We both hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a cracking start to the New Year, we have kicked off January with more work and exciting opportunities – David is freelancing at design agencies and Helen is scheduled to be jetting off around Europe and the Middle East for client projects in the coming months.

Our online shop is still offering 25% off all limited edition prints until the end of January. Check out our images at the Notworkrelated Shop.

We have also collectively been asked to be judges in an online competition in conjunction with The Printspace which we are very excited about. More to come on that once we start the judging process. How exciting.

This morning we had a lovely delivery from Glasgow Press which contained our new look business cards. New colour, new classic typeface (Gill Sans), letterpressed, white ink and GF Smith paper stock all combine to create these little beauties. Looking forward to handing some of these out. Thanks to Glasgow Press for the great service. *UPDATE – here is a nice article about the new business card packaging from Glasgow Press…*

• Colorplan Ice White 270gsm / Colorplan Turquoise 270gsm = Duplex of 540gsm.
• Side 1. White Foil, Turquoise Colorplan 270gsm.
• Side 2. Pantone to match the Turquoise Colorplan, letterpressed text on Colorplan Ice White 270gsm.

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)