Russell Crowe, Leicester Square, London 1992.

Thursday, 6 May 2010 I was reminded of this photograph today whilst listening to Russell Crowe being interviewed on BBC Radio Five Live.

Russell Crowe may not remember me or the photograph (I’m sure he doesn’t) but he certainly remembers Gavin Martin, the NME journalist that accompanied me for the interview.  

It was soon after Russell Crowe had played the skinhead Hando in the film Romper Stomper. A lot of people were shocked by that film and, according to Mr Crowe on the radio today, Gavin hadn’t liked the film at all.

In the days since this photograph was taken, Russell Crowe has developed something of hard-case reputation for himself off screen as well.  Back then, he seemed as nice as pie.

Nevertheless he still seems to harbor a bit of a grudge against my good friend Gavin, who may need to make sure he doesn’t run in to Mr Crowe again.

Mind you, Gavin is fairly feisty himself so it could be interesting.

I’ll keep you posted.

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Switzerland 1998.

Wednesday, 5 May 2010 I’d photographed Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry once before in Willesden in the early ‘80s and I thought at the time he was barking mad. I suppose I was encouraged to think this because of his reputation. And when he had me photograph him standing on his head in a puddle at the side of the road, that sort of confirmed things . 

Until I came to do this shoot for Loaded. If you look in his home studio (seen in this previously unpublished photo) it’s still a cacophony of recording equipment, junk, weird constructions and his home spun philosophy - which he tends to write on any available flat surface. But the rest of his large house, overlooking Lake Geneva, is spotless and totally normal. Almost like a “footballers wives” type house in fact – clean and white with a lot of glass and polished metal. So whilst I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m thinking maybe Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry is not quite as crazy as he likes to make out.

Debbie Harry, Hammersmith Odeon 1977.

Tuesday, 4 May 2010 This was during the UK tour Blondie did with Television. My girlfriend and I had bought a ticket to go and see them at the Hammersmith Odeon and, luckily, our tickets were quite near the front.

I did what I often did back in the days of being a keen amateur: once the lights went down, I slipped out of my seat, ran down to the front and jumped into the pit and tried to loose myself among all the other photographers. I had no camera bag or anything, but since I only owned one camera and one lens, I didn’t really need one. Besides, with Debbie Harry on stage, no one was really going to be looking at me. 

In all honesty, that sort of thing wasn’t hard to do back then. There was very little stage security in the ‘70s and certainly none of the “first three numbers, no flash” lark that photographers are saddled with these days. When I eventually processed the film I was surprised to see how it looked like Debbie Harry was actually looking right at me in some of the shots.

Ayrton Senna, Silverstone 1987.

Monday, 3 May 2010 A year or two before most people had even heard of Aryton Senna, I persuaded Arena magazine to commission me to shoot him.

He didn’t live very far from me at that time, in Walton-On-Thames I believe, so it seemed quite convenient. But it was one of those jobs without a particular deadline, and whether it ever happened or not was largely down to me. 

In those days press passes for Formula One were quite easy to get hold of (you had to see Max Mosley though) and so it came to be that I spent a largely fruitless time stalking Ayrton during a practice day for the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch. Whilst I thought I had all the right passes for ‘access all areas’, the security had other ideas and I kept getting chucked out. Since they didn’t actually take the passes off me, I just walked round and went in again by another gate. So I was playing tag with the guards all day.

Eventually I managed to track Ayrton down and in a spare moment, I asked him if I could “pop round” to his house one day and take some photos. He was fairly good about it and said “sure, no problem” but I sort of had my doubts if he really meant it. Later on in the day, after practice had finished, I was driving out of the car park, when I happened to see Ayrton again, driving a long black Mercedes just in front of me. I was younger then and slightly foolhardy. So I thought to myself, I may as well follow him from a discreet distance and try to see exactly where he lives. I thought I should be able to keep up: the M25 is a pretty crowded motorway and just how fast can he go?

Well, the answer was a darn site faster than me, that’s how fast. When we got down to the M25, I managed to keep up with him for about 500 yards. And I was driving a car that could do over 130mph. But I honestly didn’t see him for dust.

This photograph is from the year after, at Silverstone. And I never did get to do that session with him in his house.

John Cooper-Clarke, London 1981.

Saturday, 1 May 2010 I’d arranged to meet John Cooper-Clarke in the bar in Waterloo Station and even as I was chatting to him over a quick drink, I noticed him periodically looking past me to check himself out in the mirror behind the counter. As we walked to the photo location, I noticed he wasn’t able to go past any sort of reflective surface without stopping to take a look at himself and play with his hair. I think he’s our greatest living poet, and a lovely guy, but he certainly never met a mirror he didn’t like.

