Instagram Top 9 2024 - and another one...

One of the definitions of madness is to continually do the same thing and yet somehow expect different results.

As such, I think I must suffer from a brief moment of madness whenever I reach the end of the year and search the "Top 9" of my Instagram page -https://www.instagram.com/kimayresphotography/ - and expect my best photos to rise to the top.

Instead, because it is based purely on "likes", what happens every year is it is dominated by selfies and photos of my daughter, Meg.

As you can see, this year is no different. Apart from one of my Aurora photos, and a portrait I did of artist, Denise Zygadlo, all the others are selfies of some kind, or photos of Meg.

In fact the one of her in front of the shed with odd socks on was a repeated image from a few years back that I took for World Down's Syndrome Day.

I've long understood there's a reason it's called "social" media - and that a selfie with my daughter, father, or grandson, is a much easier, quicker "like" when people are scrolling at high speed through their feeds.

But it does always make me sigh inwardly that my actual hard grafted, meticulously composed and edited photos rarely get a look in.

This year I have added a 2nd Instagram feed to find a Top 9 for -https://www.instagram.com/kimayresphonepics/ - only it is not about crafted professional photos or trying to promote my business.

Instead it is full of images taken on my phone, usually when I'm out on my daily walk.

It might seem odd to some that, given I am a professional photographer, with a big professional camera, that I would take photos of bits of moss, reflections in puddles, or bits of rusty metal, on my phone.

However, the best way to think of it is like artists who do quick sketches, or musicians who play scales - it's a way of continually training and honing my eye.

Each time I try to make a dead leaf or a bit of peeling paint look interesting, I have to think about light, line, shape, form, camera angle, colour, composition etc.

None of these images will ever be sold, or win accolades but they will, in a very real sense, contribute towards those that might.

Back in April I did a bit of photography mentoring and, in an attempt to encourage the person to begin a journey of "how to look", I suggested they set up an Instagram page to help motivate them to post something each day (or at least a handful or times per week).

And as an extra layer of encouragement, I decided to join them by dusting off an old Instagram account I'd set up years back (and then abandoned) and do the same thing.

Although the mentoring only lasted a few weeks, I decided to continue with the exercise of regularly posting my phone pics.

What I'd learned was, there is a further layer to doing this - that of curating your work.

Previously I'd still been taking the phone photos when out for my walk, but now I had to select which - if any - were worthy of being posted.

And it changes how you view your photo if you are going to put it in the public arena - even if you only have a handful of followers.

So here, for the first time, is my "Top 9" from my phone pics Instagram page.

They are not necessarily the ones I would have chosen as my best, but they are the ones that achieved the most "likes".

And I find it more interesting, and definitely less predictable, when there are no selfies or pictures of my daughter.

Any thoughts or comments are welcome.

My next post will be my favourite photos from 2024, regardless of social media likes - stay tuned...

Cluedo – A Family Photo Shoot - and Episode 214 of Understanding Photography with Kim Ayres

I was once asked by a business client if I could do a photo shoot of her with her husband and 2 kids. "Could you make us look like a normal family?" she said with a desperate plea in her voice. There were hints to a background of the wider clan all being more traditional and respectable, while her corner were seen as the black sheep. The shoot wasn't really for themselves, but to give the right impression to other people.

By comparison, when Jean came to see me at Spring Fling to talk about a family photo shoot, a traditional approach was the last thing she wanted.

Although her children are now adults, they had all grown up as avid board game players, with Cluedo being a particular favourite. Jean said she loved my approach to creating cinematic and theatrical narrative photography and before I knew it we were talking about how we might stage a Cluedo themed shoot, with each member of the family playing a different character, along with accompanying outfits, props and location.

This is what I live for!

Do a quick Google search on Family Photo Shoots and you quickly discover there are 3 styles that dominate the results – the traditional studio, the white-backdrop, and the outdoor "lifestyle".

The traditional family photo shoot was essentially like your school photo shoot – a plain or textured backcloth (often blue or brown) with standard studio lighting. Everything looked a bit formal, but participants might be encouraged to try smiling for the camera – the degree of success of creating a convincing smile rather than a grimace would depend on the people skills of the photographer.

Solid, dependable, high-street photographers with a section at the back of the shop all set up and ready to go. Not exactly imaginative, but you know what you’re going to get.

In the 1990s a radical new approach hit the high street, and shopping malls, everywhere: a completely white background where everyone was encouraged to take off their shoes and sit, or even roll on the floor. At least one parent might look embarrassed, but it was more than made up for by laughing children clambering over them.

