Roof Unit

I've recently moved offices and rejoined the gang at Roof Unit.

Roof Unit is a shared office space and studio for creatives in East London. Originally set up by Toby Smith in 2005, I was based there for a couple of years until spending the last year working alongside with my friend Richard Hadley. 


However when Roof Unit made the move to a gleaming new space in Bethnal Green with 20 desks, a photo studio and a sun-drenched roof terrace I decided it was time to rejoin my old friends, make some new ones, and settle back in. There's a great bunch of photographers working here so be sure to check out their excellent and diverse work.


And under the direction of Toby Smith and Alexa Montgomery there will be a program of events running throughout the year - so please drop in if you see something of interest.


Learn more about Roof Unit by reading the recent features about the space in the British Journal of Photography and spoonfed.

Why you shouldn't post your photos on Flickr

Via Chase Jarvis via FStoppers

New print promo going out

Wonderful Machine are using one of my shots for their latest print promo, going out to 2,000 art buyers across North America. Which is rather fab.

UPDATE - you can read about how it was made here.

Check out the new Facebook page

In my attempt to keep up with the times I've finally gotten around to setting up a Facebook page - click on the panel on the left to head there now.


The idea behind it is to have a way of sharing more day to day things about what I'm up to. More significant events will of course continue to get posts right here on the blog, but if you want to follow along on a more day to day way about what I'm up to, thoughts on photography, and the odd iphone photo, then please check out the new Facebook page. When I post on the blog I'll include a link to it on FB too, so you won't miss out on anything.


So what are you waiting for? Head on over to the Facebook page and hit "Like"!

The extraordinary story of Vivian Maier

Once in a while an extraordinary discovery is made, such as Robert Capa's "Mexican Suitcase". Recently another great photographic masterwork has been uncovered, but the story could not be more intriguing.

In 2008 Chicago resident John Maloof bought a some boxes of old negatives at a clearance sale, and in the process stumbled upon what may in future become regarded as one of the great photographers of the 20th century.

He originally bought them thinking they might be useful for a book project he was working on, but as he began to scan them in he realised he was looking at street photography of the highest calibre, worthy of standing alongside mid-century greats such as Robert Frank and Walker Evans.

Although the 100,000 pictures included several self-portraits of a woman, her identity was a mystery until he finally found a document with her name on it hidden among the negative sleeves. Her name was Vivian Maier, she was completely unknown to the photographic community and and a google search revealed she had died just days before.


Watch this quick news segment to learn more about her, her work and her amazing story:

The first major exhibition of her work opens next month and the Chicago Cultural Centre. I only hope it makes it over to London some day. You can see more of her beautiful work at John Maloof's blog.


All images (c) Vivian Meier / John Maloof

Travel Photographer of the Year announced

Last week saw the winner of this year's Travel Photographer of the Year announced. A big congratulations to Larry Louie of Canada for a beautiful set of black and white photos shot in Mali.

Image (c) Larry Louie


Head on over to the TPOTY winners gallery to see the whole set.

Street Photography Now

My good friend Laura Willis, the Marketing Director at art book publisher Thames & Hudson, has just informed me they're running a street photography project in collaboration with the Photographers Gallery to coincide with the recent launch of their new book Street Photography Now.

From the website:

"Street Photography Now Project is a collaboration between The Photographers’ Gallery, London and Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren, authors of Street Photography Now (Thames and Hudson).

Each week from 1 October 2010, a leading contemporary street photographer will issue a new instruction, written to inspire fresh ways of looking at and documenting the world we live in.

Over the following six days photographers around the world are invited to upload one photograph in response, to form part of a Street Photography Now Project Gallery on Flickr. After six days the next instruction will be issued.

The Project will run for 52 weeks. The aim is to build a global community of photographers exploring the rewards and challenges of documenting public life. All photographers, including those who contribute to the Instructions, will be encouraged to comment and respond to the images posted to the Flickr groups.

Though not a competition, at the end of the Project one photographer will be chosen who has made the most outstanding contribution to the project across a number of weeks. They will be awarded £1000 of Thames & Hudson books and have their work displayed on The Photographers’ Gallery digital Wall for All.

