Visaginas idea

A small yet significant reflection

This morning whilst waiting for the kettle to boil I held a bowl up by the window, used a scrap piece of white paper as a little reflector and was amazed.

Which one of these two and why?

Semi-Greeks

Try to work on something you feel a real personal response to.

Hmmmmm. Ok, weighing up the time limitations and the fact that just about everything here is still literally Greek to me, how about something like this for my first multi-picture assignments?

Almost without exception, all the people I know here in and around Volos are in some way connected with another, second country. Some came here as young women 50 years ago, married locals and got thoroughly wrapped up in Greek life and culture. Others have brought their entire families over to start new lives. A section of both of these types of people have had children in Greece. The identities of these different-yet-connected people are extremely interesting, especially for somebody like me, who, as an Englishman who gave up living in England years ago, has a particularly strong empathy for exiles and their nearest and dearest.

Not unlike Hercule Poirot, I’ve discovered the most interesting things about some of these people just by having normal conversations with them. Dorothy, a lady from Manchester who married a Greek and had kids here and who I bumped into on a flight back to Greece a few weeks ago, gave a most interesting reply to my question about whether it felt good to be home again as we rode on the bus from Thessaloniki to Volos. Her reply was that she wasn’t home yet. For Dorothy, who’s been living in Greece for some 25 years, home to her it turned out was Volos, but not Greece. Startled at the revelation herself, she told me she’d never really thought about it before. Who is Dorothy?

And who for that matter is Anita (pictured)? Anita appeared before on this blog. She’s the retired American lady whose Jewish grandfather fought Hitler in a German court in the 1930s and won and who came to Greece as a young girl 50 years ago. Immensely proud of her Jewishness, one can only imagine her feelings when she made the immense sacrifice of converting to the Greek Orthodox Church in order to marry the man she fell in love with as was (and still is I believe) required under Greek law. Now living alone, Anita recently started getting involved with the Jewish community here in Volos and is a truly interesting soul.

And just look at 19-year-old Alex. His father is Welsh and his mother is English, and, many years before they divorced they came to Greece to start a new life when Alex was still a toddler. I asked Alex when I first met him whether he felt Greek or English. Alex, born in England, is, he tells me, categorically, completely Greek.

Now Douglas on the other hand, who made a early staring role in one of my Relationships assignments, is a retired Englishman living up on Mount Pilion above Volos with his wife Allanah, herself born in India and having spent most of her life in England, Latvia and Greece. A former financial bigwig at Del Monte, workaholic Douglas suffered a massive stroke four years ago and now has limited use of his left leg, almost no use whatsoever of his left arm, and has also been left with fairly serious brain damage. Who is Douglas now?

Lastly there’s Dimitra, the young woman of mixed English-Greek parentage who’s paralysed from the waist down and who I mentioned briefly in an earlier blog. A girl turning into a woman has got enough on her plate without having to deal with her racial and cultural identity, let alone having to deal with all this as a disabled person. Am I projecting all of this on Dimitra? We’re having a big party tomorrow night and hopefully she’s going to make it along, so I can start finding out then. If not, I’ll call her next week.

Then, after I’ve spoken to everybody and got their permission to photograph them, I’ll start with a short picture story for all of them, something along the lines of what Lizzie mentioned about simple portraits (thanks Lizzie). Working with one of these people will, at least I hope, lead to the opportunity of extending the work into the longer piece as required for the assignment. I like the idea of a thread running through the work. It also fits nicely with my Macedonian butchers project idea, not to mention the identity issues surrounding the people of newly independent Kosovo. Looks like I’m finding my feet. Now all I’ve got to do is find my eye.

Whittling pics

I’ve got my Kosovo pictures down to just 38 and onto Flickr. Some of them are there for the hell of it, some of them for the sheer lo-resness of it, and some because I truly believe they’re good photographs. Time to step back again for a few days before I go on to select the final 12 or so. Just to clarify for those who thought I’d knocked this one squarely on the head, I have indeed given up any attempts to pull together a series of images that create a fluid image of the day, but I’d still like to have a set of strong images. I think I deserve that if nothing else.