With borderless canvas prints being favoured over traditional framed and mounted prints, these looked fresh and modern.

A decade or 2 later, when you couldn’t visit someone’s house without seeing yet another white-backdrop family photo all but identical to your own, the outdoor "lifestyle" shoot emerged.

Some might have the family sitting in a spring meadow or holding hands running along the beach. But for most it seems the dominant form has now become matching outfits – everyone wearing white shirts and blue jeans, or a tidy brown and beige combo, usually standing under a tree.

Unfortunately, because these 3 styles of photography are so dominant, most people don't appear to realise a family photo could be so much more fun and creative.

For Jean and her family, making the costumes, sourcing the props, and rearranging the dining room were all part of the fun and experience.

Jean decided to be Miss Scarlet, while her daughters were Reverend Green and Mrs White. Her son was Colonel Mustard and his partner was Professor Plum.

I guess that probably makes the viewer Mrs Peacock...

We did a series of images – from them playing the game at the table, through to them gathered around a body in a trunk, and then various individual and combination shots.

As well as ending up with a completely unique set of photos that they will never have to worry about seeing cookie-cutter versions of on their neighbour's walls, the memories of the experience will be with them forever.

And I daresay their descendents will have a different impression of them than we do when we look at old photos of our great grandparents.

Whether it's Game of Thrones, Peaky Blinders, Steampunk or Star Trek – group photos of families or friends can be so much more exciting than standing in a row, looking faintly uncomfortable.

Let's get together for a no-obligation coffee to explore ideas.

If you're interested, I discuss this photo shoot in Episode 214 of my podcast, "Understanding Photography with Kim Ayres"

And if you decide to click through and watch it directly on YouTube (rather than here on the blog), then you can watch the Live Chat Replay and see the comments people are writing in real time as the podcast progresses.

---

2:02 - Welcome, what's coming up, greetings and comments
5:37 - Smug Points Leaderboard update
7:08 - A brief history of family photography styles - from the formal, to the white sheet, to the outdoor "lifestyle"
14:13 - An introduction to the Cluedo themed family photo shoot
16:26 - Technical interlude as I try to recover a lost screen...
18:48 - The main photo
27:05 - Behind-the-scenes photos
43:43 - More images from the set
51:01 - What they looked like in Black and White
56:45 - Feedback on Viji's photo of buildings reflected in a mirror
1:09:47 - Coming up next week - The Autumn/Fall Photo Challenge
1:11:46 - End

Missing the Legend

I met Pat through blogging around 18 years ago, give or take. She was already well into her 70s and writing her memoirs, which she was posting episodically.

These days our content is spoon-fed to us via the algorithms that monitor how long we look at or hover over a post and then give us what they think we want based on our activity. Unfortunately this means we rarely stumble across anything new or challenging.

But back in the days when dinosaurs walked the Internet (who would have thought we could become nostalgic for a time still in the 2000s, but before the dominance of FB), we had to seek out stuff that might interest us.

The Internet seemed to be a place of discovery rather than a force-fed echo-chamber. And while we were busy creating our own content, we followed links, left comments and sometimes people would comment back.

Long term friendships were formed with people we might never have met in the real world because of geographical, or even social, political, and cultural separation. And yet, we would find like-minded spirits that reminded us we are all human underneath, whatever our differences.

I doubt if these same friendships could have occurred today precisely because the algorithms like to keep us in our separate social, political and cultural groups.

But I found Pat, or she found me, via a series of steps through other blogs populated with sometimes strange, sometimes down-to-earth, and sometimes just plain bonkers people who blogged as made up characters.

About 3 years later, I was on a road trip with my son, heading down to Devon to visit family, and took the opportunity to detour via Minehead and meet up with Pat. I documented it in the blog post, Meeting a Legend

"While waiting for Pat outside Mr Micawber’s café in Minehead, we spotted her from a wee way off. As she approached - elegant, attractive and with a dazzling smile - I became distinctly aware of my own travel-worn state – creased shirt, untrimmed jowls and in desperate need of a shower. Mr Odorous Crumpled at your service, Ma’am..."

We'd only planned on having a coffee and a wee chat, but it extended to, and beyond, lunch. Despite this being the first time we had met in person, if felt far more like meeting up with a long lost friend.

