The Documentary Photographer

Last Sunday, I started a series about unique selling points. Important to any business. My first USP was that I’m a documentary photographer.

My second unique selling point is this:

I use a 24mm lens for 80% of my work

One Sunday morning after a shoot I noticed something in my post-production software. I could organize the photographs I had taken the day before by the lens they were taken on. So I did.

To my astonishment, easily 80% of the pictures were taken with one lens: a 24mm wide angle.

The remaining 20% were taken mostly with a 50mm standard lens, with a slack handful using a 135mm short telephoto.

I’d always known that I favoured the 24mm, but never realized the extent. We’re talking borderline addiction.

Wide angle lenses suit documentary photographer very well. Context is important to proper storytelling, and wide angle lenses allow photographers to include plenty of that.

Wide angles also make me more unobtrusive.

That may sound counter-intuitive. After all, isn’t it more unobtrusive to stand well away and use a big telephoto lens?

Oddly enough, no.

If I stand amidst or very near people as if I belong, they soon forget about me.

My wedding clients are often asked why they didn’t hire a photographer, even though I was openly walking among their guests all day.

Same with my corporate shoots. After 15 minutes, people don’t see me any more.

If I were to stand well away with a big lens, people would feel spied on. That would inhibit them and change their behaviour.

Another reason I like my 24mm is that it allows me often to tell two stories at once. Often things happen concurrently that make for a really interesting photograph.

One of my favourite photographs from last year, and a typical example of a wide angle shot. There are two stories that combine to make one. The first story is the bride being readied to enter the church, made more powerful by the smaller second element of the reverend looking on. I was standing right next to the clergyman when I took the picture, but he had long forgotten about me. (c) Roger Overall 2009

I have a Facebook page.

Who doesn’t?

Mine is specifically geared towards my wedding clients, and is designed to encourage interaction between couples and the business.

Thing is, I don’t get on with Facebook at all. Having moved from PC to Mac just over a year ago, I can best describe my feelings towards Facebook as follows: It was surely designed by a PC guy.

Fortunately, I have help. My wife runs the page for me in her role as the business’s marketing angel. I have to say, she does a pretty fab job too: Roger’s Facebook Page.

Here’s a great example of how documentary photography (and a documentary photographer) can be incorporated into a business promotion:

Yes, I really am that plummy when I want to be.

Right now, I should be in London shooting an annual report assignment. It’s a regular gig. But for the second year running, I missed my flight.

Last year, I missed the flight because I confused the arrival time with the departure time. I rolled into Cork airport just in time to see the plane lift off with roughly the same speed as my heart sank into my shoes. That’s quite some feeling, I can tell you. It cost me €100 or so to buy a last-minute ticket on the next flight that evening, but I did make the shoot the next morning and there was a happy ending for all involved. Me especially.

This year, I wasn’t on the flight out of choice. A choice that wasn’t entirely mine, but a choice nevertheless.

The shoot was canceled last Friday at 5.55 PM by a very apologetic client.

For me, that was bad news. Four days later, it still is. January and February are quiet months at the best of times, and a corporate shoot scheduled for next month had already been postponed indefinitely. Losing a second assignment is going to upset the cash flow projections a smidge.

In hindsight, I’m glad the call came on Friday evening. It gave me two days to get my head straight. I sawed a lot of wood and pondered things. (By the way, the wood didn’t last nearly half as long on the fire as I thought it would). I also walked the dog quite a bit. She was thrilled.

Therapy in times of extreme stress. The sawing of wood, not the drinking of beer. (c) Roger Overall

The way I saw it, I had three options:

1. Go to London, visit friends, take in an exhibition or two, drink a pint of bitter. I’d already paid for the ticket, so why not go?
2. Stay at home and use the two days gifted to me by the cancellation to research new clients, finally finish my print portfolio, and make a bunch of appointments for next week.
3. Give up. It’s all far too hard and quite frankly I can’t be bothered anymore. Perhaps insurance brokering is more my thing?

While 1 was appealing, it wouldn’t have got me very far. By this Thursday I’d be back to square one, most likely having bought some outrageously expensive photography book at a shop on Charing Cross Road.

Option 3 would be the hardest of all. My wife has invested far too much of her own spirit in my career to let me walk away from it every time the frikkin’ gods go out of their frikkin’ way to frikkin’ plot against me personally in every frikkin’ way conceivable (they shot JFK you know) there’s a challenge to face. Besides, isn’t insurance just a respectable form of gambling?

So, that leaves option 2.

Yesterday, I took some additional photographs to put into my commercial portfolio.

Today, I worked on those and other image files, compiled a 20-page portfolio and got prints made. Along the way, my printer told me that he thought my work was art. He may have been being kind because I was giving him a cheque at that very moment, but I’ll take the compliment. Anything to lift the spirits.

