Special Post For Dan And Emma

This was my amazing welcome home I’ve never been happier

Work Experience With Tim Flach Day Five

Friday

Today was my last day; really can’t get over how fast it has gone. I got up early and struggled with all of my bags on the tube so it took me a bit longer to get there. First job was to start moving all of the equipment downstairs, with a spiral staircase it isn’t much fun!

Because there was a dirt floor where we were shooting yesterday all of the equipment needed to be cleaned before it was put away, and the cats where enjoying the empty boxes.

Next Tim was selecting the images he was going to enter into the AOP awards this year. He was deciding on the series entries and some individual ones. Its funny to see he still has to do the same process as I do for entering the AOP’s. Except if he wins it will actually be some money and the entry fees are about £50 a picture.

Next I helped nick sort out the proofs of the book, they had gotten mixed up so we went through and made sure everything was in the right place so if it needed to be seen it could be found easily. He also talked me through some of the set ups and ways they photographed the animals. The polar bear was quite interesting, it was £4000 a day to photograph it and its trained for films and TV work.

Next I continued a job I had started earlier in the week, I was photographing and cleaning some old equipment to put it on eBay. I photographed it and got the photos on the mac just before lunch. Nick cooked lunch for us all and then Sebastian helped me decide on the prices for the listings.

I got a chance to sit down and talk to Jake and ask him how he managed to get a job working for Tim. His story is similar to everyone else I have talked too, move to London and knock on doors then from there people know other people and it all moves on like that. I showed him my website and he had some nice things to say about it which was really encouraging.

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching Tim edit. He was talking me through what he was doing and why, he talks a lot about how the eye moves through a photo and how the process of lightening parts and darkening others draws the eye round and makes the viewer see the parts of the image he finds interesting. I suppose this could be quite a naive way of thinking of the viewer as the same as he is, I mean people will look at images in different ways and there is no way of controlling that. But at the same time the before and after edits he was showing me did complete transform the way I viewed the images.

Later in the afternoon Martin Usborne turned up to show Tim his most recent book he has been working ‘Dogs in cars’. I’ve been a fan of this for a while and it was really interesting watching him talk to Tim about his work. It was also good as now I have met him I can maybe ask for some assisting work.

After Martin left I said my good byes to everyone, I was actually really sad to go I enjoyed it so much. Made me realize this is what I want to do after uni so now I have tried it out I can see a goal at the end of my course, and what I want to get out of it. I jumped on the tube the Paddington and got a expensive dinner from M&S (couldn’t face burger king). I got on my train and continued reading my book, whilst reflecting on the week I had just had.

Work Experience With Tim Flach Day Four

Thursday

Today was the early start I had been dreading, got up at 4:45am it was pretty killer and even got a txt from my mum to make sure I was up, that’s trust there! No one was even awake on my tube I think everyone had their eyes closed.

Got to the studio at quarter past 6 as Sebastian turned up in the van and started putting everything into the back of it.

After setting off at 6:30 we stopped off for a quick coffee at a services and then hit the road to the venue. I made the most of the time talking to Tim on the journey there. We talked about his photography, where he makes money and how, about critical theory especially relating to his latest book. It’s been a real eye opener talking to him this week; he is much more of a conceptual ideas based photographer than I originally pegged him as. I think just because the work he makes is highly commercial and highly crafted he is almost instantaneously branded as a commercial advertising photographer. When in actual fact now a days he spends more time on his own work funding his own book projects balanced with some commercial work. He even turned down an offer from Steven Spielberg to work with him on warhorse as he was doing his personal work for the book. We also talked about what I was doing and how I felt about my course, as well as listening to a lot of his stories about how his career started and how he has managed to get where he has gotten today.

After an hour and a half and the sat nav taking us to the wrong place we eventually arrived at the venue where the horse was. It is a place he uses a lot and they supply stunt horses to all major filmmakers they are currently working on the new Les Mis film. We where greeted by many a dog barking and then backed the van in to start unloading everything.

After unloading everything me nick and Sebastian started to set up the background, lights, stands, polly boards and flooring for the set. It was interesting to see they just know how he will light it to start with, and started to set up without any instruction. I think this is key element to being a good assistant, using intuition and common sense. They walked me through the lights and how they worked (quite different to elinchrome and Bowens) and showed me how to set up everything else properly. In all we had set up ten lights, all just to light the horse it was amazing. Apparently they usually have 6 lights for the background but made do with 4. I started to cut out sheets of a semi translucent diffusing material (they don’t use soft boxes) that would defuse the key light which is the massive one called a satalite. Originally it was going to be on a frame but for ease of use it was simply hung from an ari arm. After labelling every light and getting everything on the right starting power we where ready to test it.

