WERE YOU THERE?

•  Were You There? Summer Show On WebTV! – Were you interviewed at the www. photomart .co.uk SUMMER SHOW? PhotographyTV's latest episode features this event, and includes many of the delegates who were there. Were you one of them? Take a look and see!

Did you photograph the WonderBra model? – photographer Jon Gray's world-class model at the Summer Show, Katie Green, has since gone on to win this high-profile contract. The current episode of PhotographyTV catches a glimpse of her, and also shows new model Sarah (2007 TNT UK Miss Photogenic). Sarah's got her head in a bucket of water, doing wet hair flicks for travel photographer Ian Brierley's outdoor group shoot!
[expand story >>>]

The www. photomart .co.uk Summer Show was a bumper day of photo workshops at the company's mega studios in London. Six photographers presented ten workshops across two floors of studio space, sponsored by manufacturers including Bowens, ExpressDigital, Fujifilm, ICI ImageData and Sony. The day was great fun, and was enjoyed by all.
[add comment]

DENNIS HYLANDER COMMENTS ON PHOTOWEEK!

• Dennis Hylander Comments on PhotoWeek! –
Dennis Hylander, one of the best known names in UK wedding photography (he used to be famous!), has commented on last week's PhotoWeek! story on Helmut Newton:

"In the very early 60s Helmut and I had our studios in the same office building known as Block Arcade in Melbourne's city centre. As a busy portrait photographer I never have enjoyed a shoot with the model! For me the kick was to achieve the result working with the female client who was ready to give me her all!"

Most PhotoWeek! readers are the kind of professionals best described as those who make their living by selling prints. Photographing experienced models is a rare luxury! Taking a good studio portrait of Jo Public is much harder! [expand story >>>]

Over four decades, Dennis Hylander has made an extraordinary contribution to UK wedding photography, and many of our wedding photography awards are named after him. His autobiography, "I used to be Famous" was published in March.

Related Stories:
photoweek/2008/06/helmut-newton-at-topshop
[add comment]

HELMUT NEWTON AT TOPSHOP!

•  Helmut Newton At TopShop! – TopShop toured an instant photography installation called The Newton Machine round some of its stores earlier this month. Named after the late Helmut Newton, TopShop's Newton Machine was an installation of a self-photography solution inspired by this celebrated photographer. Newton was dismissive of other photographers whose reputations he believed were based mainly on the qualities of the model they partnered with. He thought the model was effectively the better photographer! He devised a set-up that allowed a model to photograph herself. This is what TopShop replicated in-store for its customers this month, in London, Manchester and Dublin. [expand story >>>]

TopShop's Newton Machine was a marketing promotion based around a studio installation that allowed the store's customers to come in, dress as they pleased from the TopShop wardrobe, be professionally made-up, and take their own self-styled fashion photo using a remote trigger. The Machine was quite a faithful reproduction of Newton's original set-up, using a mirror, marks on the floor where the model should stand, and the original brand of lighting. (The Times Online published a story about it, including a web video clip.)

Newton's original had a serious purpose, "to heighten the tension of the modelling session and to catch the model at the peak of each pose". To this end he incorporated an adjustable motor-drive that allowed the model to choose to work fast or slow, and a bell that would go off just before each shot was triggered. The studio strobes would trigger in sync with the shot.


TopShop Marketing Manager, Lara Einzig, came across the idea in Newton's autobigraphy and thought customers would love it. She saw it could work well in today's culture of shared, self-generated images, like those on FaceBook and MySpace. Being able to have fun, pose as a model, get images posted online, and instantly be given prints to take away and share, would encourage customers to come in and try on outfits.

It also created a favourable association between TopShop's own image and the legacy of the renowned Vogue photographer. The retailer worked with the Helmut Newton Foundation, and Newton's agent, to recreate the Machine. The waiting room for customers queing to use it was supplied with books of his work.

Event and Snap Shot Photography companies could learn from this. It's an inspired and well thought out application of instant photography, one that could be adapted in many ways and proposed for many purposes. You could seduce event organizers and marketing people with this idea, or sell the experience directly to the public. And you can improve on it too – TopShop were averaging a bit longer than a minute a print to output A5 prints on an A4 inkjet. Using dye sub technology you could print an 8"x10" in the same time, or several 6"x9"s.

The only draw back is psychological. Newton's Machine can raise the anxiety of a certain type of photographic auteur about a secret fear – that much of the genius of photography may be inherent to the medium, rather than the artist, and that others may discover this!
[add comment]

MODELS SPEAK ON BBC!

• Models Speak On BBC! – BBC Television has been showing a couple of series lately about the working world of photographic glamour models. BBC Three's Glamour Girls has been described, cleverly but unfairly, as "a yawn in a D-cup" while their related Page Three Teens series was similarly dismissed. Both documentaries though manage an authentic and not especially dumbed-down representation of a part of the world of professional photography, and give a voice to the models themselves.

Related Stories:
photoweek/2007/10/who-was-marion-franklin.html
[add comment]

Who Was Marion Franklin?

On October 26, 2007 a photographer was formally sentenced in the US in connection with the fatal overdose of a young woman. In 2003 Marion Franklin was nineteen. She had suffered abuse, her parents split up, she left home and dropped out of school. She graduated from working in fast-food restaurants to earning her living working for a photographer. She modelled nude for him and his clients, and collaborated with him on various projects - including a proposed bondage pay site featuring the pair of them. She went to live near his studio, in an apartment he got for her.

They worked together, their lifestlye at work was bohemian, they partied with each other and with other people in their milieu. The photographer was attracted to Marion, they became friends and, despite an age gap of more than 35 years, he eventually persuaded her to have a kind of affair with him.

Marion's drug use was problematic. The accidental overdose that killed her was put in her drink by the photographer. Between them it was usual for him to help keep her drugged, as she wanted to be. It was also usual for him to use and photograph her in this state, as he did again this last time.

I have to be honest and say I didn't know who the photographer, Bob Shell, was before I first read about this. I work in professional photography and I'd never heard of him. And neither had some of my colleagues. Shell had authored quite a few books, apparently, and worked for a well known photo magazine in the US.

What I read is that he paid a hard-up young girl with issues, one who'd fallen to the fringes of society, to work as a glamour nude and pornographic model for him.

She was far younger than him. She had an obvious drug problem which showed in her face as well as her behaviour. You couldn't be around her and miss it. It was what being around her was about - an endless cycle of getting and taking over-the-counter, prescription, and illegal drugs. Bob Shell supplied her with some of those drugs and money for more, and helped her to stay dosed. He made use of her when she was groggy and when she was out. In 2003 he helped her take too much, called medics too late, and they couldn't resuscitate her. She was dead. She was a damaged kid, who didn't make it. Shell's life is derailed now, Marion's is over.

The prosecution case against Shell was that he deliberately manipulated her drug habit as a way of taking advantage of her, and that this led to her death.

I have to be honest, before the recent press reports I didn't know who Bob Shell was. I hadn't heard of him.

I didn't know Marion Franklin either. And I never will.