Tomorrow, instead of shooting annual report photographs in London, I will spend the day on the telephone making appointments for next week.

My biggest regret in all of this is that tonight I missed out on a wonderful meal with friends in Twickenham. We always have haggis and whisky round about now, and a lot of fun. Sigh.

Twitter is a great thing. It has helped me forge new friendships.

Anthony Creswell (@ummera), who owns the Ummera smokery, is one of my new Twitter friends (twends?). That’s not to say we haven’t met face-to-face. Quite the opposite. For a while there we were turning up at the same events and venues throughout Cork city so regularly, Anthony must have thought I was stalking him.

One of the reasons I started following Anthony on Twitter, and eventually looked for a personal introduction to him through my BNI network, was the quality of his salmon, which is quite breathtaking. Anne and I first tasted it after buying some on our way to a holiday cottage in West Cork last June. I can barely stand to eat anything of lesser quality since.

With me, if I like something enough I often want to photograph it in some way. Anthony was more than happy for me to visit the smokery, but an overloaded pre-Christmas diary meant the project was shelved until now.

This morning I was finally able to to negotiate the potholes … craters … look, as an aside, did somebody carpet bomb the Innishannon-Bandon road, or what?

Sorry … where was I?

Ummera, yes.

You cannot imagine a more gracious host than Anthony. He gave me a tour of the smokery, took time to chat about his life and the business over coffee, let me loose with my cameras, and then treated me to a fabulous lunch at his house.

Into the bargain, he’s agreed to let me turn Ummera into a longer-term personal project. I shall return.

Here are some faves from today, along with commentary:

Outside the smokery is a copse, which houses a series of ponds that make up a filtration system for the waste water produced on site. (c) Roger Overall 2010

Frog spawn in one of seven pools that make up the smokery's natural filtration system. (c) RogerOverall 2010

Another of the filtration pools. (c) Roger Overall 2010

The three photographs shown above help place the smokery in its environment and establish a link with nature, which is important given Ummera’s strict organic principles.

Another detail shot that is equally important to the story is this one:

The sharp end of the business. (c) Roger Overall 2010

Finally, a picture that shows the two most important components of the story: the product and the people who make it:

The salmon is so delicate it's translucent in the right light. Tastes damn good as well. In case you're wondering, this is pretty much how the file came out of the camera. (c) Roger Overall 2010

I’ve been thinking a lot about the business lately. In case you hadn’t noticed.

Maybe it’s all part of a mid-life crisis, though why I can’t just buy a Harley like everyone else I don’t know.

Undeniably, all the analysis is due to some dissatisfaction with where the business is at the moment. Don’t get me wrong. It’s traveling down the right road. It’s just not far enough along it. Nor is it traveling nearly half fast enough to my liking.

It’s tempting to say that it’s all the fault of the economy. But that leaves me pretty powerless to do anything about improving my business. The state of the economy is far too great a problem for me to solve on my own. I’d need, you know, at least one other person to help me tackle it. Maybe two. Million.

What I can do is affect the state of my mind when I think about the economy.

So here’s how I choose to see it. The economy could be rosier, yes. That means clients are more discerning when they commission photography. Money’s tight, so they have to get their purchasing choices right. That means photographers have to be crystal clear about their style of photography so clients know what they are getting before they commit funds.

Consequently, photographers who have a clearly distinct style have the advantage over those who don’t. It’ll help them shine out brighter in the economic haze.

It’ll also help them cut through the same haze to identify the right kind of clients to approach in the first place, increasing the chance of a commission.

To do this, photographers need to have a good handle on their unique selling points (USPs).

So over the next few Sundays, I ‘m going to work out my own USPs on this blog. Starting today.

USP 1 – I am a documentary photographer.

This is the most fundamental one, as it underpins everything else I do. It is my passion.

Other photographers live for posed photographs. I live for real moments of history.

Next week: USP 2 – The 80% lens

I had a brief email exchange with another professional photographer today.

He had been approached about photographing a wedding, and the bride had laughed in his face when he had told her his package prices. Thing is, he isn’t the most expensive photographer I know – by a long chalk. Nevertheless the bride turned on him, saying that a well-known photographer in Cork city was offering wedding coverage and an album for €800.

That’s an astonishing figure when you analyze it.

VAT on wedding photography in Ireland is charged at 13.5%, so just under €100 goes straight to the state, leaving €704.85 to cover travel, equipment, office overheads, insurance, and the album (including printing). That’s not even setting anything aside for labour or photographic ability. The latter is something too few photographers consider important enough to charge for, and sadly too few clients rate enough to pay for.

The income tax people will want their share of that €704.85 as well.

Now, you can’t really blame the bride in all of this. €800 including VAT is a pretty attractive proposition from where she is sitting. For the moment anyway. Whether it looks so good after the wedding album has been delivered is another matter altogether.

