ASTURIUS PHOTOS - NORTHERN SPAIN

Asturius Food & Travel Magazine - Images by carl pendle


Last week I returned from a Food and Travel assignment for a magazine and here is a slide show of the ones appearing in the magazine. Hope you like what the art editor choose.

EHRIN MACKSEY - A FINE FILMMAKER

I saw the above clip today and thought it was so powerful I watched it two more times. It was filmed by Ehrin Macksey, a photographer/documentary filmmaker based in Hanoi, Vietnam. He uses the canon 5d mark II (same camera as I use) and to great effect. He mixes the video with black and white stills which really adds something to the piece. The story is really sad and I urge you to watch it.

I'M NOT A TERRORIST

At first glance you might think this man to be a terrorist or some murdering thug but what's behind him is a bit of a giveaway - he's chopping down sugar cane in a field in Mauritius. Hard, tough work but he was a cheerful man and happily posed for a photograph.

DOOR NUMBERS

Don't ask me what it is about this image that I like but I just do. Maybe it is the regimented nature of the square or the random nature of the door numbers or that each door number is someone's house and behind it lies people's lives - I don't know and you probably don't care but I just like this image. Out of all the pictures I've taken this has probably taken me the longest time and has been the most dangerous - as strange as that may seem. These days in the super wary, on guard, there is a terrorist lurking in every dark alley people tend to be suspicious of someone taking a picture of their door number - and I sort of understand but it is only a number but I got sworn out, chased and generally got some quite unwelcome remarks at what I was doing even though I was doing nothing wrong. As a stock picture it has some potential, or at least that is what I am hoping. Home ownership is a strong concept keyword and these set of door numbers can have a number of meanings. It also has an educational element to it and it might make a good poster for a kids bedroom for parents wanting their child to learn their numbers. Here's hoping it appears in every child's bedroom! CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO LICENSE IT.

BIRD TIED UP

I took this picture quite some time ago when in Indonesia. A lot of Asian's keep birds as pets - and they pay quite a lot of money for them. To ensure they don't escape they tie them up like this. It is incredible sad to see. To stop an animal like a bird from flying must be like putting a person in a straight jacket. So while this picture upsets me it is also one of my favourites because of the emotional tie I have with it. When I look at it and just want to reach into it and cut the rope with a knife. I hope it raises your emotions like it does mine.

ART ON WEBSITE

I have a new picture on the homepage of my website www.carlpendle.com It's a bit different from the usual things I do on my website because it is more of an artistic photograph that has been processed in photoshop using layers of textures and blend modes to give it a very arty feel. I'd like to do more of this work but I do worry there is not much of a market for it to make it worthwhile. Let me know what you think.

PRICE OF MEDICAL CARE

Being a photographer I generally don't do illustrations. One because I mainly use photoshop and illustrator is foreign to me and I don't fancy learning yet another program (I struggle to keep up with photoshop) but I want to create a good stock image to tried to visually get across the rising costs of medical care. We all know how expensive medical cover is in America and it is only a question of time before the NHS struggles to cope and the government will issue some kind of top up NHS tax so an image that shows a heart monitor and a pound sign (I also did one with a dollar sign) I thought might sell quite well. I hunted round all my medical centres near me but none had a heart rate monitor I could photograph so just had to make one up in photoshop which wasn't that hard. I sent it to getty and then today when I had a look at the keywords they had associated with this image it was all about the stock market. So either my image is visually confusing or the getty keyword team is doing a poor job. I'll email them to see why. In the meantime if you like this image and like to license it go to my getty stream CLICK HERE

COUCH POTATO

In a lot of the work I do for getty images most of it is quite serious so thought a few months ago I'd tackle a very common keyword 'COUCH POTATO' and I came up with this image. It is not a new idea but putting a common potato on a couch with a tv remote and make it look funny was a bit of a challenge. I think in all, there are four different photographs in this one montage. It is for sale on the getty site so click below if you'd like to license it.

CLICK HERE

CHRISTMAS CARD

Just ordering my christmas cards today and finally uploaded them to moo.com so looking forward to getting those in the next few day.