Tight

I’ve received several comments from several different sources over the last couple of months about some of my photographs being shot too tight. Sometimes I fully agree. At other times I’m not so sure. Take this one for example. Personally I really like the fact that the two main characters don’t quite fit into the frame (and I especially like the policeman’s foot not being there). It lends a certain character to the shot that I feel would be lost if they we both completely in shot. The things I don’t particularly like about this picture are the space over their heads and the fact that the background is in focus. The latter fault is one of the pitfalls of a point-and-shoot camera, and there’s not a lot that can be done about it, but if I really had to change something about it’d be the loss of some of the empty space above their heads. Funny also that the classic faux pas that nobody picked up on this one is the lamppost growing out of the cowboy’s head. Oh well. I’m always interested to hear criticism, but sometimes it seems to me that there’s no reason for the criticism other than that’s sort of what’s supposed to be said. I realise that as a still relatively inexperienced photographer I have little defence for my work, and that one of my main objectives over the next few months of the course is to produce a body of work that pushes all the right buttons. The late saxophonist John Coltrane continues to be criticised in many circles for his later work because to them it sounds like he’s simply making a racket. Firstly, sometimes there’s nothing wrong with a racket, but for me the thing that makes John Coltrane ultimately listenable is that he spent years playing his soprano and tenor saxophones in a more traditional way and was by all accounts one of the finest saxophonists around. It’s back to the old cliché again of not being able to break the rules if you don’t know what the rules are, and I suppose one of the main reasons for doing this course is to learn what the rules are. I’m very serious about this, even to the point that I really want to learn how to shoot classic, almost boring photography, which will provide me with both a base and a reason to branch out. I’m waffling again, but I do just want to get this down and on the record. If the tightness of my photography is my trademark mistake then so be it. There are other mistakes in my work, and sometimes I see them as the humanising factor of my photography. I need to work harder on my mistakes until I’ve got them all absolutely perfect.

Pondering poodles

Reading Anna's blog recently I was reminded of seeing a poodle wearing earrings in Stanmer Park near Brighton many years ago. Then, on turning a corner on the way to buy some blank DVDs today I was confronted with the little fella above. He moved fast and the shutter delay on my Nokia didn’t help, but I think I captured the essence of the beast as he passed. Sniggering aside, there’s something much stranger going on with these dressed-up doggies than first meets the eye. Surely.

A very simple test

Breaking news from the People’s Republic of Wimbastan and other stories

After two false starts I finally managed to have my latest one-to-one (complete with appraisal) with Paul in the People’s Republic of Wimbastan last night, a satisfying full stop to the end of the first paragraph of the course (or something like that). When the still sadly limited time has been available, the past two months have been a roller-coaster ride in the company of those fabulous travelling companions education, philosophy, soul-searching, idiocy, delight, camaraderie, frustration, madness, joy and the rest. As we move on to the next level of the course I believe I’ll be bringing to it stronger ideas about what it is I’m supposed to be doing with photography (well I’ll have to really, won’t I?) as well as a more technically proficient approach. Of the many interesting things Paul said last night, it was interesting to hear him say that he thought I should be bringing more of the creativity I show with my Nokia into my work with my ‘proper’ camera. I never quite saw it that way before, thinking rather that I should be taking a more serious approach with the dSLR, but as this doesn’t seem to be moving as fast as it could be then maybe I should lighten up a little and enjoy my big camera more rather than being scared of the beast. As I sit here writing this I’m pinging messages backwards and forwards to my business colleague in Holland on the subject of our travel schedule for the next few months. Having this in place will be one less thing to worry about, as I’ll have plenty of time to plan assignments due to the simple fact that I’ll know where I’m going to be. One of those places is going to be Albania, although it looks like I’ll go there just after the next (April 16?) deadline. Hopefully I’ll have enough basic experience shooting short picture stories to do one or two little projects as I do a complete clockwise trip of the south of the country. I’ll also be meeting up with Bevis Fusha in Tirana around May 1, which I’m really looking forward to. I got a nice email from him today. My longer-term thoughts, in particular about the Borders project (in my dreams at least) are on a series of portraits of ‘Macedonian’ butchers living on either side of the ‘Macedonian’ border. Also, if my plans with Nokia move in the right direction I also hope to be in Cuba in the autumn, messing around with mobile phones and, time permitting, examining the border between the Communist island and the extraordinarily strange and increasingly controversial US military base at Guantanamo Bay. Of course all of this could easily change, but you’ve got to have a dream.