The Street Photography Now Project was launched in September 2010, as The Photographers’ Gallery closed its doors for the redevelopment of its building on Ramillies Street. The Project will run for one year and is scheduled to end when The Photographers’ Gallery reopens in late 2011."

Visit the website to learn more and to take part.

Normal programming will resume shortly...

Apologies for the echoing silence on the blog over the last month or two. This summer has been stupidly busy, with shoots in Brazil, Turkey, Sweden and the UK. In fact I've only spent 5 weeks at home since the start of April! With only one week of travel scheduled in September, I hope to get back to my usual routine of posting once or twice a week. Stay tuned...

2010 PDN Photo Annual

Photo District News, the US photography industry trade rag, has just posted it's influential Photo Annual online. Take a look to see some of the best photography happening around the world right now. 


One of my favourites is Simon Harsent's campaign for the World Wildlife Fund - "When they are gone, they can't come back" - beautifully illustrating a powerful message.

The perils of microstock

When companies are looking for photography for their website or brochure they face a few choices:

1) hire an assignment photographer for the shoot

2) use a rights-managed stock image where they can see who has used it before and buy and exclusive license if necessary

3) use royalty-free microstock

When the bill for the first two options might run to hundreds or thousands of pounds, it's not surprising that many are turning to microstock where they can license an image for their website for £10 or less.

Chris Barton has humorously outlined the perils of this approach on his blog. Well worth a look. Next time you have a company turn you down for an assignment, suggest they take a look too.

No plastic sleeves

No Plastic Sleeves is a great blog set up by Danielle Courier where she displays and evaluates photographers' and designers' portfolio packages. She's just published a book with all her knowledge summed up in 270 pages. From the blurb:

This text will guide you through the complete process of conceptualizing, designing and developing all the interconnected aspects of your total portfolio package:

- Objectively evaluate and edit your work
- Develop a distinguishing self-brand concept
- Understand and apply effective design strategies
- Create a custom-made portfolio book
- Translate and extend your ideas into an online portfolio
- Plus develop integrated self-promotional materials and marketing strategies

It's available for pre-order on Amazon, and is released at the end of the month. You can preview the table on contents and introduction on her blog. I've just ordered my copy, and I'll post my thoughts here once I've had a chance to read it. But if the quality of advice is as good as the blog then I'm pretty sure I'll be a happy customer.

New website now live!

After a couple of weeks on "soft launch", I'm happy to announce my new website julianlove.com is now live! It was due to be launched last month, but spending 2 weeks in India threw a bit of a spanner in the works of my schedule.

Why go to all the bother of a new website?

For one, I wanted to be able to show my images much larger. The old site limited pictures to have a height of 440 pixels. On todays 24 inch monitors, 440 pixels is pretty small. With most art buyers and picture editors (the main people who hire travel photographers) sitting in front of large screens with super fast broadband connections, there's no reason not to have huge images.

Secondly I wanted a site that looked a bit slicker and more professional. I hired a graphic designer, Ed Robin, to design a new logo with matching business cards, letterhead, DVD labels and so forth to match. So I feel I present a slicker brand to my clients.

I've posted before about the options for hosted portfolio websites. In the end I went with A Photo Folio, as I felt they had pretty much all the features I wanted at a price considerably lower than industry leader Livebooks.

Let me know what you think.

So how much do photographers earn?

A great post over at A Photo Editor where several established advertising shooters spill some of the beans on what they earn. Anyone billing a million dollars? Sure. But the surprising thing is how much gets eaten up in costs...most are only netting about 1/3rd to 1/5th of what they bill. If you run a big studio with several staff and have expensive productions with models etc for every shoot, that money gets eaten up pretty fast.

Head over to APE for the skinny.

When travel no longer requires travelling

We've all known about the power of Hollywood special effects ever since Star Wars in 1977. But when Chase Jarvis recently posted a showreel from Stargate Studios I was blown away.

Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot Demo from Stargate Studios on Vimeo.

