I’ve steadily been able to build up a small reputation online to the point that I now get invited occasionally to provide photographs and some written pieces for magazines and other media to use, as is demonstrated elsewhere on my blog. But this week something rather unusual happened, something I was neither expecting or planned in any way, somehow I managed to land two cover photographs on two different magazines at the same time.
In Part 1 of this series I set out the arguments to printing more of my work and although it’s arguably taken far too long to get to this point, it’s still felt like a natural journey. When I first started out in photography, I actually printed more than I do now. I think there was definitely a naivety on my part back then, I perhaps didn’t care what others thought about my photography, I blindly and plainly didn’t see what I regard today as obvious flaws in my earlier work but I certainly didn’t have the attention to detail or the benchmark I set for myself now.
Following another invitation from Amateur Photographer, I’ve completed another article for the magazine, this time on infrared photography. Best of all I’ve landed my second cover in a month with Refuge, one of my absolute favourites from 2014.
I’ve read a few articles recently which talked about the risks to a digital legacy. The crux and central theme of these views are that if we create a purely digital portfolio as photographers then eventually this is at real risk of being lost, more so, it’s pretty much guaranteed. All the backups in the world won’t protect your photography if no one else knows how to easily view or access it after you’re gone – our paranoia with web security and using cheap cloud based services utilising some faceless corporate servers somewhere are adding to these issues too. I’ve certainly sat up and paid attention to this sentiment – it all seems so utterly pointless if all we do as photographers is create JPEGs that even our own family take little more than a passing or casual interest in. Once you’re gone, that vital link to your work is also gone – and will anyone really care? Even if they do all will inevitably be easily lost on some hard drive which gets dropped in a landfill soon enough. Personally I’m now compelled to create more than fresh air for my efforts…
I’m very pleased to have been invited by Outdoor Photography Magazine to speak as part of their programme of events in the Photography Arena at the Patchings Arts Festival in Nottingham next month.
I was beside myself with excitement a few days ago when this dropped through my door because it’s finally happened – my first magazine cover ever, and it’s certainly a nice one from my point of view too. When Steve Watkins, editor of Outdoor Photography, asked me to write the June Learning Zone feature piece for this edition, he neglected to mention that the cover image might be in the offing too…
It has to be said, April was a pretty hot month for me, certainly not in terms of weather but in photography prospects. I find it goes like that quite a lot, I have an off month and just as I’m starting to lose a bit of mojo some top conditions play into my hands at the right time. That’s the landscape photographer’s lot at the end of the day and if you can’t take weeks of flat grey skies and be ready when it counts then this game isn’t for you…