Both Helen and I will be attending the fourth London Photo Festival (LPF) held from the 16th until 18th May at The Crypt gallery, London. The theme of May’s photographic festival is Travel.

With our combined experience of travel photography, digital fine art papers and history in the creative sector, the London Photo Festival have kindly asked us to participate in offering portfolio reviews. We are available on the 16th and 17th May 2013 to meet, review and give positive constructive feedback to photographers and their travel related imagery.

You can find out more information about us and make a portfolio review booking with either Helen or David over at the website. We hope to see you there!

Think National Geographic and not National Lampoon’s Vacation! They can be taken anywhere in the world (including the UK), any time period and on any format (i.e. digital or film).

The photo festival gives amateur and semi-professional photographers the opportunity to exhibit their work, gain professional feedback and to join a thriving community of photographers. All the images in the exhibition are for sale with visitors able to meet the photographers behind the works as well as photographer networking and industry suppliers.

London Photo Festival, 16th – 18th May 2013
The Crypt (St George the Martyr Church),
Borough High St,
London SE1 1JA.

Entry is free for the public. The Festival will be open from 10.30am on all three days and will remain open late on the Thursday and Friday, closing at 6pm on Saturday, 18th May.

Following on from the previous post on the Mexico 1968 Summer Olympics Radio Times feature here are some more images from that era. The ’72 Olympics are considered ground breaking in their approach to design,  typography and merchandise.

Extracts from munich72.org:

The design work was led by Otl Aicher who sought to project the lightness of the Bavarian landscape and the character of southern Germany. Aicher’s team developed a range of material which is probably best remembered for the innovative and exemplary series of posters; and a range of pictorial symbols which subsequently has been adopted and extended worldwide with considerable commercial success, thanks to Aicher’s close collaboration with the German lighting manufacturer ERCO.

The colour palette was one of the most significant aspects of the identity. It was based upon the heraldic colours of Bavaria, light blue and white (as used by BMW and the Hofbräuhaus brewery). Aicher chose these, together with the light green of the Bavarian alpine landscape, as the principal elements to provide a light palette (which required bespoke ink formulations). The lightness of colour was reflected in the adoption of a light typeface (Univers 55). The colours in the German national flag were expressly excluded.

This is an Illustrated London News Special Publication produced in conjunction with Young World Productions Ltd on behalf of the British Olympic Association. Many thanks for Jan Roscoe for allowing us to photograph this memorabilia. She competed in Munich ’72 and Montreal ’76 as a 400m runner for Great Britain.

More images can be seen on our Flickr.

Hello, we’re hoping that you’re enjoying the last of the summer, we seem to be having some very cool starts to the day, reminds us of being in other parts of the world exploring the West Coast of America this time last year. Oh to be reminiscing. But the truth is we’re both quite happy in our lives back in the UK. We’ve had an amazing summer with the Olympics taking center stage and we’ve been busy freelancing in both of our professions whilst also managing to take the time to work on some of our own stuff too. Notworkrelated has launched it’s first shop and we have collection number 1 ready and waiting for your eager viewing.

So onto something Notworkrelated. Last week we took ourselves off to London and Brighton for a few days and along with Dave’s mum Barbara we ventured to the Paralympic Closing Ceremony having picked up some tickets a little while back. And WOW was this an event to be a part of. It was absolutely amazing with a soundtrack from Coldplay that just seemed to work so well with the performance throughout the night. It was a surreal experience and we kept having to pinch ourselves to check that we were really there! Well not quite but it was definitely an event to savor. Coldplay were fantastic and we were able to applaud the fantastic achievements of all the Paralympians along with the ever-so praised volunteers who really did make a significant contribution to the smooth running of the Olympics as a whole. Well done to you all and yes we felt very proud to be ‘Made in Britain’.

We were in London for the TeamGB parade taking place on Monday the 10th also and so thought it would be rude not to go and support our athletes and medalists who represented us at both the Olympics and the Paralympics. After a long wait we stood along with thousands of others on The Strand awaiting the team who were being driven on 30 or so big trucks. After an hour and a half and a few moans and groans later the athletes made their first appearance with Mo Farah and Jess Ennis on the first two floats followed by the rest of the athletics team. Helen even had a brief exchange with one of her friends from the Junior GB team who recognised her in the crowd, she was buzzing from this for the rest of the day! But along with this moment it was great to cheer on and congratulate Olympic and Paralympic legends such as Sir Chris Hoy, Ben Ainslee and Ellie Simmonds. It was another special moment that we wouldn’t be forgetting anytime soon.

Onwards we went to The National Portrait Gallery where Road to 2012 was being showcased featuring works by 8 photographers whose insightful portraiture celebrates exceptional British sportspeople, and some of the crucial figures working behind the scenes. With photographers such as Anderson & Low on show this was something that we both wanted to go and view and having had our Olympic experience it felt very relevant too. We also purchased the book Road To 2012 a National Portrait Gallery publication which holds great significance to the likes of Helen who has a strong interest in Sports portraiture. The exhibition is on until the 23rd September 2012.