Thessaloniki dreaming

Thessaloniki (Salonica, Saloníki, سلانيك, Selânik, Солун, Sãrunã, Selanik etc, and originally named Thessalonike sometime around 315BC after a half-sister of Alexander the Great), Greece’s second largest city and the capital of the controversially-named northern Greek region of Macedonia, lies some 230km (143 miles) north of Volos at the end of a jaunty little three-hour bus ride past a fabulous Venetian cliff top castle and the majestic peaks of Mount Olympus. A busy commercial port city, part modern yet retaining much of its ancient Ottoman, Jewish and even Byzantine architecture, the city and the area around it offers many ideas for possible borders projects. In 1903, a group of students from Veles and Kratovo (both now in the other Macedonia, over the international border in FYROM), the so-called Gemidzii, carried out a series of bomb attacks in Turkish and Western companies in the city and are believed by many to be the world’s first suicide bombers. Anyway, apart from being lots to think about, all of this has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that a few days ago, realising that my temporary stay in Greece might possibly turn into something a little longer and that I haven’t really been getting too involved in the country (or for that matter in the photographic history of the country) I started looking into things. Living in something of a backwater, a quick session typing variations of the words photography and Thessaloniki (the closest big city) into Google revealed that the only photographic museum in the country can be found there. Also wanting and needing to further my investigations into lighting and failing to turn up any photographic shops in Thessaloniki using Google, I thought I’d email the museum to ask them about shops. To cut what’s already looking to be a long story short, I got from them the name of a street in Thessaloniki famous for its photographic shops and decided a trip to the city was vital. So, after the aforementioned jaunty bus ride I emerged yesterday lunchtime from the huge spaceship that is Thessaloniki’s main bus station, map in hand, and heading for the street in question, Venizelou. It turns out there are two decent photographic shops on the street, the smallish and imaginatively named Fotovision at Venizelou 15 and the beautiful beast on three floors at Venizelou 42 that is Kochelakis. Horrified at the price and mind-boggling choice of professional lighting equipment as well as everybody’s personal opinions on what I really do need to get, I picked up a few brochures, had a couple of enlightening conversations, felt like a dirty old man in a cheap Soho peep show as I passed a glass cabinet full of Hasselblads, and headed to the port and the photography museum thinking about how useful it’d be to have a database of good photographic shops all over the world that can be easily accessed on a mobile phone (does one exist already I wonder?). Located inside an old port building that also contains the city’s museum of cinemaphotography, I slipped into the main entrance past three Albania builders hard at work on renovating the downstairs toilets and found a completely empty gallery staffed by a man behind a counter and busy café full of people with interesting hair next door. The museum website gives the distinct impression that the museum has a permanent collection, but the reality is, so the nice man behind the counter told me, that they only put on temporary shows and I’d arrived right in the middle of two of them. There were however a number of books for sale, which I flicked through, finding some good stuff, jotting down a couple of names for future research (I was particularly taken by the Greek photographer with communist leanings Spyros Meletzis who took thousands of wonderful black and white photographs during the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949. After a mineral water in the café (see the photograph from the previous post) I headed back to the bus station via the central market (see above), where I took a few pictures on my Nokia, notably of butchers. There’s something truly intriguing about butchers and their goods, and when you’re already thinking about war, and how ordinarily warm, docile men such as the charming butchers of Thessaloniki can be turned into cold killing machines when it comes to feelings of national pride etc, you do start to fantasise about such interesting border-related projects like a series of portraits of butchers living on either side of an internationally sensitive border. Other interesting dreams to come out of my trip to Thessaloniki included the outrage-driven idea of creating a Greek National Photography Museum in Volos (why not? It’s more central than Thessaloniki and there seems to be plenty of great local photographers both past and present whose work could liven up the walls) and a project Antrim would certainly be interested in, working title Second Light, inspired by mixed thoughts on the extraordinarily beautiful quality of Greek sunlight and how it could be used to charge batteries via photovoltaic cells that would in turn run a photographic portrait studio run entirely on renewable energy. Oh, and among the leaflets I picked up earlier in the day at the photography museum are a couple relating to Greek photography competitions. Those interested should take a look at www.citynights.gr and www.photobiennale.gr. I’m sure there are many more, and I hope to get more proactive in this area and to bring further news as time progresses. My Easter project remains on the back burner until later this week when I’ve got a better idea of exactly where I’m going to be over the next four weeks.

Honour thy error as a hidden intention

I used to do a four-hour trip regularly on the bus in Lithuania between Visaginas where I lived and the country’s second city, Kaunas. I’d do all sorts of things to pass the time, including taking photographs out the window on my mobile phone. Occasionally I’d see something coming up and quickly point the Nokia out the window only to find I’d got a completely overexposed photograph. As my Nokia’s fully automatic, this technique of pointing it somewhere dark then suddenly pointing it where you want to take a picture and getting the shot before the auto-exposure has had time to adjust became something that, occasionally, I now use for effect. Whilst sitting in the café at the Photography Museum in Thessaloniki yesterday, looking through the other visitors and a huge window to the harbour outside, I saw the chance the grab something interesting. The intense difference between the light in the café and the light outside meant the only way I was going to get pleasing results from what was a pleasing image was to do what I just explained above.

Kosovo update

On my way to Thessaloniki and the only photography museum in Greece. In the spare moments I get I've been editing the Kosovo photographs down. I'm almost ready to lay it to rest and present something in the nature of a series of pictures of the day with an overall bit of text and captions for each. Good practice for the current assignment, and although the pictures will be full of flaws I have to say I'll be happy to finish it. I think it's important to show what I did, warts included. Have a splendid weekend everyone.