After pretending to be a horse for a while and setting up the monitor with the Hasselblad it only took a few tweaks to get it right. It was strange because they didn’t use a light meter, because they had a calibrated screen they could just tweak it by eye. Next the art director and the copywriter turned up to watch over the shoot, Tim talked to them while we continued getting everything ready.

We then got the horse in, luckily I have had a bit of experience working with horse so I know how they can be but it was important that no one did anything sudden and nothing was flapping about, so every time we had to move the diffuser the horse had to be taken away to stop it being spooked. The picture you can see is a copy of how they wanted the advert to look, so it was only really the back end of the horse. As we started the shoot a calf decided to turn up and say hello as you do. By about 1:30 we had adjusted a few lights, positioned the horse in the right pose and got the right amount of tail movement and the art director was happy so we had a break for lunch.

Lunch was nice, all paid for by the client and some good conversation. It turns out the art director is also a photographer so that was another useful contact made.

After lunch the client decided that they wanted three more shots just to cover them for every possibility. They where using both a4 crops and crops for the iPad when choosing the images. The next shots where one portrait and one landscape flowing from the front to the back of the horses back. This took a bit of work with the lighting, positioning the key light and diffuser in the right place and getting rid of the flare from the high key light. Tim decided to shoot hand held so I had to hold the ring flash next to the camera moving with him. To get a better depth of field he also used an extra bellows attachment to achieve a swing on the lens and make a perfect depth of field. Another main job of mine was to sweep away all of the mud made by the horse in between changing lighting, exciting stuff!

After the client was happy with the shot we started taking everything down and packing it all away into the van again. The dog was sad to see us go I think. We got back on the road and I had another really good talk with Tim with some interesting ideas on how he brands himself for different uses and how he switched to digital. It’s also interesting to see he transferred to digital in 2005 and only uses film occasionally when its needed. We also talked about his editing technique and how his training all really comes from being a painter and teaching himself. He is great to talk to and very highly focussed, it’s easy to see how photographers become absorbed in every part of what they are doing.

We got back and unpacked the stuff; I ended up getting home about 10pm, a long 19-hour day. Such a good day though learnt so much and can’t really believe tomorrow is my last day! Off for some packing then sleep now.

Work Experience With Tim Flach Day Three

Wednesday

Today was a very wet start to the day, managed to get up ten minutes later and still make it in plenty of time. On an observational note I have been to London quite a bit, but I can never get over how no one talks on the tube! Hundreds of people all close enough to actually kiss but still no one speaks, I find it so strange. I arrived to find no one was in the studio yet so had a 5 minute wait till Tim was back from dropping his kid off to school.

This magazine came through the other day “Intelligent life magazine” with an 8 page spread with some of Tims new work. We where talking about how he makes money and he was saying 5 years ago he was selling a print for £2000 and yesterday he was trying to decide whether to sell one of his large prints for £20,000 or £25,000 the money involved is insane.

First job of the day was to resize and crop all of the images that where going into Tims presentation at LCC later that day, between me and Nick (and me finally almost nearly mastering the pen and tablet technique) we got it all done pretty quickly.

Next the proof prints arrived from the printers that will be printing Tims new book. It was a selection of prints that had different levels of sharpening, on a range of papers (silk with gloss glaze, gloss with silk glaze etc). One thing I have learnt is the importance of sharpening and how to do it well, each image they print is sharpened at the end over all as well as having some more finely tuned sharpening masks applied in post production. There is a massive difference in the quality of prints done on the top of the line Epson printer and the lith prints from the printers. The Epson cant really print red well at all, and the over all sharpness and richness from the proper prints are amazing.

As it had been raining loads a leak that has been a problem for a few weeks started to flood the printing room so I had to mop it all up, nearly filling the mop bucket.

