Scene Photography - Viewing the World with Fresh Eyes

Monday 2nd November 2009

Andrew Cooper

NVA recently interviewed Rob Smalley and Chris Burks of Scene Photography at their studios in Radford. The week before we met, they had won both the Photography and the main Business of the Year awards at the Nottingham Creative Business Awards 2009.

Rob and Chris both had 35mm SLR cameras as boys before taking diploma courses; they met on the photography HND course at South Notts College.

NVA: How did Scene Photography come about? How long have you been working together?

CB: Scene came about over a pint in a pub one night, neither of us were happy where we were and decided to get together and set up a commercial studio. We started planning the business and looking at properties in 2000, then started in 2001

NVA: You have assembled a pretty impressive client list – including Boots, Bentley, Alton Towers, Vision Express, E.On, Powergen and Playboy Menswear plus loads more . You were nominated for the Award (the Nottingham Creative Business Award for Photography) by one of your clients, which is a very good recommendation. What kinds of commercial projects have you been working on recently?

CB: We work really closely with our clients, a lot of them we’ve kept for many years and have a great relationship with them both in and out of work. They will often come in to talk about projects and ask for our input and ideas, or to help them with a pitch. We have had some pretty exciting work recently: for De Montfort University’s latest advertising campaign our work had to run alongside a TV advert that was being aired at the same time.

RS: For DMU we photographed Jimmy Choo (the world renowned shoe designer) and Akram Khan (highly acclaimed choreographer for celebrities like Kylie Minogue) plus Andy Gotts, photographer to the stars: Gotts was probably the most nerve-racking subject of all as he is such a talent in photography himself. We also recently photographed Carl Froch (world middleweight boxing champion) for a policing campaign in Nottingham.

NVA: I guess you regard yourselves primarily as commercial photographers? How much creative control are you able to retain in that role? Does it involve negotiation, or do you have to accept a brief while trying subtly to introduce some of your own personal characteristics into the work, maybe without the clients noticing?

CB: It depends on the job and the client. We always get a brief, which means we know the area and direction we are working in, and we usually have an art director unless the budget won’t support one. Some art directors have a very specific idea in mind: our role is just to set it up and make sure the right look is captured. Other art directors take a completely different approach and ask us to create imagery that they can get excited about, rather than telling us what to do. Most now realise that we can produce good work on our own.

NVA: The specific project for which you were nominated for the Award was a much more personal, artistic project – Night, a stunning series of pictures taken around Nottingham at night. You also recently did a set of stop-frame films taken from key vantage points around the city. Tell me a bit more about those pieces of work.

Nottingham Visual Arts

CB: We treated this no differently from the commercial work we do in the sense that all our effort was poured into making sure every picture was perfect. This was, after all, a self promotional piece of work. This was us showing people a Nottingham they may not have seen. The final 21 images that were exhibited were only a fraction of the total we shot. We went out to look for places that we thought were interesting to recreate in a picture, but we weren’t trying to put any sort of message across about the city.

The time-lapse films were something we did to run alongside the still images. It was fun experimenting as we were never completely sure how they would look, but we were very pleased with the final results.

RS: When we shoot commercial work, although we add our creative angle, it is still vital to work to the brief. This project was purely our own idea and our own work, we had total freedom which allowed us to demonstrate our own true creativity.

The time lapse was completely experimental for us. Most people see it as a piece of film, but in fact all of the frames were taken as stills on a digital SLR and assembled afterwards. It took 18,000 still images to produce it.

NVA: Do you think or work differently when you are creating a piece of “art” work as opposed to a project for clients?

CB: Even when working with clients there are subtle differences in how we shoot. One clients may want a very bleached-out look with subdued colours and a shallow depth of field. Another client may want work with a very ‘reportage’ style rather than the staged look you often get when working with professional models.

With our own project we set ourselves certain working guidelines to ensure that the images would sit together as a single piece of work. We were keen to reduce the saturation and cool down the hues of the pictures. We then looked at what was working for us and jointly chose the images that were successful. The main difference between this and our normal commercial work was that we could set the boundaries ourselves. One thing that I did though was to get some of the designers I work with to score the images we had shot so that we had an impartial benchmark on the work and knew which ones to reject. Sometimes you are too close to your own work and need a second opinion.

Nottingham Visual Arts

NVA: How easy is it to switch between the “commercial” and “art” modes, or doesn’t it really work like that?