Strange low light setting on my Sony DSC-H3

Accidental LED torch experiment No1

Punishing portraits

Having worked late last night and secured myself a little free time today to experiment with finding one or two portrait subjects to practice on today, I was a little more than depressed to discover that this morning brought with it the first cloudy day in Greece in (my) living memory. For a couple of hours in the morning, the sun usually strikes Volos from the east, poking its brilliant rays into every shop window pointing in its general direction. Add to this wonderful quality the fact that many of the shops in Greece are visually intriguing and quite often exceedingly beautiful (or just plain odd) and you’ve got yourself a large choice of places to walk into off the street and see if you can arrange a spontaneous shoot. Or at least you have if it’s light enough or if you’re the owner of a simple lighting kit to overcome the lack of luminosity. Soldiering on (at least I’ve now got a tripod, which is already proving to be more than handy) I managed to get a couple of short spontaneous sessions, first with Irini, who sells the basic ingredients for making traditional Greek sweets out of an almost empty shop with a fabulous, enormous stainless steel fridge at the back of it. Despite Irini’s best efforts at putting every light on, her position far from the window meant that although there was a decent(ish) amount of light, I could see that owning a small portable light to put on her would’ve made the pictures I took just that little better (and, dare I say, more professional). Looking over the shots I see once again that I make far too many appearances in reflective surfaces (which themselves could benefit with the occasional addition of a polarising filter), although I was at least aware of them this time. Am I going blind? Also I’m still subfreezing from picturing what I see in the viewfinder as a two-dimensional picture. Some shots came out so completely different to how they appeared to me. Anyway, more experience and, despite this most gruelling of assignments I continue to improve with each scenario I create. A few grabbed street shots provided a little diversion before heading off to see my carpenter man who once again wasn’t where he was supposed to be. A little further up the road I found an old man in a strange shop selling plastic wrapping in bulk amounts. His environment consisted of a bare room lit by two tiny light bulbs, he spoke no English, I was worried about the light but thought I’d see what I could do anyway as he was quite interesting to look at, and his place of work was equally interesting. Then back home to collect a dog I’ll be looking after for the next few days, as if my life wasn’t full enough already. Hey ho. One other interesting think today was a telephone call I got in the morning from a retired Greek dress designer who I met at the ladies’ do on Sunday evening (she’s the one at the front of the picture with the glasses and 1920s haircut). Among other things she once designed a dress for the late Princess Diana, and, a bit of a local celebrity she’s just got herself a permanent exhibition of her work in a museum here in Volos. She wants to meet me on Thursday to see if I can take some pictures of it. Watch this space. Back briefly to the portraits I realise that I want to create simple, pure ones, with no flashiness beyond what the scene presents to the naked eye. A bit of fun with the subject and a few props is always allowed I think, but ultimately I like to work as simply as possible and without too many pretensions. Among the multitude of other tasks ahead I need to work on lighting. These poor blogs get grabbed whenever I get a spare minute, and I fear I almost never write down what I really want to say. I think what I really want to say can be said with photography. Again, make more time to take photographs!

Now then Henri

Now then Henri, not a bad effort. I think there’s perhaps just a little too much space under the man who’s jumping. I believe the tension would work better if you made that gap a little smaller. And the chap on the left, if you’d crouched down just a fraction his head wouldn’t be touching the cross-beam on the fence reflection. The symmetry really is all wrong here. And I see you have a tendency to lean just a little to the left with a lot of your pictures. For me the angle of the fence here isn’t really working. You really do need to think and look at every part of the frame before you press the shutter. Find the shot and work it until you’ve got exactly what you want. What do you mean you cropped it? At this early stage on the course it’s important that you show me exactly what you framed when you took the shot. When you’ve improved your technique then you can branch out and experiment. I know there’s not a lot of time between assignments but unlike everyone else you don’t really have an excuse, do you? Isn’t it true you’re one of the Cartier-Bressons, and that your father pays you a handsome allowance to indulge in your hobby? You show a lot of promise Henri, and there’s every chance you could make it as a photographer. You may not excel, but with our help you could find yourself working for one of the better provincial French newspapers. See you at the group tutorial on Wednesday.

