On the 4th December (which was also Helen’s 33rd birthday!) we both ventured out into the North-West of England and more specifically into Liverpool. Helen was born and raised not too far away in Widnes and so we decided to have a few days ‘Oop’ North.

The reason we were in Liverpool was to meet up with Laura from The Double Negative  in conjunction with our online shop and Notworkrelated adventures! Laura invited us over to their new office over at Static on Roscoe Lane, it couldn’t have been more appropriate!

Static is home to an artists collective combining the talents of tile-makers, hair-dressers, web developers, sound and installation artists and new tenants; The Double Negative. In the past Static was more known for it’s live music but thanks to a license issue they only have one off gigs now but do host social media events throughout the year and seem to attract a lovely bunch of creatives.

The Double Negative are made up of Laura and Mike and along with 40 other contributors they write about all the good things going on in the North-West of England. Really they’re there to keep us informed about what is going on in the arts, music, film and design world. We heard them on 6Music a few months ago with the lovely Lauren Laverne and decided to approach them about our Notworkrelated projects. They said yes and invited us in for an interview!

We soon realised there is a lot going on in Helen’s old backyard of Liverpool and especially from a creative point of view. We were interested to hear about all the DIY artists and venues that are around the city, pop up gallery spaces, gig venues and nice little collectives. Spaces we’re sure we’ll be passing through when we are in the North-West setting ourselves up.

A few places we’d like to check out for our very own field trip sometime soon will be:

- The new Open Eye Gallery, recently reopened down on the Albert Dock in a building called Mann Island (well its newly opened to us but it has just celebrated it’s first birthday!). The Open Eye has always been a gallery to bookmark as it’s the only dedicated photography gallery in the North-West of England and has been long established within the creative industry.

- Camp and Furness – this place sounds exciting doesn’t it? Its an alternative event space home to pop-up shops, bar and eatery, a photographic studio and a boutique hotel where you can book to stay in a caravan! From art installations to camera and comedy vintage markets and street food. This is high on our list of priorities to visit when we are next in Liverpool!

- Baltic Creative (The Baltic Triangle) also located down at Liverpool’s Albert Dock, it’s a creative campus. Once a warehouse district handling the dock trade it is now a growing environment for creative and digital businesses. With places to eat, music to listen to and art to explore.

It was a real pleasure to meet up with The Double Negative and we felt really inspired afterwards. We also ate some very scrummy food at Leaf on Bold Street, we can definitely recommend this place, you may have to wait for a table but the atmosphere and food is very inviting, plus their selection of teas are equally enticing.

Here’s how our interview went…

They’ve managed to context our travel experiences and photography really well and have written some lovely words about our Shop too! In case you missed anything all through January (Not long to go now!) we’re offering 25% off everything until the end of the month, it would be lovely for you to visit and have a browse.

It was a pretty quiet day for the Leica, Helen decided to take a few shots in her yoga class (blog post to come!) and Dave was getting us ready for our move to the new pad on the beach front! With a spot of Wholefoods shopping and a bit of sorting out we eventually moved out of our wonderful home that has been at Matt’s Feel Good Lounge and he ever so kindly offered to give us a lift over to the new place! So we have now moved and are in a little studio space above a garage on the row just back from the Venice boardwalk. We expect noise, skateboarders passing by and bin dumpsters keeping us awake at night. The studio itself though is very nice! Although we will miss the abyss that we had only a mile away.

Dave had found out about the Venice Art Crawl a few days earlier and so it was on our list of things to do for the evening and along with Sarah (from Helen’s class) we started off at Lilly’s on Abbot Kinney for an exhibition opening. This was one of the many venues featured in the art crawl which happens in Venice on the 3rd Thursday of each month. At Lilly’s we received some free wine and nibbles and enjoyed the atmosphere. After a brief chat with the artist Olivier Pojzman we made our way closer to the beach front to seek out some more venues in the crawl. Pretty much most bars on the front were involved, even the apartments were having little events on their rooftops. Eventually though we made our way to the Erwin Hotel where a good few hundred people were dancing, being photographed, interviewed, drinking and so on, and over the road at the no longer in use Gas Station Courtyard were even more people gathering around live performance art, people painting, selling their work, their vintage clothes, dancing to funky house and enjoying the overall vibe. This whole event was the 1st year anniversary of the art crawl and loads of people were there to enjoy it. We were impressed!!

We ended the night in the Canal club, enjoying a few more drinks and listening to a band play motown classics. We need more of this in the UK, an appreciation of local art and music and more live opportunities for people to showcase their talents.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f/2.0, Leica 90mm f/2.8, Zeiss 18mm f/4 ZM & Olympus PEN EP-1, 17mm f/2.8 & 100mm f/2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

Shooting for the Creative Marketplace is the preferred used term for shooting stock photography according to Commercial Photography Consultant Zoe Whishaw. Before I moved away from Leicester I attended a seminar led by Zoe at the AOP Gallery in London. I decided to attend the seminar as shooting for stock is something that Dave & I are interested in whilst we travel along & soak up what we see. I guess it’s a way that we can hopefully make some money back on the trip, but also a new challenge from a photography point of view…shooting with an idea in mind, perhaps thinking about how some of our imagery can be used in this “creative market place”.

Along with other AOP members & a few non-members I went with open ears & mind to see whether I could go away feeling inspired & with a fresh approach to shooting for stock. I knew the seminar wasn’t going to be focused on bland stock imagery, imagery sold in bulk from micro-stock agencies such as i-stock or Shutterstock because the introduction to the workshop described it as offering a more creative approach & thinking about more innovative ways of shooting stock. So in many ways my expectations were high.

Zoe introduced herself as a Commercial Photography Consultant, a title that belongs to very few & one she practically thought up for herself. Her previous 17 years with Getty as a senior creative & current profile of mentoring professional photographers & photo-agents certainly allowed for an insightful & imaginative approach to this workshop.

So what did I learn? To summarise, for Dave & I to be serious in our approach to shooting stock whilst on our travels we need to challenge ourselves creatively, have conceptual meaning behind our imagery, be playful with our subject matter, think more laterally about what we’re attempting to shoot & re-invent previous ways & concepts of shooting. These are just a few things for us to think about. We can place this in any part of the world as long as we look at the usability of the image. When it comes to travel stock photography the main thing we need to focus on is what draws us to a place i.e; the mood, the feel, the atmosphere, what is iconic about it, re-inventing old cliche’s & believe that there is real beauty or emotion within a place & the people that we encounter either constructed or un-constructed.

We will seek inspiration & advice from other well-known creative stock photographer’s & it would be great if our work was accepted for rights managed or royalty free usage by stock libraries. Photographer’s that stood out in Zoe’s seminar were Tim Flach, Susana Vera & Tim Macpherson because their work emphasises character, real-life moments, controversy & often imperfection. Photographer’s who not only sell their photography through macrostock channels, but also would use them in their portfolio. That is what we want to do, create imagery that we are proud of, have fun with & would include in our portfolio as well as see it distributed through a photo agent.

There are many areas to investigate further such as model & property release & also which agency we think would want to sell our work. So let the research begin because this is a venture that will inspire, re-form & challenge the way we shoot.

It was great to meet Zoe & be able to discuss options, think up keywords for usable imagery & brainstorm around how certain brands would use that type of imagery.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0, processed in Photoshop)