I’d only just posted about delving back into the past, when Geoff came through and reminded me about a post that I had written a couple of years ago - ‘Forever Content’. Geoff reckoned it had made him laugh out loud, but couldn’t find it, and he encouraged me to repost ‘for my fan club’.

I don’t know about having a fan club, but I was once chased by a man who’d caught my brother and I nicking plums from his tree, although I’m pretty sure that’s not the same thing. However given Geoff is as sharp as creases and had built a successful career on giving smart advice it was sensible to follow it.

It turned out the post was on a different site altogether and as I could barely manage one website, two seemed to be just silly. The work he liked now has a new home.

The real reason though, was that the content idea I had never really fired and I’d moved on. If I’m honest, this was down to me not trying hard enough. But I’d promised to update you either way, and I hadn’t, which was hardly in the spirit of telling the bad with the good, so here we are. On a re-read it seems I was right about one thing - nothing was going according to plan.

Funnily enough, I’d been asked to make a piece of what I’d called ‘forever content’ only a couple of months ago. My friend Meg wanted a photo of her family, and there were six of them. They’d never had one taken since the kids had grown up with kids of their own, so it was quite a big deal.

Six is quite a crowd when it comes to a photo. Like a marketing manager using Canva, and other silly things that shouldn’t be allowed, I turned to Annie Liebovitz’s Vanity Fair work for inspiration. There’s a painterly quality to her group shots and plenty of online tutorials about how to achieve the look. Well kinda.

I’d also stupidly told Meg what I was aiming for, destroying any opportunity to under promise and over deliver later on.

One of Annie’s most famous shots is a VF cover of a naked and pregnant Demi Moore, of which Annie observed; “If it were a great portrait, she wouldn’t be covering her breasts. She wouldn’t necessarily be looking at the camera.” Even if there wasn’t any nudity planned for Meg’s work, I worried that I’d set the bar way way too high.

I had discovered that Annie’s even lighting effect and no lens distortion is largely what makes her photographs painterly, and is achieved by compositing. I roped my daughter Georgia into this role, grabbed a couple of lights from Gilly, and arranged to meet Meg and the whanau at Frimley Park just before magic hour.

To do the compositing requires the photographer to be technically proficient, patient and follow the rules. I’m none of these. You need a clean background plate and even lighting. Each shot needs to be taken along the same plane. No colouring outside the lines in other words.

I didn’t even come close.

Georgia saved the day, skilfully blending eight different, in some cases very different, shots together. I’d learnt a couple of valuable lessons, the most important was don’t rush things, oh and just because you can fix it in post doesn’t mean you should. While her wizardry made up for most of my technical missteps, it would have been a complete ‘mare to pull together. Graciously she’s never bought it up and we’re still on speaking terms. All is well.

Meg was happy, her Mum and Dad were chuffed and the end result was swiftly dispatched to the printer, although probably no need to bother Annie with it.

That’s the update, it took a little longer than expected, but that in itself reminded me of a letter I once received from Sue Bradford that opened with ‘I have delayed writing for as long as possible, so I could give you the most up to date information available.’ She what she did there? Genius.

Anyway, here’s the original. It’s for Geoff. And the fans.

Forever Content

A couple of weeks ago I was taking some photos of a young mum and her baby boy. I’ve been getting seriouser and seriouser about photography for 7 or 8 years now, and while there’s never any shortage of things for me to learn; or indeed a shortage of photographers, a couple of hours behind the lens reminded me just how much fun it was. 

”Shit”,  I thought to myself, “I wish I could do more of this’.  

It was after this shoot that I decided to get behind the camera more often.

As it turned out, I was having a gap year, and therefore quite available, and so, here we are.   

I’ve always loved writing stories and now I’ll be telling them with pictures too. I love showing people a side of themselves they might only rarely get to see.

I’m going to focus on making what you could call ‘forever’ content. Sure, the name’s a bit shit, but the idea is solid. It’s simply pictures that because they make you feel good, you might just want to see more than once. 

Here’s some I prepared earlier.

It’s content designed to last, and be read and viewed over and over, just like in the olden days. Images and yarns that we might take a little more time crafting, because they’ll be all the better for it.

It might be a bespoke coffee table book about your business perhaps. Or your home, or farm. Maybe a short film. A celebration of an important anniversary or milestone. A gift for overseas clients. Framed portraits for Father’s Day. Or maybe a documentary film of a family gathering. 

You get the picture.

At least that’s the plan. Mind you I’m struggling to think of anything I’ve done that’s gone to plan, so as I watch my comfort zone disappear behind me, who knows what will happen.

But when it does, I’ll be sure to write about it here.  

And then we can all laugh about it together.