Adventures on a sofa with 18 lively ladies

Problems are fun to solve and failures generate the best successes. It’s therefore my great pleasure to report that tonight’s session with the international women’s group was both fun and has spawned many good things for the future. After Denise had made me a nice cup of tea and offered me a sandwich and a slice of cake, and after I’d told my life story several times over to a wide variety of expat wives, I dragged all the lights I could find in Anita’s tiny little house into her equally diminutive living room, squeezed 18 ladies on and around the sofa, used the back of an armchair as a tripod and then hopped on top of a small step ladder to get a more interesting albeit worryingly wobbly camera angle knowing full well that I wasn’t going to get a masterpiece and fired off a few shots. I’d really wanted to use the dining room to take the pictures as it looked far more homely and visually interesting, especially with a table full of sandwiches, cakes, teapots and other nibbles on it, but as it was impossible to fit everyone in the room let alone arrange them in it, I had to go for the living room. Offers were made to cull a few ladies, but I’d decided it was all or nothing. The reflection in the painting over the sofa was driving me nuts (see above) and the simple fact that there just wasn’t enough light to get a good shot meant I still hadn’t got my second portrait assignment done but I had made a lot of useful contacts and got an offer to take some photographs of Angela, her husband (the local Greek Evangelical priest) and their four children. Back to work tomorrow and I’m embarrassed at being so late with this project, but like I said earlier, I’m learning so much at the moment, and I only wish I had more time to dedicate to all of this.

Time etc

Two extraordinary-looking 17-year-old girls, one dark, the other blonde, just rode past me on a little motor scooter. I was carrying my dSLR and I didn’t take a shot. Is it because it’s Sunday and I’m hung over? Maybe it’s because I’m still a bumbling amateur? And, come to think of it, do I really want to be the kind of person who’s always looking for photographs?

I’m just back from a therapeutic Sunday afternoon stroll down to the fishing boats and back, the glorious Greek light playing on every crumbling, shiny, epidermic surface. I could get used to wandering the streets with a camera all day and every day. Take away your eye and your technical capabilities and what you’re left with is time. The subject keeps cropping up. I want more time.

Last night hordes of us drove down the coast to see a couple of friends murder several Irish tunes in a beachside taverna. Sat at our large table were a young dark-eyed girl and her identical mother. In her early 20s Dimitra is paralysed from the waist down and is, in a nutshell, stunning. My friend Anita, the retired American Jew who converted to the Greek Orthodox faith before I was born and who I’ve mentioned before is teetotal, and as the meal to accompany the food came off a set menu including wine, I had her half litre as well as mine. Pleasantly giggly I took the opportunity of somebody’s need for the toilet to steal their chair and get to know Dimitra. I’ve got her phone number and I want to photograph her.

Back to today, I realised that one of the things I enjoy most in life is talking to strangers. This is a prerequisite of my day job, and is something I automatically do when I’m taking photographs in the street. It’s not that I want to take the kind of pictures of people that involves asking them for their permission, it’s more the other way round. I take the portraits I take when I’m out because it means getting to meet people. I’m going to have to look into this closer at a later date. Right now I need to lie down for a bit before heading off to Anita’s apartment in the hope that the light will be kind enough to allow me to take a group portrait of the international women’s group here in Volos. They're an interesting bunch and I realise I don’t take enough pictures of females.

Oh, and about Sebastião Salgado. I’d never seen anything of his taken before his Kuwait pictures, and was struck by Paul’s comments about his early work having dreamy, mystical overtones. This is pretty much (in my opinion anyway) a Latino trademark, seen in Latino art from the Cuban theatre of Teatro Buendía to the films of Luis Buñuel to the novels of Fidel Castro’s buddy Gabriel García Márquez. Personally I’m not a fan, but it’s good that it’s out there. Salgado’s business model is more interesting than his work, and I was glad more for being told about that than being shown his actual work. The other thing about him is that he’s not from the USA. Amazing that documentary photography’s one and only superstar hails from a Third World country.

Albanian Sworn Virgins

Now here’s a funny thing. As my work schedule slowly builds up to a travelling crescendo I need to work into my studying, I’ve been looking into potential photographic projects in the countries I’ll be working in over the next few months. Commissioned by Thomas Cook Publishing to write a new guidebook to Albania it naturally follows that I’m going to be spending a reasonably large amount of time there this spring. During my initial research into the country I found out about the so-called Albanian Sworn Virgins, Albanian women from the north of the country as well as in parts of Montenegro and Kosovo who live their lives as men. The leading English-speaking expert on the subject is the English academic Antonia Young, who among other things has written a rather fascinating book on the subject. After contacting her it not only turns out that she’s good friends with my company’s business partner in Albania but also wrote a piece for the Guardian last year, which she sent me a pdf of. She also sent me the email address of the photographer who provided the pictures for the article, an Englishman by the name of Ben Speck. A quick Google revealed the extraordinary fact that Ben Speck graduated with an MA in photojournalism and documentary photography in December 2006 at the London College of Communication. How spooky is that? It turns out his final course project was about the Albanian Sworn Virgins, and the Guardian piece was commissioned after his final show was spotted by somebody at the newspaper. I now have to go back to the drawing board, but at least I do have the comforting thought that the course is producing professional results. I’ve emailed Ben, and am looking forward to getting some more information from him. Watch this space!

