Asia 2013 Part 7 :: All That Glitters Is Not Gold

Sometimes life takes us by the hand and helps us to see what otherwise might be missed. It shows you one thing to allow you to see another. You might not realise it at the time, you might not realise it until after it happens, but the aha moment shows it's face and makes you wonder just how the universe nudges us one way or another as we stumble through life.  The divide between rich and poor was projected on the walls of  shops and houses, but first I would be taken on an unexpected journey with the Chinese workers of Taipa and Macau.

I woke early and slipped out of the hotel room with my shoes in my hand and my camera bag over my shoulder. This was fast becoming my MO, up early and out either before, or as the sun comes up, leaving the others to sleep. I slipped my shoes on and stepped into the elevator and hit G. The lobby was empty, nobody on the desk and nobody on the door. I stepped outside and felt the Asian heat hanging from the night before. The sun had just came up, but was nothing more than a bright spot in the thick fog. I was in Taipa, but  I has heading to Macau, the Chinese gambling capital. The Taipa Bridge wasn't far from the hotel and would take around ten to fifteen minutes to walk across (it's long), but I felt like commuting with the local workers that were just starting to surface from their grey hi-rise flats.

I asked the driver of the first bus if it went to Macau and he nodded and gestured me inside, looking a bit annoyed that I wasn't speaking Chinese. I had a good idea he didn't have a clue what I was saying, but I got on, sat on a single seat and felt the laser-like stares of thirty-odd pairs of eyes. The bus headed off in the opposite direction from Macau and the Taipa Bridge, but hey, it's a bus route and it will get there eventually right...wrong. I sat there hoping the bus wouldn't cross over some Chinese border with this dumb Gweilo (white ghost) with no passport. Eventually I asked a collage student (guessing they would have a better chance of knowing some English) if the bus went to Macau. He shook his head and spoke to the driver briefly. The bus pulled into the station and the driver looked back at me and  pointed out the door. As I left the bus he used his right index finger to tap each of the five fingers on his left hand, which he repeated and then pointed to the departure area. As the bus pulled away, I thought "did he mean 5 or 10?". Number 5 bus came first, so I jump on, but it was the wrong bus. Another wrong direction, then a third bus and I was travelling toward Macau.

I had gone miles off the reservation, but I was back on track and heading into Macau. In a way, I felt there was a point to my journey through the streets of Taipa and Macau. I was looking at the average Chinese person in an average working class area, both on and off the buss. This was no tourist tour!

As soon as I spotted the unmistakable shape of the Grand Lisboa casino in the distance, I knew where I was and got of the bus at the next stop (in case it changed direction). I had got off way to early, but I was happy to be walking in an area that I recognised. As I turned the corner, it hit me like a slap in the face, and it was as though I had been guided here at just the right time. I would have missed it if I hadn't made the unplanned extended journey first. The sun shone on the facade of the the Grand Lisboa and bathed the run down buildings behind it in the most amazing ocean of gold. I stopped in my tracks and stared. It seemed to shimmer and the words literally popped into my head 'All That Glitters Is Not Gold'. The physical gap between these two buildings was nothing more than a narrow street, but the real gap was vast. One of the most iconic casino buildings stood there proudly showing off it's gold and rubbing the little guys face in it.

Ghandi once wrote "There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed!". You see it in every country.  Rich man,  poor man, beggar man, politician. It's Robin Hood in reverse!

Looking from Taipa towards Macau. The Grand Lisboa can be seen at the end of the bridge with its exploding firework design.

All photos shot using the Fujifilm X-E1 & 18-55mm lens, except image number 2, which was shot with the X100 (obviously).