For me it was a real eye-opener how much footage from even relatively simple scenes was shot on a green screen, with a background composited in afterwards.

The advantages from the production perspective are obvious - you don't need to travel, get location permits and are not dependent on the weather. And creatively you are limited only by your imagination.

So what has this got to do with travel photography? Compositing in still photography has been around for a long time, and has become extremely prevalent in the last 10 years as Photoshop has become ubiquitous.

However, it's only been relatively recently that it had been common to see travel posters on the tube here in London where a couple or family have been composited onto a beautiful background. Sometimes it is done very sloppily and looks terrible, but often it is done with great skill and would not be noticeable to the casual viewer.

I can imagine this is a trend that will only accelerate in future. With high quality stock photography available for backgrounds, models can be shot in the studio without the need to expensive travel and weather delays.

The green screen is here to stay.

Are you safe to post on Flickr?

Many professional photographers have shied away from posting their work on social media sites such as Facebook or Flickr. Often they have legitimate concerns about whether their work is protected well enough from copyright infringement. The terms and conditions to these sites are often onerous, hard to understand for those of us that don't speak legal-ese, and in any case get updated so frequently it's hard to keep track.

The downside of not participating professionally in social media sites is that increasingly photo editors and art buyers are looking to them for inspiration, and to find new styles and new photographers. And with the current generation of 20-somethings entering the photo industry, who have spent all their adult lives participating in MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, this will only become even more prevalent.

So that you know what's what, the ASMP, America's version of our own AoP, have put together a web page that explains to you in plain language the T&Cs of the main social media sites, letting you know what they, and other users, can and cannot do with your uploaded photos and videos.

Something everyone should read IMHO. Go here for the details.

Travel Photographer of the Year results out

The international 'Travel Photographer of the Year' competition, the most prestigious award in travel photography, has just announced its 2009 results. This year's winner is Bangladeshi photo journalist GMB Akash. He has a great portfolio of ship breakers in Pakistan and railway travellers in Bangladesh. You can see them and the individual category winners here. I was fortunate enough to win the competition in 2006.

Where now for emerging photographers?

A lot of traditional magazines are dying - the drop in print ad revenue is not matched by the increase in online ad revenue. The result is smaller budgets, and less money to spend on creating interesting and original content.

And as a photographer who generates quite a lot of my income from editorial shooting, that can makes things pretty tough. Magazines are using more and more stock photos and commission less and less. Those that do still commission often take the copyright of the images, cutting off a source of future income in stock.

As well as all of that, magazines are the way many people have traditionally gotten into a career in photography. The reduction in commissioning is removing what has traditionally been one of the key steps on the career ladder.

For anyone getting in to photography and looking to get their first editorial clients, Tim Kemple, an adventure sports shooter from Salt Lake City whose blog I have followed for a while, tells it like it is.

"The modern day magazine, the one charging thousands a page for advertising, while paying out hundreds a page for photography, in a book that is 50% advertising is on its last legs…"

Read more here

Film craziness is catching on

It seems the MF film craze is catching on big-time. Photographer and prolific author David duChemin over at the Pixellated Image recently picked up an old Hasselblad 500CM and seems to be having a lot of fun with it.

Interestingly, he talks about how shooting in a different format and style helps him sharpen his creative eye for when he uses his regular digital setup for his clients.

In the meantime, after my own little experiment with a Hasselblad, I've had some film come back from the lab. Of the two rolls I shot, there are a couple of portraits I really like. Now I just need to get my hands on a scanner to show them to you!

The future of magazines?

Sports Illustrated, have put together a demo of what their magazine might look like on a tablet touchscreen device. And I have to say it looks pretty good.

If this is what a digital magazine subscription could look like in a year or two, then I think they'll be a huge hit. eBook readers like the Amazon Kindle have been slow to take off, but reading novels is very different from magazines. As adoption of touch screen devices grows I can see these flying off the virtual shelves.

Thanks to A Photo Editor

Great minds think alike

It turns out Mike Johnston over at the Online Photographer has also just made a post about the delights of film-based medium format. Worth a read.