Kosovo

About 24 hours ago, just before going out for the evening, the thing that I knew full well already but was in a rather blissful state of denial over suddenly entered my waking consciousness and slapped me on the ears. Ouch! And, as so often happens with things like this, nature’s second opinion arrived, in this case in the form of a sentence buried in Paul’s Easter project brief email that arrived today. Trying to make sense of almost 700 photographs taken willy-nilly during my trip to Kosovo last month and turn them into a photo essay has undoubtedly been an education, but as I think I can safely say on behalf of all of us, education isn’t always a pleasure. No pain, no gain. Rather than waste any more of my or anyone else’s valuable time I believe it’s wise to abandon my absurd ideas and be happy with what I learnt from the experience. Not to say that the exercise was a total waste of time. Far from it in fact. What I’ve got from my Kosovo trip are a handful of interesting pictures that I can add to the small body of work I’ve been creating with my Nokia since I bought it eight months ago, a fact that when I think about it is something to be rather proud of. The entire exercise taught me an enormous amount, and it’s time to add these experiences to my growth as a serious photographer and move on. Even nicer than the value the experience had added to my own development is the knowledge that there are others on the course who were there for me when I needed them. What a fabulous roller coaster of a ride this course is.

Portrait of a piercer

Marios is a 32-year-old former chef who with the exception of a two-year sojourn cooking in Utrecht has lived in Volos all his life. Four years ago he did what so many people want to do with their lives and turned his passion into his business, and now shares a small shop with a tattoo artist just around the corner from my apartment. Catering to everyone from teenage rebels to the more respectable (and discreet) members of Greek society, the heavily tattooed Marios earns a living poking holes in people, which he told me he considers to be first and foremost an art form. I’d chosen Marios as the subject for my straightforward portrait, but it was difficult to not venture into photographic territory that included both the place where he worked and the tools of his trade. Shooting what was effectively two rolls of colour 36-exposure film on my dSLR, I took a torch and a strong light bulb just in case but ended up using only available light to take photographs of Marios in a few different settings including inside his shop and against a nearby metal fence that was screaming out to be used as a backdrop (as well as the obvious accoutrements of his trade, Marios appears to me to have a certain metallic quality that I believed the fence would help show). Getting to his shop early, I found Marios doing his daily chores involving mopping the floors and feeding the shop’s pet iguana. It seemed logical to grab a few shots of both of these as well. One of two of them turned out quite nicely I believe. Despite Marios’ basic English skills it was reasonably easy to work with him, the major problems being my own reservations as directing him too much. Having said that, I found myself moving him around more than I imagined, and again I think the effort was worth it. The pictures I took were taken on three separate occasions, first a couple of simple test shots to look at and think about before I went and did the proper shoot, then the proper shoot itself, which was broken in two by a gap of an hour while we waited for his business partner to turn up with the shop’s one and only head torch, which I thought would make an interesting accessory and which the tattoo artist forgot to bring. In total, the entire shoot took about 20 minutes. I must say I’m rather pleased with what’s in effect my first ever portrait session and am very much looking forward to having Paul tear me another new arsehole.

A powerful feeling?

Oh what fun to be in a country where the Communists are still active. Just as we’re wrapping up today’s group tutorial, with the smell of uncollected rubbish wafting in through the window, another strike-related event takes place and the entire city plunges into darkness for today’s power cut. At first angry and upset I quickly realise there’s a positive side to the lack of electricity and head into the streets to photograph the chaos in the darkness on my phone. Just as I’m getting into the swing of things and thinking these Communists aren’t so bad after all the electricity goes back on again and I find myself getting angry and upset again for the complete opposite reason of why I was angry and upset just 20 minutes before. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. On an entirely different note, Kosovo has just announced a competition to write the newly founded state’s brand new national anthem. Open to all, the lucky winner not only gets the honour of having their very own masterpiece played at the Olympics and other high profile events around the world until the Russians start WWIII, but there’s €10,000 thrown in as a prize for good measure (no pun intended).

Cuba 50

In November 1998 I directed, shot, produced and edited five short films in Cuba for the UK broadcaster Channel 4 as part of the channel’s celebration of 40 years of the Cuban revolution (see stills, left). Ten years and one president later and I think it’s time to go back. Whether there’ll still be a Cuban revolution eight months from now is anyone’s guess. Mine is that regime change is unthinkable in 2008 and perhaps inevitable the following year. Whatever happens, January 1, 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution and I want to revisit the island, this time as a photographer. My original brief was to film a series of short stories about ordinary people (ordinary in the West that is). This time I want to take photographs of ordinary people. Ideally I want to do this using a mobile phone and I’d like to get a mobile phone company to support the project financially. Utterly clueless, I’m writing this for the benefit of anyone out there with any ideas and/or connections.