Kage Collective :: Call For Submissions

So we (The Kage Collective) are one year old and feel that it's time to expand a little. We're looking for one or two, male of female documentary photographers to join our close knit group. We're an international collective, so there are no restrictions to location or nationality. we're looking for photographers with their own vision who are shooting with Fujifilm X cameras. For more information and to apply, please click HERE

Jazz & Other Projects

I've added a section to this website to include personal projects, especially long term projects that don't necessarily fit as a documentary story. Surpassingly it's called PROJECTS and can be found in the main menu. The first thing to be added is my long term Project Jazz that started as a story, but morphed into a long term labour of love.

I absolutely love looking at black and white photos of jazz musicians like Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon,Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock (to name just a few). The focus is mainly on colourful photos of pop stars these days, even though the suited and booted jazz musician is very much alive and giging. So I want to continue what photographers like Herman Leonard and William Claxton started and create rich black and white photographs of jazz musicians. I've had the pleasure recently of photographing live performances of modern day jazz legends like Tommy Smith, Branford Marsalis and David Liebman and hopefully a lot more to follow. At some point in the future, I'd like to go on the road with a jazz band and document a tour or at least part of one. On stage, backstage, on the road and everything in between.

So the Projects section is now open and kicks of with Project Jazz. More projects will follow, but in the meantime click HERE to take a look. as always, your comments are very welcome.

PPOTY :: And The Winner Is...

I didn't have much expectation of winning Professional Photographer Of The Year, but as I was a finalist in the News category, I thought it was only right to go along and be a part of the awards night. At least it was an excuse for my wife Fe and I to have a day or two away. The night before the awards, I visited my dad at hospital after he had just gone through a kidney operation. He was in an enormous amount of pain and I wished the awards had been the following week, instead of the following night. But it made me think it would be really nice to win the award, because I knew that it would give him a big boost and it would mean a lot to him. When we arrived at the venue, there was an easel for each category that had a collage of the finalists photos on it. We had a good look at each board before getting to the news category, but  we were both surprised to see the other nine finalists photos printed there, but not mine. Maybe if I had engaged my brain I would have realised that none of the winners were included on the finalists prints, which were actually taped down to hide the winners. As the awards started, it was made clear by judge and compare Adam Scorly, that "if your photo isn't included on the prints, you've done pretty well!". So the penny dropped and I realised that, as mine was the only photo in the News category that was missing, it had to be the winner....dahhh!

Maybe it was an omen that earlier in the day, a pedestrian tried to re-inact my soon to be winning photo by falling in the street, which I shot with the same X100 (cue Twilight Zone music). I also took a few street shots in Brisol and Cheltenham and will be posting them on 35mmStreet this week.

For a change, it really was back to sunny Scotland. As we walked out of the airport, the sun was shinning and the shadows were long. A combination I'm growing to love.

So the little Fujifim X100 that I took the winning shot with, just keeps taking me to places I don't expect. It's been a game changer for me and many others, including my fellow Kage Collective colleagues, Patrick LaRoque, Paul Pride, Robert Catto and Flemming Bo Jensen. It was also great to talk to a few of the nice people at Loxley Colour who did a fantastic job of printing all the photos, including the large ones of the winners. I was really impressed by the resolution from the X100 print, which sadly, I wasn't able to take it on the flight home. But Loxley kindly offered to do another print that I can collect from their lab near by, so a big thanks to them.

You can read all about the winning photo on The Digital Contact Sheet :: Episode 3 or by clicking HERE

A huge thanks to everyone that sent congratulations by text, email, tweets, Facebook etc... I really appreciate it!

• Top photo of the X100 was taken by the X-Pro1 and the 35mm f1.4
• The shot of myself was taken by Fe with the X-E1 and the 18mm f2
• Last two shots were taken with the X100

Addendum :: Click HERE for some street photos taken in Bristol & Cheltenham during this trip. 

McCullin :: DVD Review

"War is partly madness, mostly insanity and the rest of it is schizophrenia!"

Don McCullin

McCullin is a feature length documentary film by Jacqui & David Morris on the life and work of photographer Don McCullin, who is most known for his hard hitting photographs of the conflicts in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s & 80’s. This film mostly covers Don's war photography, but also features a great deal of his work on poverty in post World War II Britain.