NEW 27 INCH IMAC

My new 27inch imac computer arrived this week. And I must say it is a bit of a beast. It is quite difficult getting used to being a few inches away from a screen you'd normally sit 12 feet away watching tv. It really is not much difference from sitting in front of my tv. I switched to a mac laptop last year after having used pcs all my life. Must admit to having struggled a bit with the switch as didn't think it was as easy as people make out. So while I still love my macbook it really is not powerful enough to cope with large picture files and video so am hoping the 27inch well speed things up a bit. I also needed to upgrade the dell monitor I had plugged into the macbook to work from so it was a not brainer to upgrade the computer and a screen at the same time.

THE GREAT BRITISH SUMMER

Over the last two years I've been photographing some of the big summer events in the uk. These were all commissions from various editorial and commercial clients. The events ranged from the Cartier Polo to the Henley Regatta and Goodwood races. The pictures above are just a few from these jobs. To see the 50 or so I've uploaded to my website CLICK HERE

What interesting is that I've cropped in quite close to these shots to show that you don't need to always have wide angle pictures to get a feeling for what's going on. It helps that photographing some of these great british events this summer was that the british public are great to photograph.

CATS OF ASIA

I know cat photos are done to death and another cute cat picture is enough to put you off cats for life. Hopefully my cat pictures are a bit different. For one, most of them were taken in Asia where cats have a tough life. They live off the streets and have to fend for themselves. This gives the cat photos a grittiness that are worlds away from the cute pictures we are used to seeing. After living 5 years in Asia I accumulated quite a few cat pictures from my travels. So many in fact that there is almost enough for a book. I self-published a mock up and sent it to a very publishers in a hope they could see its potential but got a few rejects with the answer that the pictures weren't cute enough. Typical hey! To see more CLICK HERE

GETTY AT CANON PRO SHOW IN LONDON

This week in London at the Canon Pro Photo Solutions event Getty images were part of the free seminars being offered. Tom Hind and Nick Mullord were there. Nick talked about the production side of how images were handled while Tom chatted about the current creative direction.

As a getty contributor I went along to see if I could gleam some gems of information to help me shoot more accurately. What they said actually surprised me. I don't quite know what I was expecting but they seem to want more imagery and don't seem to care that much where it comes from.

For those photographers who might be interested in what they said below is a brief summary, if I can read what my notes say!

If you're a experienced getty stock shooter probably none of this will be new and will only reinforce what you already know, for others, it may help.

Tom started off talking about portraits. They are looking for more realistic pictures of people. The warts and all photos with wrinkles, not necessarily smiling and showing more attitude. He was particular about pointing out they are looking for more on-location lifestyle portraits showing real people doing real things. The real-life things people do. Not people running and jumping on a beach - it could be as simple a someone reading a paper on their bed. There is a lack of imagery of older people doing young people's activities and shots of the less heroic side to people.

Tom then went on to talk about family-type pictures. Similiar to the individual portraits they want pictures that capture the real moments in family life with the gritty backgrounds and unflattering poses that come with them.

He touched on the flickr collection which is probably proving a little unpopular with regular getty contributers especially those who are paying $50.00 to submit a picture to the photographers choice collection. To see flickr photographers have their images signed up without them having to pay a fee is bound to cause some tension.

Flickr, he says, seems to be doing very well, especially in europe. Their flickr scouts have been searching for more european images showing culture of the country of where they were shot, again, less generic imagery.

Anyway, hope that helps a bit. Probably nothing new to regular getty shooters but a bit of an insight into what they are looking for at the moment.

IT'S OK TO BE SEEN

Sometimes, in fact, most of my time as a travel photographer is to go to a destination and blend in (sometimes this is quite hard outside of europe!) The theory is, and it is not rocket science, that by melting into the background and observing you should get better pictures than if you brashly go around clicking your camera at everything that moves. While being observant, patient and respectful of the culture you visit you thereby get better pictures. While this tends to hold true, sometimes being the obvious tourist photographer can produce results. The above picture is an example. This thai lady found my fumbling with my camera equipment worthy of a quick glance and my opportunity to take a nice picture.

CHRISTMAS CARD NEEDS A CAPTION

Every year for as long as I can remember I've been creating my own christmas cards. The early ones were embarrassingly bad such as the time I stuck holly leaves onto a bit of card! This year went for a photograph (stick to my strengths) and in tune with the current economic crisis I thought the above picture quite appropriate. It's a very simple image but it really needs a amusing caption so anyone who can come up with something please get in touch with your effort

PUT EMOTION INTO YOUR PHOTOS

What makes a great photo is a bit like asking what is beauty. It's one of those questions that doesn't really have an answer for. On the one hand you have what makes a great photograph for you and then, the other, what art critics tell us is a great photo. One thing is for sure. Whenever you see a photo that you like I'm willing to bet that there is some element in it that illicits some emotional response. A landscape the creates serenity, a shot that brings back a memory, a news picture that makes you angry, some tragedy that makes you cry. Whatever it is there is some emotion attached to it. Thing is the majority of pictures we take, sorry to say, are sometimes quite boring. We can't always take photos that makes someone burst into tears but try and put a little emotion into a shot and see what happens.