Next job of the day was to start packing away the equipment we will need tomorrow. The shoot is only of the hindquarters of a horse and only one picture, but we are bringing over ten lights with a array of attachments and stands. Its actually crazy the amount of gear we are taking for this seemingly simple shoot. There are so many little things to consider, like the horse will slip on paper roll so we bring rubber matting for it to stand on as well as bringing a monitor so the client can see what it going on. I also had to check all of the batteries in the two 5D mk2’s, the 1D mk5 and the two HD4 Hasselblads (they are pretty much the same as the HD3’s just with a better sensor). He also uses broncolor lights, apparently the best lights on the market, if not they are definitely the most expensive.

I had to do some last minute editing on the video I did yesterday, he wasn’t happy with having the Hasselblad logo at the beginning of the video so I quickly trimmed it down.

After Tim left for his lecture I helped rewire and relocate the main server to the other office which involved running some wires and spinning a cat on a chair, which resulted in dirty looks from said cat.

Before I left I helped carry all of the kit upstairs, only bad thing about a basement studio is hauling everything upstairs for shoots on location. I also re-mopped up the leak, which was probably even more flooded than before.

I walked past this so many times but only just realised what it was for, just funny how massive the board is advertising better sex.

Jumped on the tube back home to find that there had been a fatality on the line so it was super busy and took me a hour and a bit to go home. As it was pretty late I decided to go to the beefeater with Drew and get someone else to cook for me for a change! I’m proper tired and have to be up at 4:45am, less than 7 hours away so I’m going straight to bed after posting this! Getting a lift with Tim in his car tomorrow so it will be a good time to rack his brains on the hour and a bit drive, looking forward to it.

Work Experience With Tim Flach Day Two

Tuesday

Today I got up on time again and managed to get in some breakfast too, after stealing someone’s sugar. Tube was equally as busy if not busier, had some time to kill so waited for the less sardine packed tube.

Noticed this place yesterday but forgot to take a picture, it specialises in old classic cars and has some really nice stuff, maybe one day when I’m earning the monies I’ll go in and buy one, by which time petrol prices would be astronomical so it’d be a wasted exercise.

I forgot to mention yesterday there are two cats in Tims studio, probably the nicest cats I have met and like to help me around the studio by sitting on my lap.

First job of the day was to take out all of the coloured paper rolls from the cupboard and check how much was left, the condition they where in and that the colours where in the right boxes. I also organised them by cutting a piece of it off and colour matching it to the leaflet then sticking it on the front. So many paper rolls! Over 20 and at least 5 just blue.

Next I thought it was about time I learnt to make coffee for everyone, as I will probably need to in the next few years. After figuring out the coffee machine and chatting to Joanna about how she has actually done two photography degrees one in Poland and one in London.

She then showed me through how the shoot I am doing on Thursday comes about, how it starts with the agent and how costing translates for different elements of the shoot. I also learned that I would have to be at the studio for 6:30 am so I will be getting the first tube of the day at 5:30!

The studio has recently upgraded its network and servers, so it was my job to start disassembling the old server rack and tiding up the mess of wires that came with it. One of the old hard drives has actually failed so I had to ring up global distribution and see if we could get a new one under warranty.

Next I had to collate information about the old equipment and write and advert up ready to put it on ebay. Tomorrow I will have to photograph it ready to put on ebay.

There where a number of deliveries throughout the day so I had to organise putting away paper and cat food.

Next most important job of the day was to go and buy lunch for everyone and then cook it at the studio. I bought two different soups and some nice bread for everyone to share, was nice to get out in the fresh air as the studio is mainly underground daylight doesn’t come about much. It was nice again having everyone sat down eating and after washing up and being meowed at by the cats for food I was back to work.

Tomorrow Tim is doing a lecture at London College of communication and he wanted to use a video Hasselblad made about when he photographed a tiger. However there where parts he didn’t want in so I became a video editor and cut down the film how he wanted so he can use it tomorrow.

Everyone was sat in the office retouching and sending off final files to the publishers to check they are happy with the overall layout. My last job of the afternoon (as well as the odd picture to trim and print) was to make Jpg’s of the pages in the book that had changed layout since the last major edit. As the images will be printed separately in the end and to edit they need to be printed in a double page spread, no double page spreads are actually saved (so its not confusing). So I had to use the templates they use for printing to recreate the layouts to send to the publishers. It sounds straight forward but there are so many different things to take into consideration it took me a while to get into a flow, its interesting seeing how different it is working in a professional environment and how much more fine tuning goes into each digital image. Tim was walking me through his editing process and you can see from the layers there is lots and lots of fine tuning, he edits and retouches all of his images, he knows so much about composition and how a image is read, its amazing listening to how he is editing and why. They all use graphics tablets with pens, which I’m finding tricky to get used too.

