What are you interested in?

I did my first "Facebook Live" attempt this evening on my FB business page.


(This is a screenshot - scroll down for the actual video)

Even though I scripted it, and even though I never have problems talking in front of people, I found this particularly nerve-wracking.

I think it's partly because I can't see who I'm talking to. I can't tell from the expression on someone's face whether what I've just said was a bit stupid, or didn't make any sense, so I can't correct it.

Also, "live" means I can't edit it.

Sure I rehearsed it a few times, but all that went out the window the moment I clicked the live recording button. It is not polished. There are mistakes.

But it is authentic, and sometimes that can be more appealing than polished slickness.

And it was my first, so hopefully I'll improve over time.

So here it is, and for those who either have no sound, or would rather read at their own pace, I've added the script below.

But I am genuinely looking for feedback to the content - do let me know if any of my suggestions have an appeal, or if there is something you would love to ask or learn from me





Like many of the self employed in the creative arts industry, Covid 19 has pretty much killed my business and income for the foreseeable future.

The kind of photography I do cannot work with social distancing.

And with at least 2, possibly all 3 of us in our household being in higher risk groups, I can't afford to take risks to do photo shoots with people, even if there was any kind of market for it.

For us, this won't be over in 3 months. It looks like we'll be in isolation for the long haul – waiting for a vaccine, which by current estimates is at least a year away.

Like many people at the moment, my mind and emotions keep swinging wildly in different directions – from trying to find solutions, to blind panic.

However, the wisest piece of advice in almost any circumstance, is focus on the things you do have some control over, not the things you don't.

With that in mind, I'm sitting here with more than a decade's worth of professional photography knowledge and experience, which is more or less completely useless if I keep it to myself.

So I may as well share it with anyone who's interested.

Of course, I tend to do this anyway, as anyone who has ever been on one of my photo shoots, or at any of my presentations or demonstrations, will tell you.

But I'm trying to think of things that might be of interest to you.

Possibilities include:
Short, live videos showing how to compose or light people and things with your phone cameras
Revisiting some of the bigger photo shoots I've done and talk you through how I did them.
Some of those were filmed, so I could re-edit the behind-the-scenes videos to give more insight into the processes
I could do question and answer sessions on ways to get better photos with the cameras or phones you have
I could do live or recorded video interviews with other photographers I know who are experts in their fields and amazingly creative.
And of course I'm open to suggestions!

So if any of this has an appeal, please leave a comment about the kind of thing you'd like to see from me over the coming weeks and months.

Please tag or share this with any of your friends who you think might be interested, and I look forward to your feedback :)

A Call To Action...

To the artists, the writers and the creatives: we need new stories to help us shape this new world of ours.

Since the dawn of humanity it has been the tales we tell and the art we create that has helped us make sense of who we are, how we feel, how we behave, and who we could become.

The phrase of the moment is "unprecedented times", which means we don't have the frameworks to make real sense of what is happening and how to react.

Post-apocalyptic movies are all we are familiar with, and they are really not helpful just now.

We need new narratives and it is, and has always been, the storytellers who have shaped our understandings.

So to all the artists, writers and creatives: now is the time to help build our new reality.

Please share the message.


(an easily sharable version for social media use)

A combination of different strands came together, leading me to create the above statement and put it up on different social media platforms.

The hope was it might get shared and inspire some of the creatives who are now in self-isolation with their greater-than-average imaginations.

By their nature, most artists are able to conjour up unimagined worlds. This allows for amazing creativity, but can also lead to incredible levels of fear and anxiety.

A few days ago I was thinking about these "unprecedented times", and the fact we don't have any real narratives to deal with it. I explored this a bit in my last post where I mentioned Zombie Apolocalypse movies being the nearest thing we have, and that's extremely unhelpful right now.

Then yesterday I was introduced to a quote by Pablo Picasso, "Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth." This lead to a discussion about how art doesn't just reflect reality, it helps us to make sense of it.

From nursery rhymes and children's stories, to the TV programmes and films we watch, to the books and magazines we read, to the music we listen to, to the paintings, photos, scultptures and other art forms we look at - these things shape how we view the world.

This is the power of art, the power of storytelling in whatever medium.

So I was mulling this over - how we are lacking the narratives, and that artists create narratives - when this morning my wife put up a post:

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

This triggered the thought of putting up a call to action to artists and creatives - to give us something else to focus on - to harness that creativity to help make sense of what is happening, rather than our imaginations running wild in fear and loss.