I think one of the key differences between blogging and other forms of social media, is that there is time to explore thoughts, feelings, emotions and experiences. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the like are all designed to scroll through quickly, producing endless, quick dopamine hits. As such, there is no time to get to know anyone in depth, so our connections remain shallow.

For those we already know in the real world, those platforms are a great way to keep the relationships alive with constant "postcards of information", until the next time you meet and properly bond again. But it's practically impossible to do this with new connections. We "friend" easily, and "unfriend" even more easily. If someone disagrees with our point of view on almost anything, then it's easier to remove them from our feed. Why waste time trying to keep the relationship alive with someone we barely know?

But with bloggers, that sharing of fears, hopes and desires, loves, laughs and losses, we build a much deeper connection. It doesn't matter if they might vote or worship in a different way - we connect to them as people first - and as such the differences become a place of curiosity and learning.

3 years after that first meeting, my son and I planned another road trip down south, and I knew I would want to meet up with Pat again, only this time we would do a photo shoot.

In the intervening years, I had set up as a portrait photographer and knowing Pat had been a model earlier in her life was excuse enough.

We bounced ideas back and forth and eventually decided we would attempt 2 different shoots - one of her in a Hollywood Style, Marlene Dietrich pose, while the other would be making a nod towards Annigoni's portrait of Queen Elizabeth II - see Photographing a Legend

It was huge fun. Pat had gone to great lengths to find reference images and create outfits.

Over the next decade or so, every time I did a trip down to Devon, making a detour to visit Pat was always on the agenda. Conversations never dried up, and partings were always tinged with a little sadness.

In between times, blogging for many of us had become sporadic at best, but the other social media sites allowed us to stay in contact - frequently sharing, commenting, and messaging.

The last time I saw Pat in person was 2 years ago when we were down at my niece's wedding. This time Pat was delighted to finally get to meet my wife and daughter.

Back when Covid first hit the UK and we were all plunged into Lockdown, I began my live weekly video podcast, "Understanding Photography with Kim Ayres", which at the time of writing has now been going for 4½ years.

Despite having no interest in taking photos herself, Pat would still tune in and join in the live chat almost every week, and was seen by all as a part of this community.

A few months ago, she told me she would no longer be able to be involved due to failing health and a need to prioritise her energies. And yet she would still periodically stick her head round the door and say hello.

Following the death of my brother at the end of last year, my son and I started talking of another road trip down south so he could meet up with family, and of course, take in another visit to Pat.

Pat's sense of hospitality meant that if you turned up for lunch, she would provide a spread large enough to feed an entire cricket team. This too had left a lasting impression on a young lad...

The initial plan had been to go in late spring, but work commitments meant it got bumped to autumn, and then more timing difficulties led to it getting postponed until next year.

With great sadness I found out yesterday that Pat has passed away. The chance to see her at least one last time has vanished.

For nearly 2 decades, Pat has been a warm and uplifting part of my life, and she will be sorely missed.

My heart goes out to her family.

Aurora – finally...

I've lost count of the number of near-misses I've had when it comes to the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, despite the fact we live on the doorstep of a recognised "Dark Skies" region, where light pollution is very low.

Over the years, every now and then my Facebook and Instagram feeds have become plastered with images that local people took on their phones the night before, while I was completely oblivious,  watching Netflix or sleeping.

Other times there have been much heralded expectations but cloud cover in this region has scuppered any possibility of seeing them.

While Scotland is at the Northern end of Europe, here in Dumfries and Galloway, we're still the best part of a thousand miles south of the Arctic Circle, so the aurora is pretty rare and precious.

However, last night, around 11pm, I saw a friend had posted an aurora photo from their phone onto FB about an hour earlier.

I quickly clicked over to an online aurora tracker - https://veryweather.co.uk/auroraTracker20.html – and it looked like there was some activity, but I wasn't sure how much it was covering this region.

Next thing I did was go to the back window. The rear of our house faces Northwest, and if I angle my phone to face north, there's just enough gap between the edge of the window and a tree in next door's garden to get a glimpse of the horizon at the edge of town.

Although I couldn't see anything with the naked eye, a 3 second exposure on the phone made me think this was hopeful.

View from the back window on my phone

It's probably worth mentioning at this point, for those who have never seen the aurora, but have seen their friends posting their colourful phone pics - the chances are that what they were seeing with their own eyes was more like the desaturated images shown further down this blog post, and not the full colour displayed in their photos. 

