5 with some presents for his family
He landed, he LIME’d, he left.
Or as my girlfriend says, “Veni, vidi, visa ….. I came, I saw, I shopped”Our talented make-up artist was Emma Ridgers: www.fabulousyou.co.uk
Male Model – Nick Crispini: www.crispini.co.uk
Female Model – Prabha Shiyani: Prabha at Usana.comImages from the group are here: https://www.flickr.com/groups/1228981@N23/
Slideshow Below
The Gumball 3000 GRD Built Subaru STi Promotions Car
James Greenwood of Greenwood Racing Developments asked if I could take some pictures of a car that his tuning company built on Saturday just gone.
So I turned up at the GRD‘ workshop and I saw the Gumball 3000 Promotions car sitting in front of me.It turns out GRD built the Stage4 500+bhp Subaru (owned by Andrew Brimecome) that Gumball use for brand promotion
James wanted some pictures of the car for the GRD website, so he passed me the keys and disappeared.Andrew enters the Gumball 3000 in his 1250bhp Viper and lets them use his Subaru whenever they want.
It’s currently lined up to be at a trade show in September and he’s also giving it to them to use in next year’s Gumball. He thinks it may be the Jackass guys, but the celebrity has yet to be selectedAn hour after starting taking shots, Andrew turned up and after chatting for a bit he called some friends so I could do some rolling shots.
These are some of the edited images from the shoot:
Big companies getting loads of content – for free?
I was contacted recently regarding a promotion from RedBull as they’re holding a competition in which you go to Sisikon in Switzerland to report/photograph their cliff diving series.
To paraphrase from my ‘invitation’:
"Red Bull is looking for a reporter to head to Switzerland to capture the twists and pikes of the amazing divers, the breathtaking location and the all round excitement.""To be considered for this exciting assignment, head to https://www.redbullreporter.com and keep uploading examples of your best photos. Tag your uploads ‘Cliff Diving’.
UK entrants only."
This sounds fine until you look at the Terms and Conditions on their website:
#6 You will be solely responsible for the content of your submission and the consequences of posting or publishing it, including in relation to any defamatory material or content that intrudes on the privacy of any third partyWhich means if they use your picture and then someone sues them … they point to this clause and pass the buck to you.
Talk about your ultimate get out of Jail free card. And then there’s’ this …
#8 You will retain full ownership rights in your submissions, but in submitting your submission to us, you agree to grant to us a worldwide, exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence (including the right to sub-licence to any user of the Website or otherwise) to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display or otherwise manipulate your submission including for the purposes of the submission. In submitting your submission to us you agree to waive all moral rights in your submission.So in other words, I still own the copyright, but I can’t re-sell any of the images as Redbull have worldwide exclusive rites to use, manipulate and re-licence my pictures.
They could make them into flyers or a billboard poster – and the person taking the picture doesn’t see a penny.
Even though they’d have to fly from the UK to Switzerland, stay in accommodation, pay insurances and permits and have wear and potential damage/loss to my (rather expensive) camera gear.
The prize for winning he competition is that they say you "may" be selected to go on a selected assignment for them.
#5 Those that are selected for the pool of Reporters will be considered to undertake special assignments on behalf of Red Bull, on terms to be agreed. Such assignments shall be selected at Red Bull’s discretion. Red Bull is under no obligation to commission any member of the pool to undertake such an assignmentSo they don’t really have to do anything other than hoover up free content. They can get all the images and not have to select anyone for a special assignment.
I’m all for a bit of creative enterprise and will elect to work for selected charities, but when it’s a multi-billion dollar companies looking for free content …. that’s taking the Michael Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
I’m actually not sure how they can pull this off as no Pro photographer will glance twice at the ‘competition’ and I can’t see an amateur coming up the money to do it either.
Perhaps Red-Bull should behave themselves and just pay a pro or an agency who will get them the images they want. they will have the passes to get to exclusive areas and the technical and creative ability to capture amazing images for them.
Or perhaps cliff diving isn’t high-profile enough to warrant paying a local Swiss pro to turn up. To quote a line I read in an industry article recently covering a very similar scenario of ‘free content’ "Since when did mediocre become acceptable?"
It’s all showing a sad trend for the photojournalists out there. the knock on from that is that as their work dries up from conglomerates getting ‘free’ content, they have to move into new areas to make a living.
My heart goes out to them