Laid off

This sums up my mood

On the 13 of September this year, I was invited into the HR department and told by our new department head, that the company for which I have worked for the past nine and a half years had no more need of my services.*

I was given five months notice, effective from the beginning of October. My last day will be at the end of February 2012.

To say that I was shocked would be a massive understatement. To be laid off is bad enough, but to be made redundant when you think that all is well is a nasty surprise.

Since my birthday in 2002, I have worked as the in-house photographer for the premier lighting company in Switzerland. The work I do includes, but is not limited to product shots, on location work, portraits, exhibition coverage and lots, lots more.

As the sole English person working here, I proofread brochures and documents for accuracy in my mother language. With my knowledge of HTML, I built private websites for my co-workers including members of the management board.

Presentations, movies and PowerPoint’s are also called for. In fact, only last week, one of my self made movies was shown in the town of Olten to inform its citizens how their Christmas lights will look next year.

I’ve immediately started a campaign of letter writing and registered myself for email alerts for any jobs with “photography” somewhere in the description.

The rejection letters are coming back thick and fast. It seems that employees can now be choosier because of all the “photographers” on the market and the plethora of picture libraries.

Although (at the time of writing this) I have another three months or so until I have to go, I am cautiously optimistic of finding an in-house position. If not, then I’ll have to go back to freelancing.

Other steps that I’ve taken are building up a mailing list of architects and lighting designers etc that I have worked with in the past and offering my services to them. My print portfolio has always contained my best stuff so I don’t have much extra work to do with that. My website will be completely revamped to show more professional work. Business cards will also be added to the mix.

Since I first got into photography, I have always been able to survive. In the past I moved to different countries and was always able to find photography related work, whether it was managing a lab in South Africa or being the base photographer for the US army in Stuttgart, Germany. (For which I received a certificate of commendation for my photographic work and knowledge.)

However. I was younger then and didn’t have a wife and family to think about.

  

I’m not going to make this post depressing but rather will use my blog to detail how I’m managing to find photographic work which is my passion.

* I have just checked my work computer. Since 2005 I have made 25,777 digital images for Regent.  Before that and up until about two years ago, I shot hundreds of rolls of medium format film. I think that there is DEFINITELY a need for a photographer.

Film from a three day shoot

 

 Film boxes from a two day studio shoot

Thanks for reading.

It's nice to see them so big!

I work for an international company and as such, I get to see my pictures used all over the world in everything from brochures, posters, newsletters, catalogues and in magazines etc.

The images normally range in size from small postage stamp dimensions for use in pocket catalogues to A3 (29.7 cm x 42 cm) in books.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised recently to see some of my images blown up to 3 meters and used to cover walls at exhibition stands.

The following two images were taken at the "Restauro Ferrara" exhibition in Italy. The original image on the wall was snapped last year at the "Giannada Fondation" when I was in the French speaking part of Switzerland on a photo-tour last year.

What I find especially pleasing is that it was taken with my EOS 5d and a 17 - 40 L lens! That's right. A 24 x 36 sensor. Granted, a bit of post production work went into the image (not from me though. My thoughts of after image editing are here.)

This second image was taken at the "Sisseg" exhibition in Paris.

You can see two images on the walls. One was taken again with my 5d and the 17 - 40 The other was taken with a Rolleiflex SL66 and a 40 mm wide angle lens, using Kodak EPT tungsten balanced film in one of my studios in Basel. Which is which? Well the 5d is the one on the left.

 

On closer inspection, they both look equally sharp.



I took delivery of a digital Hasselblad earlier this year and am already blown away by the amount of details recorded. It'll be interesting to see what level of enlargement we can achieve with it.

 The old

... and the new (pic by Marcel Brodbeck)

As a side note. Both of the exhibition stands you see here were conceived, designed and produced by our in-house Visual Communications director Marcel Brodbeck.

Comments anyone?

My reputation was saved by a ZSD.

Last week I was looking through some of my old press stuff from the days in the early eighties when I freelanced in London for some twelve different publications.

Looking at the images bought back many memories of various jobs and situations etc, which I'm quite happy to share here (even the embarrassing ones).

One job in particular sprang to mind. I was asked to provide pictures in  colour for Hello magazine and black and white for the City of London Recorder newspaper.

The job itself was to photograph the Queen visiting the New Royal Mint premises.

On the day of the visit, I arrived in plenty of time and secured myself a good vantage point. The photo pass that I was issued only allowed me to photograph the Queen outside.  The indoor shots would be taken by another photographer

I was using my Canon A1 and the T90.The A1 was loaded with Ilford HP5 black and white film rated at 400 and the T90 was filled with Ektachrome 400 slide film. My reasons for the film in each camera was that I wanted to use the spot metering capability in the T90 to make sure that I was exposing correctly for the skin tones. Essential with unforgiving slide film.  The black and white, I would develop myself later as the newspaper was only printed once a week.