At a point where photographers, musicians, performers and many different kinds of artists and craftspeople suddenly have no work, no audience, and no income, then it's easy to feel completely overwhelmed.

In addition to feeling extremely vulnerable, we feel useless. What good is an ability to take photos, or paint a picture or write a poem when people are ill or dying?

But here is a different narrative. What if our skills do have a use? What if we can find ways for people to make sense of this new, unprecedented world?

However, while I have had a little bit of positive response to it, I've also been hit with some negativity too - from people implying I'm concentrating on the wrong things, to having my head stuck up my own arty arse, to even my turn of phrase.

Aye, well, I'm a photographer, not a poet.

I thought what I'd written was clear, but apparently not, which has lead to me feeling the need to expand on it all in this post.

Meanwhile I'm swithering again from feeling I was doing something positive to feeling foolish for having stuck my head above the parapet.

It looks like this blog is going to be used much more again for writing, now that I'm not going to have any more Photography clients for quite some time...

But out of the window, everything looks normal...

With at least two, possibly all three of us in the house being in a high-risk group where the Corona Virus is concerned, we figured it was time to completely self isolate.

It seems really odd it was only a week ago Maggie and I were sitting in a cafe and discussing whether we should go ahead with the launch of our daughter's new business venture, Megalicious (see www.megaliciousfood.co.uk) on March 21st.

Over the past few months we've been planning, applying for funding support, and working closely with The Usual Place, where Meg has been training for the past 3½ years, gaining qualifications in Professional Cookery and Hospitality.

Everything has been moving towards setting up Meg's gluten-free home baking and pop-up cafe business, which would have been launched with a pop-up cafe at The Usual Place itself. In essence, she would have taken over the cafe for the day, using their facilities and staff, but with her products, menu, and branding.

Set to happen on World Down Syndrome Day we were hoping to get some serious publicity for it. As well as The Usual Place and Down's Syndrome Scotland helping to promote it, Princes Trust Scotland have also been involved (in fact they were so impressed with Meg, they invited her to become one of their Young Ambassadors), as has the local Business Gateway.

When you add to that the amount of local support Meg has, this was set to become a major event.

Two weeks ago we were designing apron logos, feather flags, postcards and flyers, as well as trialling all the gluten-free recipes. Corona Virus was something that still felt distant and might not even happen here.

But by last Friday, as we sipped our coffee, Maggie and I wondered if we would still be able to do the launch before it reached this corner of Scotland. Already large events were being cancelled, and various officials were beginning to say they were no longer going to be attending meetings, unless it was remotely via the Internet.

At that point, the fear was if we went ahead with it, perhaps few people would turn up and it would fail to have the significance we wanted.

I tried to phone Heather – the CEO of The Usual Place – to get her thoughts on it, but she was off until Monday.

Over the weekend, we attended a couple of producer's markets that we were hoping to get Megalicious into, but the conversations with organisers indicated that these would probably be the last ones for a while.

We started to realise that even if the launch was a great success, everything would be shutting down very shortly afterwards and all the momentum would be lost. And we wouldn't be able to have a 2nd launch a few months later that would have the same impact.

By the time I did get to speak to Heather, it was obvious that delaying the launch was the best thing to do. Indeed the following day Heather made the decision to close The Usual Place until further notice, as many of the staff and trainees have disabilities and underlying health issues. And today the government told all cafes they had to close by the end of the day until they say otherwise.

By Wednesday we had pretty much moved into self-isolation. The only thing left which required me to leave the house was I had the car booked in for a service in Dumfries on Friday.

Although I was very hesitant to take the risk, the fact is I wanted to make sure the car was OK in case it's needed for emergencies. So wearing disposable gloves and armed with a tiny bottle of hand sanitiser gel with a little bit left in it (fortunately discovered in my glove box, as you cannot get hold of them for love nor money any more), and a handful of anti-bacterial wipes found at the back of the cupboard, I took the car in.

Watching the News, listening to the radio, and following the conversations on social media, I was expecting empty roads, deserted towns and lifeless buildings with the occasional sheet of newspaper being blown down the street.

And yet I couldn't really see any difference from any other day. Cars aplenty, few parking spaces, pavements with lots of people apparently going about their daily routine.

It's a real struggle trying to get my head around the difference between everything I'm being told with what I actually see.