After all, the only way someone can deliver wedding photography and an album for that kind of money is by cutting corners. Using a pretty big blade.

There is a race towards the bottom in photography at the moment. Photographers themselves are not blameless in this. For many, it will end in tears.

Sometimes I really wonder whether this is the future of wedding photography:

Is this the future of wedding photography? (c) Roger Overall 2010

Flowers on a Flourishing Cake - (c) Roger Overall 2010

I’ve mentioned it before: I really admire the cake bakers here in Cork.

They talk to each other.

They recommend each other.

They all end up doing a roaring trade.

They also make some very fine cakes.

And they are happy to give other exhibitors at wedding shows samples to taste and take home.

Nothing like mint chocolate biscuit cake to get you over the mid-afternoon dip when you’ve been on your feet for four hours.

So, thank you to Karina, Sue, Trish, Ali and Camellia for the great bites over the past two days at the big show at the Silversprings hotel in Cork.

By Flourishing Cakes (Camellia's Confections) - (c) Roger Overall 2010

I travel a bit for my work. At this stage, I have seen more of Ireland than my wife – and she was born here.

Last year, my photography took me as far north in the Republic as Ballymascanlon, as far west as Baltimore, and as far east as Wexford. In one instance, I had to drive from southwest Co. Cork to the top of Co. Louth in one night. I listened to an entire Red Dwarf audio book on the way. Twice.

These photographs are from a wedding I covered in Co. Wexford towards the end of last year. Huge fun, especially as I’ve known both the bride and groom for a couple of years now through BNI.

Three things separate the flower girl from the grown-ups. Height is one. Make-up and alcohol the others. Children often exist in their own world on wedding days; almost as if they are living in a parallel universe. (c) Roger Overall 2009

Two mirrors on either side of the wall and a bit of luck. I managed to get one shot off before the moment passed. (c) Roger Overall 2009

Inquisitiveness makes for great pictures. (c) Roger Overall 2009

There was a Marilyn Monroe moment a few frames before this one, which is why everyone is laughing. (c) Roger Overall 2009

There are two glances here. I'd gone for the big obvious one, waiting until it happened. Then when I was working on the image in post, I noticed the altar girl's quick glance, which lifts this photograph above the average - for me, anyway. (c) Roger Overall 2009

I'd love to know what was said, wouldn't you? This just makes me smile every time. (c) Roger Overall 2009

(c) Roger Overall 2009

One of my favourite photographs from last year, mainly because it was planned. Well, part of it was. I'd noticed that when people walked up and down the corridor, they would be bathed in light for a second. I also knew that the flower girl would be appearing from a door on the right at any moment, so I waited. It took an age, but when she did appear look who she had on her arm. (c) Roger Overall 2009

Generally, I hang back while the bride and groom are waiting to be called for dinner. It's one of the few moments on the day they are just in each other's company and I don't like to intrude. Nevertheless, this is when some very tender moments occur, so I make sure I don't disappear too quickly. (c) Roger Overall 2009

Typically, I finish my standard coverage with a photograph of the bride and groom entering the dining room. It gives a nice end to an album. (c) Roger Overall 2009

Humbled.

That pretty much covers how I felt yesterday.

Humbled for two reasons.

Firstly, Paul O’Mahony (Omaniblog) recommended this blog as one to follow during 2010. He did so in the comments to a post by Jade Craven on ProBlogger. A nomination like that from a man of such substance is the kind of thing that makes your day. It also brings with it some pressure. I mean, I’d better perform now, hadn’t I? I’d better keep you entertained and enlightened for the next 12 months.

The second thing that happened was a brief email exchange with one of the photographers I admire most: Doug Menuez.

In my eyes, Doug Menuez is a giant of modern documentary photography. For two reasons.

1) He can take a picture.

2) He is very generous with his advice, and is the author of one of the most important pieces of writing any photographer will ever read: On Chaos, Fear, Survival and Luck.

Why is the article so important? Well, the unspoken, veiled secret that many photographers carry with them is that they feel hugely cowered by the demands and strains of the business. Me included. Outwardly, we might project confidence and control; inside, we don’t know what the hell is going on. We’re riddled with angst and doubts about our abilities, our purpose, the direction we should take – the list is endless. The result is that we give to photography everything: our relationships, our health, our money, our sanity. Worse: we can’t even see it. All we know is that we are often profoundly unhappy.

Not all photographers are like this. Those for whom the business side comes first generally aren’t. It’s those of us who are photographers for the pure love of photography who are the basket cases.

Ask it to our faces, and we’ll deny it point blank. Unless, you have the honesty of a Zack Arias.

Doug’s article is a blueprint for survival. In it, he gives his own story and outlines how you can survive as a photographer with your passion intact, and how you can thrive happily.

So when Doug Menuez takes the time to view your work and then send you a complimentary email, it gives you a real lift. More than a real lift. It’s humbling.