I opened the back of the A1 and threaded the film tongue into the take up spool, wound one frame on and then closed the back. I then fired off a couple  more frames until the mechanical counter showed number one in the small window.  Then I opened the back of the T90 and laid the tongue of the Ektachrome film against the take up spool. I closed the door and heard the film being automatically loaded. Thus set, I waited for The Queen to arrive.

HM always attracts a good crowd and I shot lots of pics of her with her subjects alternating between the two cameras. My window of opportunity was however all too brief and before a few minutes had passed, the Queen had gone inside.

I looked at the film counters on both cameras. The A1 had made 27 images and the T90 was nearly full with 34 frames gone. I put both cameras back in my bag and drove to Joe's Basement in Wardour Street SOHO to have the slide film developed. Joe's was a photolab that was open 24 hours a day. You could go in at one o'clock in the morning, hand in your slide film and have it back two hours later. They also did push processing, printing, mounting and lots of other photography related things.

I gave my film over the counter at 11:00 o'clock and was told that it would be ready by one. This was ideal because I had an appointment to hand in the best slides to the magazine at two thirty.

This meant I could go home, get some lunch, come back and pick up the slides then take them to the magazine with plenty of time to spare.

When I got home, I took the A1 from my bag and went to rewind the film. I pushed in the tiny film release button and lifted the lever on the film spool to begin the process.

Normally, for a thirty six exposure film, I would have to turn the handle about thirty or so times until it went slack, indicating that the film was back safely inside the cannister. This time however I felt the tension loosen after about two turns!

Shock!

Horror!

This could only mean one thing. The film had not gone through the camera. I had no black and white images for the newspaper. I felt sick. In the photography world, you are only as good as your last job. I had made a stupid amateur mistake and would be a laughing stock. No-one would employ a freelancer who didn't check if his film was loaded. What could I do? I began to formulate excuses but each one sounded more absurd that the previous one.

Then I had an epiphany. A simple solution came to me. I remembered that a couple of months  previously, I had bought myself an Ohnar Zoom Slide duplicator (ZSD) from Jessops photoshop on Tottenham Court road. This was a tube, containing a fixed focus lens at f22 that fitted on the front of an SLR and enabled the user to insert a slide at the front end in order to take a picture of the resuting image. There were two types. A fixed focal length and a zoom version. I had paid about £25 for the zoom version.

 Zoom slide duplicator. Image by Delgibo on Flickr

It was now nearly time for me to pick up the slides from Joe's. I grabbed my T90 , the ZSD and a roll of HP5 then made my way to Wardour Street. The slides were in my possession at one fifteen.

At about one thirty,  I made my way to one of the sit down cubicles in the mens toilet at Hello magazine. The next half an hour or so, saw me sitting on the toilet with my camera, ZSD attached,  pointed at a light bulb. I fed the best slides into the ZSD, zoomed in to crop and pressed the shutter, thus making a black and white copy of each colour image.

At two twenty five, I was able to hand over the colour images to the picture editor at Hello magazine.

That evening, I processed and printed the black and white images and handed the pics to my editor.

 Colour image from T90

Black and white copy from ZSD

 Ektachrome original

 

HP5 copy from ZSD

Reputation intact. Until next time that is!   ;o)

The times they are a changing

The image capturing tools that I use in my job include a Sinar view camera, a pair of medium format Rollei SL66’s and my own digital Canon EOS bodies.

The vast majority of product photography done by me is shot on medium format tungsten balanced film. I go through anywhere up to 600 rolls per year.

I phoned my photolab three weeks ago to order one hundred rolls. I was then informed that they only had twenty rolls in stock and would order the rest. Five minutes later, they rang back and told me that it had been discontinued and that there were only twenty rolls available. Period.

 My favourite artificial light film. No more available

A quick visit to Kodak’s website said:

„ Due to significantly decreased sales volumes, Kodak is ceasing production of KODAK EKTACHROME 64T Professional Film (EPY). Based on current usage demand, product is expected to be available in the market through early 2010.
Kodak actively evaluates its professional film portfolio to ensure it's consistent with customer demands; decisions regarding product discontinuations are largely based on customer demand and sales.“

A feeling of unease begins to set in so I ask if there is any Fuji equivalent available. Half an hour later my call is returned and I am reliably informed that there are only ninety rolls left in EUROPE!! Naurally I ordered them and they arrived last week.

 The last ninety rolls of Fuji 64T

I can’t however (at the time of writing this), find any mention of its discontinuance on the Fuji website.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. „ Just switch to digital“. That will definitely happen but I find it somewhat disappointing to see such a great film being discontinued.

I’ve been using it since the early eighties. Perhaps I’ll keep one box back to give to a photomuseum!

 Feeding the beast

Oh well. 'til next time.