Through the power of Twitter Dave had been conversing with a follower and managed to arrange for us to go to a design talk at the British Design Museum located on Shad Thames. The talk was again Olympic themed but perhaps on a more interesting level of design focusing on Design Munich ’72 with guest speaker Ian McLaren who was part of the design team for Munich. It was a really interesting discussion centering around McLaren’s involvement in Design Munich along with the importance of lead designer Otl Aicher whose work has become highly influential upon design as it is today.

The project was huge and without the technology as we are surrounded by today, the deadlines were strict and the planning very thorough. The use of colour and horizontal lines is consistent throughout and there was an advancement of pictograms for Munich which have been used and developed in so many contexts since. The conversation then went onto discuss London 2012 design which managed to stir some interesting views in the audience including one designer who has worked on the current branding and who was quite defensive of her role on the project. The ‘Branding Police’ were in the room!

It definitely gave us a lot to talk about on the way home and when we got to Helen’s parents we found an ‘Illustrated London News Special Publication’ showcasing some of the design work attached to Munich ’72. Jan Roscoe competed in Munich 72 and Montreal 76 as a 400m runner for Great Britain.

The next morning we drove to Brighton which took an hour and a half from London by car. We’d decided to use Airbnb for our Brighton accommodation which has been our first UK experience. Our hosts were here to welcome us, but we weren’t expecting a young baby nor were we expecting the house to be only partly complete! Perhaps this is part of the risk of going through Airbnb, although we did have the top floor to ourselves including a nice roof terrace area where we ate our breakfast in the morning sun each day. They were friendly enough but we figured we have probably experience the best Airbnb has to offer with our hosts in LA, Seattle and Melbourne coming up trumps. Anyway the benefits were we stayed in a good location on the northern side of central Brighton close to Queens Park and not too far from a good cluster of restaurants and it did have a nice homely feeling about our accommodation which always helps.

We had been scheduled to do a photography talk in Brighton which has now been postponed until the end of November and so we decided to go all the same and enjoy the seaside city for a few days. We enjoyed the food scene the most, Brighton is home to many a good restaurant, bar and cafe and we couldn’t help but indulge in this scene with The Black Dove, and Food For Friends coming up trumps. We enjoyed local cider and lovely vegetarian food at these places and we also loved our little sitting in an authentically Mexican place; La Chozo in the North Laines side of town. It was good to explore the Lanes and feel the vibe Brighton has to offer along with having fun with our own photography at Brighton Pier.

It was quite busy but we did hear that perhaps it’s best to visit off season so we are already looking forward for a short return visit in November and perhaps we’ll be doing some of our Christmas shopping there too. Oh no we already said it…Christmas shopping! Eek! Too soon!

Anyway back to the grind, in case you missed it we launched a collaborative wedding photography site this week too; HelenPlusDavid. Yep things have been busy for us on the Itsworkrelated side but we hope to do more of this again soon. Enjoy!

In case you’ve been out of the country or have had your eyes and ears shut these past few weeks, London has hosted the 2012 Olympic Games and what a fortnight it has been. The coverage has been pretty immense and both through the television and radio waves and we have been hooked. Inspire a Generation…Inspire Roscoe and Rutter too!

We were lucky enough to get our hands on some Olympic tickets for London 2012 thanks to the Roscoe parents putting in a successful bid for the first night of Track and Field and we also picked up some tickets for the Women’s Team Foil Fencing event taking place at the Excel Arena.

It has to be said that we loved our Olympic experience. Starting with the fencing, which neither of us have any prior knowledge of we just liked the thought of getting to one of the lesser known Olympic sports. En-route we were greeted with Thai tourists eagerly anticipating one of their top table tennis players, always drawn to a group shot we couldn’t resist sneaking one there and then.

In the Excel arena Boxing, Judo, Table Tennis and Badminton were all taking place with more events going on there in the second week of action. Within the fencing competition we saw lots of competitive action too and Team GB were out in force attempting to go through the rounds. Fencing is tough to follow but we could tell who were the favorites  through the rounds with Italy and France having the most International support in the crowd. Happening in the Excel arena that day also saw an epic Judo silver medal from Team GB’s Gemma Gibbons, so there was a lot of buzz at Excel throughout.

The next day we were so excited to be taking our turn at the Olympic Athletics Stadium accompanied by Jan and Den (Helen’s parents). We’d been staying in Bromley for a few days and were very pleased with the transport links, the underground ran smoothly all around central London and the free Zone 1-9 railcards which came with the tickets were well used. For our final night we opted to camp with the parents out in Theydon Bois. A campground that is right next to the train station and a 25 minute ride to the Olympic Park. Perfect.