Intellectually I know that the virus is invisible, that there are several days when people can have it and be contagious before they show any symptoms, that most people won't even experience much beyond something like a cold, and so it would be very easy for me to be infected without realising and bring it back home to Maggie and Meg. And by the time they showed symptoms the Health System is likely to be overrun and it would be a lottery as to whether they would get the treatment they'd need.

Death is a real possibility, and not as remote as we would like.

But I look out the window and people and cars are going past, while the sun is shining and there is no obvious sign of threat.

Because this is an entirely new situation, unlike anything most of us have experienced in our lifetime, there is no existing narrative to tap into.

We don't have the stories to help us make sense of it. No films, books, or childhood tales.

The closest thing we have are the Zombie Apocalypse movies – and that's really not helpful at this time.


"Let's go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over."

But it explains the panic buying, and that apparently in the US gun and ammunition sales have gone through the roof.

How long before someone is shot in a supermarket over a toilet roll?

It's really frightening.

And yet...

Where ever I turn there are also massive acts of kindness, compassion and a desire to pull together in a community spirit to help each other in these unprecedented times.

Selfishness and stockpiling are the acts of people in fear – so worried that their flight-or-flight instinct has kicked into overdrive so, "me first and sod the rest of you" is their first reaction.

But humans have evolved as social animals.

We do not have huge muscles, dangerous claws, sharp teeth or a poisonous bite: compared to most animals near the top of the food chain we are quite puny.

Instead, we have survived, thrived, and taken over the world because of our ability to cooperate.

We have empathy, we can connect to others, and we invariably feel better about who we are when we know we have helped someone else.

And it is this we have to find a way to hold on to if we are going to get through the next few months and beyond.

The world is not full of selfish people who would beat us up for a small bottle of hand sanitiser.

While there might be some, the world is actually full of far more people who want to make sure that other people are OK too.


UPDATE:
5 days after this post was written, the whole country officially went into Lockdown unless you were an "essential worker"

Phantom Energy Syndrome

I've heard of people who have had a leg amputated, and every now and again will wake up in the morning, leap out of bed, and as they fall over suddenly remember their limb is missing.

I've come to realise I have a fairly similar thing going on with the CFS/ME (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).

Basically, at points where I'm feeling relatively normal – even more so if I've just had a coffee – my brain is very good at forgetting I live with far less physical and mental energy than I used to.

And in a burst of enthusiasm and optimism will make plans, create future possibilities and decide on actions that are completely beyond my capabilities.

You might have thought that after 14 years or so of the condition, I would have readjusted my sights and expectations, but it still tends to catch me out on a near daily basis.

When I am not overwhelmed with anxiety or depression, I'm quite an optimist.

Unfortunately, when the coffee wears off, or the cycle of excessive tiredness starts to make itself felt, then all these glowing, colourful futures begin to feel impossible. They don't just disappear like sand through my fingers - they also leave a sense of foolish embarrassment for ever having dared to think I might have been able to do more.

Perhaps I should be more of a realist – know my limitations and stick safely within their boundaries!

And yet...

There are few things more powerful, more intoxicating, more addictive, than conceiving future possibilities – creating things that don't exist, indeed will never exist, unless I make them.

In fact my whole photography career is built on this.

I sit down with clients over a hot chocolate or coffee (or these days the wonderful combination that is a mocha) and together we come up with amazing ideas of how to make them, their family, or their business look outstanding.

I love this part of my business!

The creativity and enthusiasm is contagious and spirals upwards, until the meeting ends with an exhilarating desire to make it happen.

At some point later in the day, as the mocha wears off, I will have a near panic attack as I wonder how on earth I can possibly meet the demands I've now committed to.

I feel like I casually threw myself off a high cliff with the idea that I'd figure out how to survive before I hit the bottom.

And as this sense of free fall makes itself felt, all I can think is, "Oh no, not again!"


(I am that bowl of petunias from The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy)
And if you don't get this reference, it means this blog's audience isn't quite as nerdy as I thought...

But at the same time, having made that commitment to the client, I now have to find a solution. And because most of the shoots I do take quite a bit of planning anyway, it gets broken down into bite-sized, manageable pieces.

And one way or another, I do make it happen – sometimes building a small team around me to help.

If it wasn't for that naïve optimism, I would stay completely in my comfort zone and never create anything new.

But there are many times when I wonder what I might be able to achieve if I actually had the energy of a normal person.