Norrin-Radd

After a couple of months lay off. I'm putting some more work up. It's not that I have not been shooting, it's just that I have been using other sites. Particularly model Mayhem and my own website.

If you are a model interested in working with me, message me here or at MM.

Jon.

Well it's taken a year for one reason or another but my website is finally up.

It isn't loaded up with anything I haven't posted here - in fact, it's the reverse - a slimmed-down, best-of-me, kinda gallery. Which is what a website should be. I know I'm about 5 years behind everyone else but I think having my work in an environment designed by me, display the work they way I want, will make me able to better judge the overall feel and direction of what I'm doing.

Well, please visit and let me know your thoughts...

twistedsix.co.uk

At the start of 2009 I said it would be a very tough year for me. Recessions always hit advertising first and hardest. Perhaps not the best time to try and launch myself as a photographer and to top it all I was going to turn 40, which made even more of a reflective time.

Well unfortunately, I was right. There were 7 months in 2009 where I did not do a single days paid work. But I got through it and I know a lot of people who didn't. I have not known a recession that has cut so many different ways. Everyone from currency traders to social workers have been hit.

But 2010 is the year of the bounce-back. The economy is slowly recovering. Some of the 'dead wood' has been cut away and there are new opportunities. The last 8 weeks have been frantically busy and ad agencies are phoning me to book my time, where 12 months ago they were canceling jobs.

So it's into the new year with more confidence than I had last year. I have a feeling 2010 is going to be a very significant year - I hope I'm right again.

As a photographer I'm interested in people. Landscapes are cool, animals are nice but really I want to shoot people and real people at that.

Football fans, bikers, pole-dancers, boxers, waitresses, rugby players, et al are infinitely more interesting to work with than endless models. You meet some fabulous people, hear some great stories and people are genuinely grateful for the work you put in.  

So, as you can imagine I jumped at the chance to shoot a few members of a local bike club, when the chance arose a few weeks ago.

I turned up at the groups local pub as arranged, and found a good spot to set up my lights. Despite a lot of interest in my gear, relatively few of the group were really up for getting in front of the lens when it came down to it and after about an hour I only had 3 or 4 of the guys interested.

Then it got worse. I'd shot Mutlie, Rob and James, when my wife phoned up to say we had a leak at home and water was running down one of the bedroom walls. Nothing else for it: I apologized and said I'd have to go and sort it out but I would try and get back next week.

So a day or so later I emailed Gary (one of the group), the finished and retouched versions of the shots I'd done and said I'd see them the same time next week.

When I pitched up at the pub the following week, it was a very different vibe. In the intervening period it appears that Gary had emailed the pics to the other members and they liked what they saw. I thought I might have another 3 or 4 people to shoot and as it happened I had 18. Even Chris who runs the pub came out to have his picture taken.

It was good fun and a good lesson: I had to work fast and couldn't do my usual endless messing about with lights. Plus, I had an audience. So for your viewing pleasure, I give you selected members of the Eana MCC...






    

This year I plan to update this journal alot more.

My writing isn't half as good as it used to be when I was a proper 'writer'; largely down to the fact I don't actually 'write' anything anymore. The gift of witty prose has been squandered and can only be earned back through hard graft, etc, etc.   

So this week I found myself in the increasingly unfamiliar surroundings of a film set



It's good to get out of the office once in a while and spend the whole day standing around a draughty warehouse drinking cheap coffee in South London.

The call time is 8am. And all are present by 10 past.

Turnover is delayed several hours due to screw-up subsequently christened 'SweaterGate'.

Our clients (an international healthcare company) specifically requested our actress wear the same sweater she wore in a test film last month. In true advertising agency style, this had been lost/sold on ebay/given to someone's Gran, over the festive period, leaving us with a re-wardrobing session.

Did I mention, we didn't have a wardrobe stylist on the day because we, err, had the wardrobe in hand?


Chris Palmer (film director, commercials director, production company owner and all-round King Midas) used to say, ’The thing that goes wrong on the shoot is never the thing you thought would be a problem’. He than goes on to qualify this sage-like statement; ‘Because if you think something is going to go wrong, you cover it.’

Unfortunately, no-one had considered the importance of a rather bland Debhanem’s Sweater, and here we were over 3 hours into a ten-hour day, still in wardrobe.

The producer was sent to Debenhams and instructed (in true scatter-gun approach) to buy every style of sweater in the same colour and hope we got the same one. He got close enough to prevent an on-set lynching (his own) and the shoot resumed and pasted off without further calamity.

Coffee was drunk, cigarettes smoked, HD tape shot, but the tension was tangible. Once something puts a shoot behind like that, calm is never completely restored.







Producers fret about the lost time, account directors worry about what lie they’ll make up as a cover story. And the rest of the crew have to work twice as hard before they can go down the pub, (or whatever it is film crews do when they’re not working).

For me, its just material, (if you’ll excuse the pun) , for my blog.