We have 2 different light receptors in our eyes - rods and cones. The rods deal with light and dark while the cones process colour. But the rods detect light at fainter levels than the cones - which is why our night vision appears to be in black and white. Unless you are under extremely powerful aurora, you are unlikely to detect much colour, if any. However, the longer exposures possible with the camera, allow the colours to come through.

Back to the story...

Feeling hopeful, I grabbed the camera and tripod and headed out to Loch Ken, a few miles up the road from where I live.

Years ago, when I first had a go at a bit of night-time photography, I quickly discovered that just pointing your camera at the sky might show a few white dots on a black background, but with no context, the images tend to be pretty boring.

Fine if you have a telescope attached to your camera and are picking out the Orion Nebula, but for the rest of us with ordinary lenses, the best way is to improve our photos is to incorporate the features of the landscape.

Silhouetted trees, buildings or mountains against a starry backdrop can look pretty cool, but one of the best tricks is to use water and reflections.

From previous failed aurora hunts, I had at least realised that there were a couple of potential places along the shore of Loch Ken, where it might be possible to shoot up the length of the lake, which points more or less north, and so get reflections if the water was calm enough.

To my absolute delight, there was no wind, and the loch was almost millpond smooth. And because the temperature had dropped to about 2 degrees Celsius, there were no midges! 

Frozen fingers and toes I could cope with, but not the swarms of misery-inducing biting creatures that would have been there if it had just been a few nights ago when we had a couple of warm (by Scottish standards) evenings.

I clambered down the embankment to a small patch of sandy pebbles that jutted out a few metres into the loch and set up the camera on the tripod.

At this point, all I could see was a very faint light patch on the horizon, but when I took a 15 second exposure photo, sure enough the familiar greens and purples could be made out.

What it looked like to me

What it looked like in the camera.

I shot off several photos, playing with the settings and angles until I thought I probably had the best images I was likely to get.

At one point I decided to see if I could photograph myself taking a photo of the aurora with my phone, so set a 10 second timer and ran round in front of the camera.

Image of me using my phone to photograph the aurora

What the phone photo actually looked like

It should be said at this point, if ever I doubted why my proper camera was any better than just using my phone, then this thoroughly answered the question.

I was just beginning to think maybe my extremities were just a bit too cold and I really ought to head home to a nice warm bed, when I thought the sky was looking brighter.

I fired off some more shots and saw a magenta layer had entered the scene, and there were spears of light textured into the colours.

Over the next 15 minutes or so, the light show in the camera was incredible, but even to the naked eye, it was the most impressive I had ever seen it. Although I still couldn't make out any real colour, the light and patterns were much brighter and clearer.

What I was actually seeing - no colour, but bright enough to see the show

Standing there, at the edge of the loch in almost complete silence, with the Northern Lights and the stars bouncing reflections off the glassy smooth water, felt truly magical. It seemed worth enduring the cold a bit longer to absorb the experience.

Eventually though I realised I lost all sensation in my toes and had very little left in my fingers, so had to pack up and come home.

By this time it was after 2am, so I had to leave downloading the images until today, and I had a small nagging fear that they might not be in focus.

Auto-focus rarely works in the dark, as the camera struggles to latch on to anything, so you generally have to do it manually, and that can be a bit risky when you can't really see much either. And it's happened in the past where I thought everything looked fine in the back of the camera, but once I'd got the images home and transferred to the computer, I'd gut-wrenchingly discovered the focal point had been out

However, looking through them today I am beyond elated.

Of course there are way better photos out there of incredible patterns lighting up the Norwegian Fjords in the snow, but I'm a people photographer and neither landscape nor astrophotography are my speciality.

For me, then, these are the most exciting aurora photos I've ever taken, and I've been feeling a little smug all day.

Embarrassed Grin

There were incredible colours in the sky yesterday evening.

I was out for a walk and couldn't resist using my phone to capture the reflection in a car window.

However, when I'd finished playing about, I looked up to see the car owner staring out of her kitchen window at me, so I gave her a slightly embarrassed grin.

She came out of the house to see what I was up to and to be reassured that I hadn't been trying to break into her car.

I showed her the photo on my phone and we then had a lovely chat for about 20 minutes on skies, sunsets and why Castle Douglas is such a wonderful place to live.

No police were called...

A Steampunk Fire Breathing Blue Leather Dragon - and Episode 204 of Understanding Photography with Kim Ayres

Wait!

What?

A Steampunk fire breathing blue leather dragon?

Well of course I want to photograph it!