The first thing that stands out right from the opening titles, is the haunting score by Alex Baranowski. Music can make or break a documentary and this beautiful soundtrack does for McCullin what Antonio Pint's score did for the fantastic Senna documentary. I was glad to find the soundtrack for McCullin HERE on iTunes.

Another thing that struck me, was the amount of unseen film footage from the various conflicts featured in the film. There's no doubt the team that made McCullin did a huge amount of research and they should be congratulated on such a fine job of putting this together. The whole film is woven together with Don's superb black and white photographs, video footage and interviews with Don McCullin and Sunday Times editor Harold Evans.

Although the scenes of war are very graphic and show many mutilated bodies, including people flattened by tank tracks, I found the most harrowing scene was of a group of starving Biafran children. One trying to drag a smaller sibling up a concrete step by his or her skinny arm, the tiny body twisting as it's head bumps off the step.

McCullin is out now on DVD and Bluray and is unmissable! If you are a human (I'm assuming you are if you're reading this), then you need to watch this! In my opinion, this film should be used in schools to show the horrors of war!

[embed title="McCullin official UK trailer - in cinemas & Curzon on Demand from 1 January"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VWjo5XUIfw[/embed]

Professional Photographer Of The Year Finalist

I'm delighted to be a finalist in The Professional Photographer Of The Year Awards. I received an email yesterday confirming I was in the final ten of the News category. A selection of the finalist photographs from all categories will be featured in the April edition of Professional Photographer Magazine (on sale in March) and the winners will be announced at the awards event in Cheltenham at the end of March. You can read more about this shot (taken with my X100) in the previous post The Digital Contact Sheet :: Episode 3

The Digital Contact Sheet :: Episode 3

It's only episode 3, but it's time to change the format of this feature. When I first thought about doing The Digital Contact Sheet, I imagined it with...well you know, contact sheets. But rather than sit on the idea for a while and get it right in my head and then transfer it into a blog post, I went ahead and jumped in before I really thought it through. That's not always a bad thing as ideas come thick and fast and most of them never see the light of day. So I kind of went with the "ship anyway" mentality, but now I'm changing it into what it should be, with proper contact sheets and all. I hope this is a welcome change.

This sequence of images were shot in Italy last year at The Moonlight Marathon near Venice. The Contact sheet, above, shows the photos straight out of camera, which in this case was the Fujifilm X100. This ended up being called Running Into Darkness and was my first story on the Kage Collective website.

I usually know while I'm shooting a project if it will be in black & white, Colour or a mixture of both. This shoot was always going to be black and white, so I've converted the contact sheet in Photoshop and used +70 of Contrast and +10 of Brightness. This also helps to show the markings in red. As this is The Digital Contact Sheet my markings were done with a Wacom tablet, rather than a wax pencil.

The red boxes are the frames I would use and the ones with the red X's are the rejects. The others are OK, but more than I need. The three with the stars are the ones that tell the story. It's interesting to see a sequence of images in contact sheet form. One of the things that stands out right away, is whither I have worked the scene enough. I know by looking at this sheet, that I would have liked to have moved around a bit more and got some different points of view. Remember to click on the contact sheet above to see a larger version.

I was shooting with the X100 which has a full frame equivalent of a 35mm lens, so I'm pretty close here. It's a tense situation and I don't want to come accross as too mercenary, so the shots of the guy on the ground are all shot from the hip. I would have framed it differently if the camera had been up to my eye, but I think this wonky composition adds a bit of tension to the shot and works well.