TO SELL OR NOT TO SELL IN STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY

Ahhh, those magic words - what sells in stock photography? If only any of us know. Saying that, with a bit of research you can actually increase your chances of making a sale. Nothing is guaranteed but a little bit of research really does help. So I thought I was on to a bit of a winner with the above shot. I wanted to come up with a picture after reading a newspaper article on Asian's whose populations are getting fatter each year. It wasn't much of a surprise that the influx of western food and culture is making Asians larger. So an image of a chopstick and a french fry summed up what I was trying to say and, hopefully, make it a stock seller. It has been with Getty for about 2 years and hasn't sold once. So there you are - maybe not a good blog post if you want to learn what sells but at least you now know what doesn't!

CHOCOLATE PHOTOS

I'm a big fan of chocolate - shame my waistline isn't. Doing some sweet shoots this week for stock and this is just one of many.

LEICADREAM

Call me a sucker for a lost cause or just plain stupid - I don't know. But today saw a post about one man's quest to buy a leica and some lenses (http://www.leicadream.com/). But leica's aren't cheap and this man can't afford one so he set up a website and asked people to donate - And I did! In return he put one of my pictures and weblink on his site (see above screenshot).

I'm hoping he gets his leica and one day becomes a famous photographer and he owes it all to fools like me. Or maybe he doesn't quite make the $15,000 he needs and instead buys a cheap compact. But whatever happens hats off to the man for having the gaul to give it a go.

HELP-PORTRAIT

This is a great idea. Let's get involved.

TRAVEL WRITING & PHOTOGRAPHY

Today I tweeted a blog article http://pauldymond.blogspot.com/ from Paul Dymond as he talked about the difficulty of doing both the photography and writing on an assignment for his editorial clients. If you have time you should really read his entry but the gist of the piece was that when doing both there is a compromise in the end result - poorer pictures and words.

What prompted his post was his recent job for DestinAsian Magazine where he was working solely as a photographer and he stated how unusual it was these days. With editorial budgets being cut magazines are looking for writers to be photographers and photographers to be writers and, while cheaper, the end product isn't nearly as good.

I can testify to this as I've done a fair bit of photography and writing to know that one always suffers. Being a photographer I concentrate on my strengths so the writing suffers. Like DestinAsian, I do a lot of work for Food & Travel magazine, and they know the value of sending a photographer and writer on most of their features and it makes the magazine all the more stronger for it especially when food writing is such an art form to do well. Long may it continue.

THE FUTURE OF MEDIA

As a photographer and someone involved with visual media this is quite exciting. Your newspaper or magazine of the future will be a moving interactive beast. Whether you or I like it or not, print media is dying and new digital technologies mean we are all going to be faced with reading and seeing things on a flexible screen of some description. It may mean it will bring more people back to reading because it will mean we will get to read and see the things we really want to read - items of news or entertainment that we have chosen to receive. Either via our iphone, kindle, or whatever the new technology will be at the time. I do it already on my laptop but to have something more portable would be handy. Something to think about that is not that far away.

PORTRAIT FROM TURKEY

I was looking through some past pictures from a job I did in Turkey and this picture stopped me. It was taken early one morning at a cafe in the countryside far away from any of the tourist hot spots of Turkey. This lady was taking a break from cooking breakfasts and she has look that is so mesmerizing - I wouldn't dare compare it to the famous Afghan girl by Steve McCurry but there is something about it that reminds me of that picture.

TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

Some kind soul has nominated me for 'Photographer of the Year' award at this years Travel Press Awards. So chuffed that someone has put my name forward. I guess all I have to do now is enter some photographs!

ETSY UP AND RUNNING

For some time now I've been meaning to get an etsy shop front up and running to try and sell some of my polaroid prints from asia that have been mentioned a couple of times on this blog. We will see just how well they sell but at least they are now out there and available if people want to buy them.

Here is the link to the shop front CLICK HERE