After staying to about 7:15 I had lost track of time got the last of the layouts finished at headed home for tea. Really tired but learning so much. Oh and I’m also really missing Dan Landsborough and Emma Swabey its killing me inside

 

 

Work Experience With Tim Flach Day One

Tim Flach

 

As part of my degree course this year one module requires me to work with a client or photographer for a week to produce a set of images and gain experience in commercial photography. I was lucky enough to be selected to go and work with Tim Flach. Tims work is outstanding and is used all over the world in advertising campaigns as well as having work exhibited all over the planet. To see his work have a look at http://www.timflach.com/.

So this week from the 22^nd- 27^th of April I am working with Tim and his team at his studio, this will be a daily update keeping track of what I have been doing and what I have learned.

Sunday

Got on a mid day train to London so I can get settled in and have a good night sleep before I start on Monday at 9am.

The train was pretty uneventful just read a 100 more pages of my book ‘On The Road’ by Jack Kerouac that will be informing a current project for SDA 3.

Arrived at Paddington at 3:30 and got to my friend Drews house by 4 who has been kind enough to put me up for the next 5 days. Had to put £30 on my oyster card which should last me the week (£5.20 a day). Cooked a home cooked spag bowl and watched a bit of TV before a early night ready for starting tomorrow.

Monday

Managed to get a decent night sleep despite waking up an hour before I needed too. Walked to the tube stop and started the 40 minute journey from Northwick Park to Old Street. First taste of London at rush hour reminded me a lot of getting onto a squashed gondola when I was skiing except it wasn’t cold and there weren’t any skis in my face. Got off the tube and managed to find Tims studio pretty easily, I was a bit early so I had a bit of a walk around to get my surroundings and actually bumped into a fellow Falmouth student also up working with a photographer for the client brief, small world. Knocked on the door at 5 to nine and was let in by Tim Flachs first assistant Sebastian. He showed me around and introduced me to everyone. Nick- second assistant, Joanna- studio manager, Lewis- writer and researcher and of course Tim Flach. Everyone was very welcoming and made me feel relaxed.

My first job was to sort out all of the postcard images that had got damaged by a leak last week. I sorted through three boxes of images and ended up throwing away probably half as they where all stuck together or water damaged. Tim and his team are currently one day away from sending his next book “More than human” off to the editors to check final composition and order so this week we will be mainly organising a proof copy of the book.

I then went through the book in order with Joanna highlighting anything that didn’t work in the book to do with composition and layout, considering the fold of the double page and borders. Things like the colour, sharpness and imperfections will all be rectified in the next edit after the editors are happy with the layout and overall design of the book. After we all decided on what changes needed to be made some editing and re-printing was needed.

Nick showed me the general workflow of preparing something for print, was very interesting to see the difference in what they do compared to how I have been shown, a lot more steps and a lot more sharpening is involved.

After printing I then had to cut out the images and put them in order for the book. The plan for the next two days was meant to be casting for a advertising campaign for the dog food company pedigree, this was going to be about 40 dogs a day and sounded really promising. Unfortunately they got a phone call at mid day saying that is was going to be cancelled indefinitely with no real reason. Apparently this doesn’t happen a lot and is a shame really I would have really enjoyed working through the casting process. At lunch Sebastian prepared a pasta salad for everyone and we all sat down together and ate it, was nice to see they take time to have a proper lunch together and it gave to opportunity to discuss any ideas for the book.

After lunch I set about tidying the studio up because some people from Hasselblad where coming to see Tim and what he has been up to. This included general hovering and dusting as well as cleaning up the roof vent that was damaged from the water leak. We continued editing the proof copy of the book until there where only four pages that needed changing. Then four of the most important people from Hasselblad’s sales team turned up, it was strange having them look over the work with such respect and enthusiasm. I think they where interested in using the images of the pandas for an advertising campaign.

After they left we went over the last revisions of the day and when Tim was happy he went off to work on the txt for the book while Sebastian and Nick set up the computers to be in the same room and networked together which meant running a few cables. At 6:30 I was tired and ready to head home, was a very good day cant wait for the rest of the week.

 

Some Recent Work