Sometimes I have no idea what kind of conversation I'm going to have when Andrea, the editor of Dumfries and Galloway Life magazine, phones me up.

Louisa and Ben run The Courtyard in Annan, SW Scotland – a place for fabrics, yarns and general haberdashery, as well as shoe repairs and key-cutting.

Louisa is a quilter, and there isn't much she can't create or mend with a needle and thread, while Ben is a leather worker who has taken his skills way beyond the cobbling he trained in.

They are into Viking re-enactment, and more recently have got into Steampunk in quite a big way.

Steampunk, for those not in the know, is a retro-futurism, sci-fi/fantasy genre.

Or to put it another way – think of science fiction from the point of view of Edwardian Britain. How would adventurers using futuristic technology look – from airship pirates to time-travellers? So instead of modern computers and sleek white surfaces, the aesthetic would be levers, pulleys, cogs and wheels, with lots of brass, leather, and polished wood.

In fact, just think of the HG Wells book, "The Time Machine" or Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea", and it will start to give you an idea of where the genre has its roots.

Ben was telling me that when they were down in Whitby at a Steampunk Weekend event, he'd noticed a growth in Steampunk "familiars", or creatures that might sit on a person's shoulder. He said he'd seen a woman in a wheelchair with quite a sophisticated animatronic creature that could turn its head and open and shut it's eyes and mouth, which she operated with a small controller hidden in her lap.

I can't remember where the idea of a dragon had come up, but Ben decided to see if he could create one in leather. He managed to find a pattern online, which he then adapted to suit his needs and style.

And if that wasn't enough, he managed to create it in such a way that it had a small smoke machine coming out of its mouth with yellow LED lights switching on at the same time.

Most of the time it sat in the shop window and they would switch it on when people were peering in, however it has now sold. Ben knows he should probably start work on another, but considering the last one took him a month to build and there are many other projects calling on his limited time, it might be a while before a new one appears in the window.

Exploring ideas of where we might do a photo shoot, it turned out that The Courtyard was practically next door to Solway Spirits, a gin distillery, which had some nice brass stills that would make suitable backdrop.

So on one of they days they were not distilling, they let us use the space.

Some items couldn't be moved and it took me a while to get angle and the lighting I wanted without unwanted elements appearing in the photo that couldn't be easily Photoshopped out afterwards.

Eventually I managed to get it to work with a 3 light setup – large softbox as a key light to the right; an off-camera flash with yellow gel behind the still to the left; and another off-camera flash with a blue gel, over my left shoulder to create a subtle fill for some of the shadows.

A burst of my own wee smoke machine, and the atmosphere was complete.

Of course, I had to get a wee selfie with the dragon on my own shoulder, along with Ben, Louisa and their daughter. Immie.

Issue 201 of Dumfries and Galloway Life had a feature on Ben and Louisa that used some of these images.

If you're interested, I discuss this photo shoot in Episode 204 of my podcast, "Understanding Photography with Kim Ayres"

And if you decide to click through and watch it directly on YouTube (rather than here on the blog), then you can watch the Live Chat Replay and see the comments people are writing in real time as the podcast progresses.

---

1:56 - Welcome, what's coming up, greetings and comments
4:11 - What is Steampunk?
8:54 - The story behind the Steampunk shoot
14:11 - The photos from the shoot
19:59 - Different crop ratios for different purposes
22:32 - The editing process and decisions behind the different stages
47:52 - Smug Points Leaderboard update
50:21 - Introduction to the Feedback/Critique section
51:04 - Viji - Elephant and mahout
1:03:02 - What's coming up this month
1:06:41 - End

The Ultimate Selfie

Back during the tail end of Covid and Lockdowns I'd been getting hugely frustrated at not being able to take photos of people that weren't socially distanced. 

It had also meant I'd done even fewer images of the more cinematic/theatrical style I really enjoy.

However, I'd been toying with the idea of a multiple self-portrait for quite a long time. 

My first idea was to arrange several of me in the living room – lying on the floor in front of the tv, sitting in the chair reading a book, lying upside down on the sofa while leaning against another me, perhaps a me lighting the fire and another me walking in with a tray of coffee and cake. 

But it didn't take long before I realised I'd seen this kind of photo plenty of times online already. And while I was planning on making mine more dramatically lit and posed, I didn't think it would be sufficiently advanced for the amount of time and effort to create it.

So what if I was to shift it outdoors, and add another level of Selfie-ness to it by making it into a photo of me taking a photo of me?