Further adventures in portraits

I found the local headquarters of the Greek Communist Party, a time-warp if ever there was one, complete with pictures of Lenin, hammers and sickles and all the rest. I arrived without an appointment and met a nice chain-smoking lady called Olga who told me that individual portraits were out of the question as they were all communists (this didn’t tally with the pictures of Vladimir Ilyich scattered around, but I wasn’t going to argue). We agreed that a group portrait would be the best idea. Of course the whole thing’s gone to a committee to decide. I’m not holding my breath.

Back when I was sourcing ideas for my person at work brief one of the places on my list was the exceedingly photogenic workshop of a carpenter not far from where I’m staying here in Volos. Today I walked past his place on the way somewhere else and with the clock ticking I made my second visit without an appointment of the day. The dim lighting is too good to miss here, along with the way the place looks and the way he looks. I shot a few test pictures at 1600ASA to get some ideas and will go back tomorrow morning at 9am to shoot more. The guy speaks bad English so it could be fun, plus he keeps a large Doberman, who tried to make love to me every five seconds. The things we do for our art.

There’s a tattoo and piercing place in Volos and on my way home I popped in, again without an appointment, as I was sure there must be somebody in there worth pointing a camera at. Marios does all the piercing and has agreed to be photographed on Thursday morning.

I’ve got to call the orchestra back in 40 minutes. The sun’s behind the clouds for once, which for me is wonderful for photographing people, although I’ve no idea how a group portrait will work in such lighting conditions. There’s still a chance of course that they may say no.

Portraits, catch-up etc

Back from Ljubljana. An interesting few days, including such notable events as failing to find Tito’s leg and the man three seats in front of me on the plane from Vienna to Athens (I now look at the photography in magazines, including in-flight magazines, with a new, critical eye, sensing what the photographer was thinking and how they worked at getting the perfect compositional balance as well as what was going through the picture editor’s mind) having a totally out of control screaming fit as the plane banked steeply to the left immediately after a windy, wobbly take off. Interestingly (perversely?) I found myself chuckling at this, as I suddenly realised it was exactly 13 years to the day since I last sat on a plane with somebody screaming on it, that time being my first flight to Cuba on board a former Aeroflot Tupelov now in the hands of the national Cuban airline Cubana, its starboard engine sounding like somebody just poured a bucket of sand in it as it came in to make an emergency landing in Varadero during a particularly lively tropical storm. Thankfully we didn’t crash either time, a fact I was more than grateful for this time having just splashed out €20 on a copy of François Truffaut’s 1966 masterpiece Fahrenheit 451. I don’t think I know a film that possesses so much atmosphere. There’s something quite impossible to explain about it regardless of the horror behind the premise of the story. If you’ve never seen it then I suggest you track down a copy. Julie Christie was never better and Oskar Werner was never quite so odd. Shot by a youngish Nicolas Roeg, visually the film is a treat, featuring a host of ultra-low-budget sets and several scenes that were reversed during editing. The film was a flop on release, but it’s now considered a classic.

Having worked a ridiculous amount of hours during the previous fortnight and once again done a considerable amount of travelling I decided to give myself three days off work to wind down as well as concentrate on the course. I’d organised a portrait session in Ljubljana with one of Slovenia’s new rich businessmen but time for both of us proved impossible to make the date. I thus arrived back in Greece on Sunday afternoon with three days to go before portrait deadline and three portraits to shoot. Eager to get out of work mode as soon as possible I went out with a bunch of friends on Sunday evening, the day before the start of Lent when the whole of Greece becomes a carnival, everyone dresses up in stupid costumes, and people eat vast amounts of food. My point and shoot camera was still in my pocket, so I took a few interesting pictures without flash, this time with Homer’s voice added to Paul’s mumbling away in the back of my head every time I pressed the shutter. Last week in Ljubljana was also the first time I’d shot stuff for a city guide using my new knowledge. It certainly had an effect of just about everything I took a picture of, but looking at the finished results I still see I’ve got a lot to learn. I’m comforted by the memories of starting other things that I went on to become exceptionally good at, and what an idiot I was at the start. Not to say that my photography isn’t improving, but as Jono and myself were discussing last week, the strains of work really do eat into college time. What limited amounts of free time I have at the moment that I can put into photography more than often come with tiredness and a difficulty in giving the subject 100%. My plan for the next few months is to move further away from work and concentrate more and more on the photography. Just exactly how I’m going to do this without moving into a tent I haven’t quite worked out yet. A more partisan approach to the fact that I’ve got a surprisingly large number of filthy-rich friends would do the trick, but my irritating work ethic continues to get in the way.

