Tiger Woods, California 1994.

Friday, 14 May 2010 This is taken on Tiger Woods’ home golf course, near San Diego, when he was only 19 and still an amateur. It was commissioned in the really early days of Loaded and very few people, outside of golf, had ever heard of him. The journalist I was there with, Tim Southwell, played half a round with him. I think Tiger won. 

I don’t play golf so Tiger drove me and my big bag of cameras around on a golf buggy. It was the first and only time I’ve ever been around a golf course. Afterwards we went to the driving range and he showed us this most amazing drive (I assume a trick shot), where he could get the ball to go outside the boundary fence and then sort of curl back over the top of it and land, perfectly placed on the fairway two hundred yards away. He did it exactly the same way several times. I tried it, and my ball went skidding across the grass and stopped about 15 feet away. These days, when I tell people Tiger Woods once tried to teach me how to drive a golf ball, people look at me as though I’m mad.

Back then he was very nice, relaxed, talkative and extremely charming.

The Rolling Stones, Earls Court, London May 1976

Monday, 10 May 2010 (This is a continuation of the story immediately below).

Gradually over the next couple of years, I started leaping over barriers and clambering onto stages and shooting live bands wherever and whenever I could: Labelle, The Hammersmith Gorillas, Betty Davis, Maria Muldaur, The Rolling Stones, The Kursaal Flyers, Vinegar Joe, Eddie and The Hot Rods – I’ve still got boxes full of live photos of them all.  Some are not very good and most of them have, rightly, never seen the light of day.

But all too soon, like virtually every proper job I’ve ever had, I was declared surplus to requirements at the ad agency with the Miranda account.  So in order to continue my ersatz career as a music photographer, I went out and bought myself a second-hand Nikkormat.

But it was still the proximity to that live music that was the main attraction, not taking the photos.

Then something significant happened to me one night, in late 1976, at a Vibrators show at Kingston Poly.  I was crouched on the side of the stage, about three feet to the side of the band’s speaker stack and, as soon as the band came on, the audience started to go crazy.  It was my first live sighting of ‘punks’.  Bedecked in all kinds of ludicrous apparel, they were leaping and writhing around in front of the stage, shouting and spitting and going absolutely barmy.  And, more significantly, they were a darn sight more photogenic than the band. I didn’t quite have the gumption to start photographing them there and then, their manner took me aback slightly, but I knew that next time I encountered them I would make a bit more of an effort.

And I felt a frisson of something that night and I wasn’t quite sure why.  Apprehension certainly.  The punks were ostensibly fairly violent looking and some were none too careful where they aimed their globules of phlegm.  But there was something else too.  There was an excitement, a rawness and a vitality about them that was completely different to anything I’d encountered before.

Though I was drawn and repelled in almost equal measure that night (a feeling I’ve since become very familiar with) I felt a compulsion to try to record of what I saw.  So, a few weeks later, in December of that year, when ‘The Roxy’ (the UK’s first punk club) opened its doors in Neal Street, Covent Garden, I was one of those standing in the queue.

Ron Wood / Eric Clapton / Pete Townshend The Finsbury Park Rainbow, London 1973.

Saturday, 8 May 2010 Determining exactly when and where this all started for me is very easy. It was at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park , London on January 13th 1973.

Back then, I wasn’t a photographer, not even a keen amateur, just an advertising agency art director with a flatlining career. Thinking back though, right from my early teens I was always interested in looking at photographs and I’d often cut out and keep the ones I liked from newspapers and magazines.  So I guess there must always have been something there. 

In 1967, when I left school and enrolled at Ealing Art School, I don’t think I was even curious as to how a camera worked. Those of us on Ealing’s Ground Course (a first year of general art studies to establish where one’s talents might lay) were required to spend half a day a week using a camera and learning the rudiments of photography. Sadly, it all went in one ear and out the other with me and whenever I had the need to use the medium, perhaps for making a photo-litho or a silk-screen, I’d go to Bill Patterson, one of the photography tutors, and say, ‘would you mind just running through this bit for me one more time?’ He’d usually sigh, take the camera or film from my hand and say, ‘Give it to me, I’ll do it.’

He was a lovely man but perhaps not blessed with the required patience to deal with a lot of whacky students, so I tended take advantage of this quality in order to avoid any unnecessary toil. Which was perfectly fine, except that it meant when I left art school four years later, I hardly knew how to process film and I certainly didn’t know what all the little numbers on the front of the camera meant.

Fortunately, I went straight from college into the advertising business, so I thought I didn’t need to. But a couple of years, and a couple of job changes later on, I found myself working in an agency that had a camera account – that of the late and not very lamented Miranda SLR - and I was told to use one and try it out, so as to get to know better what it could do.  (Not so much, as it happened, but we obviously didn’t say that in the ads).

So one night a few weeks later, when I went to see the above named gig, I just happened to have the camera and some film with me. The seats my girlfriend and myself had bought were terrible, almost the very back row, and it was like watching an ant performing on stage.  So I thought - I’ve got a camera, why don’t I just go down to the front, climb into the pit and pretend to be a photographer?   In those days there was virtually no security at rock gigs, so it was perfectly possible.

So, rather unchivalrously leaving my girlfriend where she was, I ran down to the front and, effecting the air of someone who did this sort of thing for a living, hopped over the low wall and watched the rest of the gig from behind the borrowed Miranda. It was a tremendous buzz, being just a few feet away from some of my musical idols.  Bathed in the same coloured lights as them and in front of thousands of people just like them, I could see and hear every little detail.  And it was an infinitely more profound and worthwhile experience than sitting in the seats right at the back.

When I got the photos I'd shot processed, I found that completely by luck and with no element of judgement whatsoever, they weren’t that bad.   Okay, by no means good but not that bad.

And so, very gradually over the next couple of years, I started leaping over barriers and clambering onto stages and shooting live bands wherever and whenever I could...

(to be continued).

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.

Sadie Ama, Gunnersbury, West London 2007.

Sunday, 2 May 2010 This photograph of the British R&B singer was commissioned for a series on the London ‘Grime’ scene, by the short-lived style magazine Dummy. The hands are those of her more famous older sister, the platinum-selling Shola.

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.