There's a fairly quiet, single-track road that runs over the hills between Laurieston and Gatehouse that I thought would be ideal, especially if I could set it up around sunset, so when the weather conditions were right, I threw the equipment into the back of my car and headed out.

I put the wide-angle lens on the camera so I could get a good sense of the landscape, as well as give myself enough room to fit several of me into the image at the same time. I also wanted to make sure you could see the lighting system to give it that sense of a studio-style outdoor shoot.

With the camera on a tripod and set on a 10 second timer, I was able to move round and put myself in different positions, knowing that I would be able to line everything up quite easily in Photoshop afterwards.

I began by having one version of me leaning up against the car, with another one doing the photography.

But at that distance I realised every version of me I put into the image would be small, so I needed more in the foreground. I changed my pose to be upright and looking straight into the camera, and placed the photographer versions of me to the front and side.

I then put in a couple of observers, one holding the light in the background, one leaning on the car door, and one in the car at the steering wheel (which I had to light with a separate flash until inside the car). I can't remember where the idea came to have a version of me sprawled across the bonnet, but it made me smile so I left it in.

I also decided to have a version of me doing a selfie in the background. And if you zoom in far enough on the original image, you can see a 10th me on the screen of the phone I'm holding up.

With model-me wearing a long leather coat and sunglasses, while other Mes were wearing a different jacket, or no jacket, hat or no hat, or hat in reverse, I hoped to create a sense of variety in personalities.

I took quite a few more images of me in different positions than I needed, because I understood I wouldn't know which ones would work best together until I was sitting at the computer, constructing the final image.

While the theory of all the photos being taken from the same position, having the camera on a tripod in order to make the blending of the images more straightforward, was a good one, there were a couple of things I hadn't taken into consideration.

The first was there was a little more traffic than I'd anticipated and several times I had to move the tripod and lights out of the middle of the road, and place them back once the vehicles had passed.

The first time this happened, I realised I couldn't remember where they had been, so thereafter I placed some small distinctive shaped stones where the legs were, so I could line everything back up afterwards.

The second problem was the world was continuing to revolve, so with each shot the sun moved slightly. When I started the sun was comfortably above the horizon, but by the time I finished it had dropped behind the hill. This meant when I came to splice the images together the light was subtly different in each of them, and I had to carefully blend 3 or 4 different skies together, as well as the multiple Mes.

However, in the end I was pleased with the outcome, and not only did I get a lot of comments about it when I printed it up for Spring Fling visitors to see, it also ended up being used as the opening double-page spread in an article for Dumfries and Galloway Life magazine.

Below is the podcast where I talk about shoot, if you're interested.

1:57 - Welcome, what's coming up, greetings and comments
6:14 - An introduction to why I created "The Ultimate Selfie" photo
9:56 - A 10 page spread in DG Life Magazine - August 2022 - issue 177
12:51 - The photo sequence to create "The Ultimate Selfie"
23:50 - The Photoshop layers in "The Ultimate Selfie"
37:58 - Introduction to the Critique Section
39:40 - Dipti Mahi - black and white portrait
49:20 - Nadia - Sunset over Whitby
55:14 - Rose-Marie - bird in a tree
1:05:57 - Coming up next week - the art of the self portrait, leading to The Self Portrait Challenge for 2 weeks time
1:10:28 - End

2023 in Photographs

Every January, I like to put up a selection of my favourite images from the past year.

Usually I enjoy spending a few days over the Christmas break, going through my albums and carefully crafting the post.

This year, I found myself struggling. In part this was due to fewer shoots I've done that stand out to me (both because of lack of opportunity, and several months lost work because of extreme sciatica), but I'm also still processing the grief at the recent loss of my brother, and this is affecting my motivation for everything at the moment, consequently I very nearly decided not to bother.

However, I've been doing this since 2009, and I didn't really want to break the tradition . Regardless of whether anyone else notices these posts, or cares, I've come to realise I like having a place I can come back to where I'm able to see how my photography has developed over the years

If you have any level of curiosity as to how my photography has progressed over the past 14 years , then you can find earlier collections here: 2022, 2021, 2020, Decade Review, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009

As always, there's a varied selection below, so hopefully something for everyone. I'm always interested in feedback, so if you'd care to leave a comment about which one(s) are your favourite, or any personal observations, it would be warmly appreciated.

You can click on the images to see larger versions.