Anyway, the party on Sunday night reminded me that Greece was going to be closed the next day (yesterday), effectively turning my three days into two. It’s a good job I love a challenge. I’m also relishing the constant struggle of trying to find subjects and negotiate with them in a country that still remains a mystery to me and whose language I don’t speak. Although it was entirely the right decision to leave Lithuania I can’t help thinking every time I have to find a subject to photograph how much easier it would’ve been in Lithuania, where after seven years I new everyone, understood the culture, and spoke the language. Here it’s the opposite. Bah! A couple of friends at our evening out were off to a free concert by the sea the next day, given by the Emory Wind Ensemble from Atlanta GA, currently touring Greece. I tagged along with my dSLR, and managed to corner the orchestra’s director, Scott Stewart, who agreed to let me come along to their dress rehearsal for their evening concert later in the day. A superb challenge for a group portrait, I wanted to get them somewhere outside with their instruments in an informal situation and take some pictures and thought it would be useful to get to know them a little by watching them rehearse and chat with a few of them. They’ve got a busy schedule, and as I write they’re all off on one of the islands but will be back this afternoon, hopefully in the right frame of mind and with enough time to let me photograph them. Watch this space. Never one to miss an opportunity, I thought I’d take some pictures of them rehearsing, which was a pig as the lighting was so bad, I don't know them or their habits, the music they play etc. I felt uncomfortable, didn't get the access I needed (or rather I felt uncomfortable clambering over them as they played) and realised it would never make a college piece as there was no opportunity to control the event. A wonderful experience all the same, looking over what I shot I realise my framing remains appalling. What I see through the viewfinder remains nothing like the finished photograph. Does anybody else suffer from this? One interesting observation, one that keeps rearing its head, is that whenever I take the kind of shots that I feel comfortable taking rather than the ones I feel I should be taking the results turn out better. But of course it’s not my instinct that needs to be developed, it’s the nuts and bolts of the work. Whilst I was waiting for them to turn up at the theatre I was approached by a fabulous-looking elderly Socialist who on learning I was English insisted on shaking my hand due to the fact that I came from the same country where they publish the Socialist Worker and where Karl Marx is buried. He very kindly let me take a quick picture of him (above), and I almost asked him if I could come and take more pictures of him another time. But I didn’t. My friend Anita, who I wrote about before concerning the Jewish bits and pieces I’ve photographed here, has offered to find out if one of Volos’ remaining Auschwitz survivors would mind if I took some pictures of them. I can’t see this happening before deadline if it happens at all, but as I see myself gravitating more and more into the area of portraiture, I can wait. It’s now lunchtime on Tuesday and to date everybody I’ve called about portraits has given, for one reason or another, a negative response. I’m now off to find the local headquarters of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) to see if I can find the main man and get him to agree to me taking pictures of him in his office.

I continue to be annoyed at myself for not making much progress with the Kosovo photographs. As I was really very much experimenting I don’t mind entirely, as I really do have to work hard at working out what it is I want to end up with. I simply don’t have the time at the moment, although I am, slowly, editing the 700 pictures down into a more manageable amount. I’ve got my 12 headings for the series and will continue to work on it, hopefully with the help of others on the course. As well as reading everything there is to know about Slovenia and Ljubljana, I’m also currently reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and, for reasons to daft to go into, two of John Simpon’s three autobiographical books simultaneously. I hope you’re all having as much fun as I am.

Dog's dinner

Appalling weather here in Ljubljana. Met a Swiss guy at breakfast who told me about the two Swiss Cantons of Appenzell and St Gallen where the locals still eat dog meat. This has spoilt my image of Switzerland as the ideal place where the antithesis of everything photojournalistic resides. Eating dog meat is not dull. No time to write. Ljubljana still has plenty of Yugoslav-era relics, including plaques in abundance relating to the Partisans, including the one above.

Levels test

18:04, February 17, 2008. Pristina

The Prime Minister of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi (third from left) arrives at the Grand Hotel after signing the controversial document proclaiming unilateral independence from Serbia for his first public appearance as political leader of the newest country in the world. Somehow I was there on hand along with almost nobody else to capture the event on my mobile phone. The five-star Grand Hotel, whose roof Thaçi was about to be interviewed on, was the lively and entertaining media hub for the day's events. Interesting personal observations here included a complete lack of English-language television on any of the large screens, men in expensive suits pissing in the Gents' washbasins, and, strangely for such an event, no prostitutes.

What on earth am I going to do with all these pictures?

Do technical edit
Sort into groups *
Kill the babies

of course

* It looks not unlike Grand Opera…

1. Overture
2. Journey
3. Bus station party
4. Parade of vehicles
5. Militant march
6. Street scenes around 3pm
7. Hotel
8. Arrival of the Prime Minister
9. Crazy KLA guy in car
10. Evening celebrations
11. Interlude
12. The morning after

And I must remember to send the photographs Martin asked for.