I chose the frame above as my favorite, because it asks more questions than it answers. Is he alive? Is he dead? What happened to him? Is that blood on the ground or water? Is the man standing over him a stranger or a friend? is he performing CPR? The number on his shirt is turned up and not that noticeable at first. The guy standing over him is obscuring his running shoes (which would tell all). As part of the story, you already know what's going on here, but I think this frame stands up well on it's own and in some ways more powerful when taken out of context. I converted these three shots to black and white using Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2. I used my homemade preset for street photography.

This is not the sharpest photo ever made, but the content is more important than the technical and this shot is really important from a storytelling point of view. It also reveals the running shoes which gives enough information to know what's going on.

This is the last shot of this sequence, although not the end of the story. I continued to shoot the runners until the last one had gone. I then turned my lens on the aftermath of hundreds of plastic bottles.

I believe a photographer can learn as much by going through a contact sheet as he can from actually shooting the photos. It's good to ask yourself questions. Did I get everything I could have? Did I work the scene and get all the angles? Did I get enough tight, medium and wide shots?

As always, I hope you've got something out of this post and maybe some of you will try printing a contact sheet and studying your photos more. The contact sheets in this post were made in the Lightroom 4 print module. I used Print To File to save the sheet as a jpeg.

Moo Business Cards

My latest business cards arrived from Moo the other day, and this time round I thought I'd try their glossy finish. As soon as I opened the box, I was impressed with the quality of the new cards. The card stock is nice and thick and they certainly live up to their glossy title! The black box's that the regular size cards come in are very classy and look great sitting on a desk!

As these cards are my own design and include a brand new logo as part of a re-branding, I ordered a small amount of cards to make sure everything is where it should be (I've learned the hard way in the past). I'll be ordering more now that I've checked these ones.

As you can see from above, I have both the regular size business cards and the Moo Mini's. I keep the Moo Mini's on one of their keyring holders so I always have them with me. The regular size cards are mostly in my camera bags and in my car.

I've always found the quality from Moo to be very good, but it looks like they've upped their game even more with this latest batch.

A Mute Reminder :: New Story On The Kage Collective

I have a new story on The Kage Collective website today. I say new, but it was actually shot back in November at the remembrance day parade in Glasgow, Scotland. As you can imagine, it was an emotional day for everyone involved, but especially for those who had lost friends and family in any of the conflicts around the world.

Please take a few minutes to have a look at A Mute Reminder and if you feel like leaving a comment on the Kage site, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the story. A Mute Reminder was shot with the Fujifilm X-Pro1 & X-E1.

We Are The Kage Collective :: An Announcement

I'm proud to announce the launch of The Kage Collective (pronounced Kaji), a project I'm involved in with fellow photographers Patrick La Roque (Canada), Paul Pride (England, UK) and Robert Catto (Australia), with me (Scotland, UK).

As you will see from the Kage Collective website, we are a group of international photographers shooting documentary projects about a wide variety of subjects. The one common thread that runs through the project and the thing that not only brought us together, but also binds us, is that we shoot with the Fujifilm X series cameras. At the moment the X100, X-Pro1 and X-E1 are the models being used by the collective, but I'm sure other models will become available to us, and of course we can't wait to get our hands on the new XF lenses as they come available.

Kage Collective has been simmering away in the background for a few months, taking shape and getting refined ready for todays launch. It's been difficult not to let it slip a few times, especially on Twitter. I'm excited and thrilled to be a part of this collective and couldn't wish for a better group of photographers to collaborate with. To say we're on the same wavelength would be an understatement! So please take a look at the brand new Kage Collective website (built by our very own Patrick LaRoque) and have a look at our launch stories. The site will be updated regularly and will definitely give us all a bit of pressure to go out with our Fuji X cameras and document life as we see it!

The photo above is taken from my first story on the Kage site 'Running Into Darkness' which was shot on the streets of Italy this year. As you can see, my style is my style, so if you're a regular on my 35mmStreet blog and you like my black and white photography, you should take a look at the Kage website. If you're not familiar with Patrick, Paul or Robert's work, you really are missing out on some great photography. Let me know in the comments what you think.