Edd Carlile

At the beginning of the year I went up to Glasgow to see my photo of my daughter, Meg, which was accepted into the Monochrome exhibition at The Glasgow Gallery of Photography. It was also a great excuse to catch up with an old friend, Edd Carlile, who I first met about 12 or 13 years ago on a photography website and we've been connected ever since, but this was the first time we'd got to meet in person. In the 4½ hours we were in each others company, I don't think the conversation paused for more than about 20 seconds! Although Edd prefers to be behind the camera, he did let me take this photo of him on the street in Glasgow.
https://www.instagram.com/eddcarlile/

Ewan McClure

Earlier in the year I had my portrait painted by the incredibly talented, Ewan McClure - https://www.ewanmcclure.com/ - which he then displayed in an exhibition in the Kirkcudbright Galleries. Although on the surface it might seem that portrait painting and portrait photography might be a similar thing, I discovered that it is worlds apart. Three days of sitting for Ewan gave me an entirely new appreciation of portraiture, commitment, and the artistic process.

Here are:

• a photo I took of Ewan while he was painting me,
• a selfie of me with the finished portrait in the exhibition,
• and a portrait I did of Ewan that doesn't look like a painting, and took considerably less time to produce

Going Cinematic

In a world of square images designed for Instagram and social media avatars, I've found myself increasingly drawn to creating images that have a more cinematic, widescreen crop. These often intensify the feeling of a moment captured in a sequence - you have no idea what came before, or what might happen next, but you can't help speculating.

Teaming up with performer and poet, Annaliese Broughton, and her then partner, Phil Brookes, we created some of my favourite photos ever.

Accidentally Wes Anderson

Director, Wes Anderson, has a cinematic style that frequently has the characters in the middle of the screen, and an oversaturated pastels colour palette. It hadn't been my intention to create a photo in this way, but during the editing process, I boosted the saturation and realised this image contained all the hallmarks.
https://www.instagram.com/lieseypeasylemonsqueezy
https://www.instagram.com/philbrookesuk

Two Ice Creams

Shot in the same place – the sea wall and beach at Ayr, Scotland – the editing style here was more about indy-cinema – far away from the bright and glossy, this is about a seaside town at the tail end of winter, where the colours are more muted. Part of what I love about this one is it can either be read that she is holding an ice cream for someone else, while making a start on her own, or that she has just decided to have two ice creams herself. Either interpretation feels part of a larger story.
https://www.instagram.com/lieseypeasylemonsqueezy

Come The Morning Light

This is quite possibly my all time favourite photo to date. Trying to read the story makes you feel they have been through a traumatic night. He just climbed into the bath with his clothes on, and then she joined him, without worrying about her dress – comforting him was more important in that moment.

While I love working working with models, as they are past the self-conscious stage in front of the camera – to be able to work with performers allows you to reach greater heights. Some models can still be primarily concerned with whether they look their best – but performers are primarily concerned with whether the character looks authentic.

The whole experience has made me want to explore more in this direction when I can.
https://www.instagram.com/lieseypeasylemonsqueezy
https://www.instagram.com/philbrookesuk

Denise Zygadlo

Denise is an artist, performer, and always good company. Although I had originally intended to take photos of her in her studio, it was when I saw the long oak table in her kitchen that I got excited, as I could instantly see the possibility of looking down the length of  it towards Denise. It took a while to get the light balance I wanted, but was happy in the end with a combination of natural light and a large softbox. We took several different versions, but this one of her looking lost in thought was the one that grabbed me the most. Again, I found a cinematic crop worked best for this.
https://www.instagram.com/zygadlodenise

Brides in the Salon

In a collaboration with Circle Vintage and Nelson Brown Hair, I decided I wanted to have a more purposeful attempt at a Wes Anderson Style image. B Jay's Hair Studio, where we did the shoot, had magnolia walls and a brown floor. I spent quite a bit of time recolouring the set in Photoshop to recreate that oversaturated pastels look.
https://www.instagram.com/thecircleshop
https://www.instagram.com/nelson_brown_hair
https://www.instagram.com/vanessas_planet_
https://www.instagram.com/_chelsienash_

GE Studio

Fellow photographer, Graham Edwards, has created a brilliant studio space in Dumfries. In fact, it's at least 3 studios in one, with options for a white cube space, wooden and brick wall domestic, and full length paper roll backdrops. There is also room for product photography, a make up artist, and a guest area with comfy sofa, big display screen and coffee machine. All the photos he had on his site though showed the space completely empty. I figured it would be good to see the whole thing occupied. So when Circle Vintage asked me to shoot some models with a 90s clothes vibe, in the white cube area, it seemed like an ideal time to create a shot that would show off the extent of the studio in one image.