Once we were in the Olympic Park we were greeted by a pretty slick security procedure and thousands of people doing the same, so another thumbs up on that side of things too. The amount of people in the park was amazing, quite overwhelming and the buzz was so exciting. We managed to explore the park pretty well walking towards and around many of the other sporting venues finishing our stroll in Park Live where a large double sided screen attracted even more thousands of people checking out the action in the velodrome. For some people this was where they would watch the action from. Perhaps our biggest criticism about the park was that they could have done with more screens around as there were big queues for getting into Park Live, which at peak times operated on a one-in-one-out basis.

At 6pm we made our way to our seats in the Olympic Stadium, spotting Catherine Merry on the way in doing her bit for Five Live Sport. We were quite high up in the stadium with seats pretty much opposite the 100m finish. After the initial excitement and photographs of us in there surrounded by nearly 80,000 others doing the same we started to enjoy the action. Greg Rutherford was going in the long jump qualifying, little did we know we were watching a champion in the making and also Jess Ennis competed in both the shot put and 200m as part of her Olympic winning performance. It was all quite overwhelming at times and Helen had to fight back a few tears each time the roars from the crowd got behind a home athlete, especially Ennis, she is a little star!

We also saw the 100m qualifying rounds which saw race after race go under 11 seconds, fast!! The women’s discus qualifying took place and the men’s shot put final saw the heavy weights in action with the finishing event being the light-weights in the women’s 10,000m final. Never has a stadium applauded such an event on the first night of action. Jan and Den were in Athens and Beijing and were astounded by the support.

Our biggest annoyance was the use of music whilst competitors were trying to achieve their physical peak performance. Music pumping straight into the audience was just a little too much at times when trying to concentrate on a certain event. We appreciate that they were appealing to the mass audience who want to see a show, and perhaps this compensated a little for the price of tickets…who knows, surely the athletic performance is a show enough in itself? And why Ben Sheppard was there…it’s not X-Factor, this is the Olympic Games!

Taking this aside we were thrilled with our Olympic experience and wanted to go again and again to support the athletes from around the world, competing at the highest level. This is something to be admired and we felt proud that the British pulled off a fantastic games, a wonderful Olympic Park and look at where we finished on the medal table, fourth, wow! Not bad for a country of 60 million!

In September we’re back in the Olympic Stadium for the Paralympic closing ceremony and in between we may try to sneak in a few tickets for Paralympic action, which is set to have more of a following than in any other Paralympic Games in history.

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)

For both of us, traveling will enable us to continue with our photography, exploring places old, new & exciting. This will form the basis of a body of work that we hope to share with you on this blog & on flickr, updating as we go & using a laptop to edit, backup, skype, email & to book our next room for the night!

With differing styles & approaches to photography we hope to capture a wider range of imagery, as well as two pairs of eyes to keep a look out for interesting moments, inspiration and people.

I have been a Canon user in the past, whereas Helen has taken the Nikon route. They both have their positives & negatives, but have equally provided us with the tools necessary to get the jobs done. Now… here is the issue. Weight! We are both concerned about the weight of our equipment and the size of the bag we will need for our journey. It would be great to take 2.5 – 3kg each in camera equipment (not including a tripod, it’s head and a laptop!) but this would be insane for the length of time we are traveling. We want the cameras but don’t want to become a slave to them every second of every day.

Also these cameras look very conspicuous. They are large, bulky & make you look like a traveling paparazzi. They tire you out very quickly & by the end of the day you really don’t want to be shooting anymore, when the best light of the day could be during early evening hours. Insurance also becomes complicated with these cameras as specialised camera bags are required along with the need for specific padlocks on lockers etc.

Well… a big headache for us both. We don’t want to go all that way & leave our photographic capabilities here in the UK. You don’t need the most expensive cameras to make the best shots, the photographer makes the photograph, not the camera, but at the same time we want to have the best chance of capturing interesting & documentary style photos. Hence, research into cameras that would fit our needs. Film or digital? Medium format, 35mm or 4/3rds? Pinhole?

I very quickly came across the only full frame, non SLR camera out there. The Leica M9. A rangefinder! A small(ish) camera that could produce the images we want but at the same time weigh only 0.8kg including a lens. However they do not come cheap. We would need to sell both sets of our current gear to cover the cost of this camera. Ouch! After doing research & looking at the Leica website I spotted that they do workshops called Leica Akademie which offers a brief introduction & the chance to explore the full potential of what these cameras can offer. We got in touch & booked ourselves into the M9 introduction course.

Below are a few shots that we took during our little exploration of the backstreets of Mayfair: (Leica M9, Summarit-M 50mm f2.5, processed in Lightroom)

In a nutshell we both loved the camera, a different style of photography to what we are used to. We each got to play with an M9 in the street outside the shop in Mayfair. Brett who ran the workshop was great & we would highly recommend the four hour session to anyone interested in these cameras. There were only four of us in the session & we all got to keep the 1Gb memory card from our cameras.

So lots to think about & consider. Also we need a secondary camera that is a good travel companion. More research needed, but looking into the Olympus Pen as a possibility. Time to get the thinking caps on!