The importance of a USP.

Friday, 30 April 2010 Every so often I get emailed by people, mostly students, asking me things like "do you have any advice on how one can become a successful photographer?"

That's a very good question. And because of the current economic climate and demise of so many magazines and newspapers, even harder these days to answer.

It's certainly way harder to answer today that it ever was when I started out.  But, in my years working in the advertising business, I learnt about the USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Wikipedia suggests it was the great Rosser Reeves that came up with the term back in the 1940s.  

Basically it means you have to identify and promote the one thing that's most different and compelling.  In advertising it'll apply to a product or service but it can probably equally well apply to an aspiring photographer.

One way to have a USP as a photographer might be to shoot in a significantly different way to everyone else - so that art directors and art editors then have to seek you out if they want that particular style.  This is a fantastic area of opportunity because most photographers don't have much imagination (any art director or art editor will tell you that).  But, fortunately, most art directors and art editors don't have as much imagination as you might think either.  Therefore they usually have to see the precise style they want in a photographer's portfolio before they'll commission anything similar.  Hence a big gap in the market for the truly different to jump into.

Another way might be to shoot in the same style as everyone else but find subjects no one else thought of.  For instance, if I was an art editor and I wanted to commission a series of photos of smiling, big haired girls with their thumbs stuck provocatively into the top of their bikini bottoms, I could just stick a pin anywhere in the map and I'd find a thousand acceptable photographers that have already done plenty of work in that style.  Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that sort of photography but there's a million GWC's in every country that can do it.  Therefore, I'd have absolutely no reason to pick you out and ask you to shoot that.  Unless you lived right next door.  If, on the other hand, I wanted someone to shoot the West Molesey Three-Headed Toad, there would be a far smaller number of photographers who might be able to do a good job.  I don't know if there is a three-headed toad living in West Molesey.  Probably not (though there are some very funny things in the water supply round there).  But the point is, if you look hard enough, there will be something or someone, somewhere near you that is in some way remarkable.  And which could be made into an interesting photo story.  It just needs an imagination and a willingness to see the possible.  You don't become a photographer like Sebastião Salgado by just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. 

In both the cases above, it comes down to having a USP.

There are undoubtedly many other ways to become a successful photographer but having some sort of USP is a decent start.

Clint Eastwood, Cannes 1994.

Thursday, 29 April 2010 I took this photograph whilst on assignment for Loaded at the Cannes Film Festival. I was with the writer Martin Deeson and our brief was to gate crash as many film star parties as we could. As always with Loaded, it was a last-minute decision to go, so we didn’t have time to apply for any passes or accreditation. Martin’s view was that none of that mattered and, besides, he’d be too drunk to care. The trip didn’t get off to the most auspicious start because when we got to the airport, someone noticed that the Loaded office had erroneously booked us two return tickets to Caen, in Northwest France, rather than Cannes, in the south.

This photograph was taken whilst I was hanging about on the Croisette, together with about 20,000 die-hard French film fans (Martin was comatose in his hotel room, recovering from the night before). Just as I was passing the famous Carlton Hotel, the gendarmes held everyone back for a long black limousine. Although the windows were heavily tinted, I could see the occupant was Clint Eastwood. As the car passed me, I noticed the back window was open slightly, so I pushed forward and poked a small camera (a Canon Mju) through the gap. I managed to shoot one frame before one of the gendarmes pulled me away. As he passed, Clint Eastwood looked at me and gave me the sweetest of smiles, so I guess he didn’t really mind. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a real star.

Thierry Henry, London 2002.

Thursday, 29 April 2010 Some of my fellow Spurs fans may never speak to me again for including this photograph, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Thierry Henry was one of the greatest footballers ever to grace the English Premiership. If he’d worn a Spurs shirt maybe he could have made something of himself.

Kerri French, Koreatown, LA 1992.

Wednesday, 28 April 2010 I met the performance artist Kerri French one night outside the Ball Bizarre in downtown LA.  She and a friend came out onto the street and they both had their heads encased in elaborate latticework helmets. So naturally, I asked them if I could take their photograph.  

Ultimately, we became friends and I used to photograph Kerri quite often. She was very keen on being in front of the camera. She lived in a small wooden house in Silver Lake, which was a museum full of strange object trouve, rudely altered Barbie Dolls and lots of bits of her art. There was a tree in her front garden that had grown in through the louver windows and had completely taken over her front room. This shot was taken in a burnt-out store in Koreatown, shortly after the LA riots.