Carefully arranging the full crew of models, hairdressers, and makeup artist, I shot 4 separate photos from one corner of the room, and stitched them together in Photoshop afterwards. I even managed to get myself into the one on the far right.
https://www.ge-photography.co.uk/

Meg as a Model

In both shoots I did with Circle Vintage I took my daughter, Meg, along with me to do some behind-the-scenes photography. However, at the white cube shoot Meg was also roped in as a model. Seeing Meg without her glasses, and with makeup on, really caught me by surprise. As with all Dads and their daughters, to me she will always be about 9 years old, but this reminded me she is fact a grown woman in her mid-20s!
https://www.instagram.com/megayres1998
https://www.instagram.com/makeupatthemansion
https://www.instagram.com/gephotographyno1
https://www.instagram.com/nelson_brown_hair
https://www.instagram.com/thecircleshop

Robin Yassin-Kassab

Robin is an author, journalist and essayist with a particular expertise in Syria and the Middle-East. He also makes rather excellent coffee!

He was needing some head shots, but I was also struck by the fantastic view he had from his writing hut in the heart of Galloway, SW Scotland. So once we had done the official photos, I decided to capture him at work, with the log-burner in the background and the view out of the window
https://qunfuz.com

Tulip

Sometimes you have a quiet patch.
Sometimes you are desperate to take a photo but no one is available.
Sometimes just sticking a macro lens on the camera and wandering into the garden is a poor but quick fix.
Sometimes you get lucky with a dark purple tulip after a rain shower.

Gavin and Ruth's Wedding

It was wonderful to be invited to Ruth and Gavin's wedding. It was even more wonderful that they didn't even hint at the idea that I should bring my camera. 

Of course I did take my camera, but that's because I would have felt naked without it. Almost everyone else I met, though, took one look at the camera on my shoulder and asked if I was there as the wedding photographer. I found myself continually having to politely respond that no, I had in fact been asked along as a friend and I just happened to have my camera with me. 

However, when someone suggested it really would be lovely if there was a photo of everyone, no one else seemed to have a camera that would be quite big enough for the job, so of course I said yes.

Frances Ross

On one of the hottest days of last summer, I did a shoot for ceramicist, Frances Ross. Fortunately she had an air conditioning machine going at full pelt, and kept up a constant supply of jugs of ice water. We did shots of her at work, but also on the brief was a need for a photo that showed her as a professional artist as you might see her in a high end gallery, not just covered in clay. So much is in the subtleties in a photo like this that it's much harder to pull off than you'd think, so I was very pleased with the result.
https://www.instagram.com/francesrossmakes

Maggie and Brian

Artist Maggie Broadley is one of those people who both my wife and I feel we've been friends with all our lives, if not several lives before, and yet we only actually met less than a handful of years ago. We'd been discussing the idea of a photo shoot for a year or two before everything finally lined up. Maggie wanted a cinematic style shoot with her husband, up at an old burned out farm they regularly pass on their daily walks. This one of Maggie standing on an upturned car wreck, kissing Brian, was one of my favourites as it seemed to embody so much about the shoot that day, and their relationship.
https://www.instagram.com/therealceramag

Steve

Due to crippling sciatica, I wasn't able to do any professional photography for a few months. As the pain started to ease towards manageable levels I was contacted by Steve wanting tuition on portrait photography. We spent the day discussing ideas and concepts, studying different approaches and examples, and of course playing with lighting in hands-on sessions. Post-processing, or editing, is an important part of photography, and can make huge differences to the style and effectiveness of any portrait. One shot in particular that I took of Steve, I knew instantly would look good in a gritty, moody, black and white.

Lucy and Ed

Here is a taster photo of a day I spent with artists Ed and Lucy from the Old Mill Gallery in Palnackie, SW Scotland. The photos have still to be edited yet, but first scans of what I have look very promising and I'm excited by what I will have to play with when it comes to curating and editing the images from that day. In the meantime, here's one I love of the two of them down on the beach at Balcary Bay, when they were out foraging for stones and plants to turn into natural paints and inks.
https://www.instagram.com/theoldmill_palnackie

I hope you've enjoyed my selection - please leave a comment below with any thoughts or observations, and let me know your favourite(s)!

Wishing each and every one of you a kinder and more compassionate year ahead.