CB: It’s quite easy, although I don’t really see it as a conscious switch of modes. Some jobs are really just about documenting something whereas others need imagination. What is important is to remember when not to be ‘creative’ just for the sake of it. Sometimes I see people putting ‘creativity’ into a picture when it isn’t needed and the subject matter itself is enough, so much so that it can get in the way of seeing what is going on in the picture.

RS: A lot of people would consider ‘commercial’ photography and ‘artistic’ photography to be completely different categories of expertise. I don’t think this is the case. There are a lot of people out there who bring creative artistic photography to the commercial market. So to answer the question, I would say that between commercial and artistic photography there is a big potential for a cross over - which for us is an easy and sometimes automatic transition.

NVA: It might be thought that for a photograph to be considered “art” it has to be extra-specially beautiful or beautifully constructed – the National Geographic or Vogue styles, for example. But in fact many ‘art’ photographers work in quite consciously crude, even ugly ways, sometimes deliberately using ‘old technology’ or drawing attention to defects in the creative process. It seems to me that for photographs to be ‘art’ they have to contain some kind of narrative purpose, or to address a subject with more than just the intention of recording the surface image. Is that how you see it? Or if not, how and why do you think photography works as ‘art’?

CB: For me, so long as somebody is getting enjoyment out of a photograph then that is enough. I don’t like to be critical of work that I don’t personally like as for someone else it may be great. Pictures that have deep messages in them but look like the photographer has very limited abilities, don’t work for me personally as I feel that the messages might be better expressed in words. For somebody else that might be just what they love. Who is to say one is better than the other?

When a photographer uses methods to create a consciously ugly or defected look, it can be effective if he sets out with a finished look in mind rather than simply trying to salvage an image that has gone wrong.

I personally don’t believe pictures have to contain a narrative: when they do, it can add to the images but I don’t think it is necessary. For me photography is a visual art: to look at the world with fresh eyes, not to intellectualise and comment on the things around us but to observe and record for visual pleasure only.

When Rob and I were looking for places to photograph, we would both get very excited about certain sites but wouldn’t be able to describe why other than ‘it looks good.’

RS: If you are going to be 'artistic' in photography, I feel you need to master how to execute your photographs technically and achieve the look that you need to achieve first, then work backwards from that. If you make the conscious decision that you would like to produce something in quite crude, even ugly ways , deliberately using old technology, or out of focus, blurred, wrongly exposed etc… all that is fine. It’s great to be loose and experimental with your work and not to get too hung up on the technicalities - but you do need to know them, so it is a considered decision and not a ‘happy accident’.

NVA: How do you regard the work of a photographer like, say, Annie Liebovitz who seems to be able to cross backwards and forwards between commercial, documentary and artistic genres?

CB: I think she is a great photographer, I first went to one of her exhibitions when at college about 13 years ago and most recently went to her show at the National Portrait Gallery in January. I bought two of her books and felt really inspired to go out and just take interesting pictures of people. When you see the breadth of her work you realise how talented she really is.

RS: She is living testament to the lines being blurred between commercial and artistic photography.

NVA: I believe you are going to be doing some work with Nottingham Trent University, mentoring photography students. What kind of advice would you give to young photographers who are about to start out on a career?

CB: I’d say to students: assist professional photographers as much as you can. Look at as much work as you can for inspiration. Experiment with different techniques and get to know your equipment and how to use it. Keep asking yourself ‘How can I improve this?’ And remember that a lot of business is about personality so try to get on with people and be flexible.

RS: I agree with all that.

NVA: Congratulations on winning the Photography and the top Creative Business awards at the Nottingham Creative Business Awards this year. How do you think that might change your lives and where do you go from here?

CB: It was a boost to our morale to know that people appreciate our work. It has been an amazing way to meet different people and the whole event was a great networking opportunity.

We believe that putting on exhibitions is a great way to re-invest in the business and show people we are more than just commercial photographers. We are already looking at what we will work on next.

NVA: As well as Annie Liebovitz, which photographers do you particularly admire? Did you set out at any stage to emulate a great photographer, or have you always ploughed your own furrows? Film-makers frequently cite other directors or writers as influences, or deliberately reference other film-makers work within their own. Have you got any conscious influences either in your photography or your film-making work?

CB: Although Rob and I have loads of photographers’ websites bookmarked and send each other details of good work whenever we see it, there are no one or two photographers that I would say have influenced us more than any others.

NVA: I see you have done some work with Shauna Richardson, whose crocheted Lions have been selected as the East Midlands entry in the Cultural Olympiad for 2012. How did that connection come about? (We hope to include a feature on Shauna’s work in NVA very soon, so it’s a really nice bit of serendipity.)

RS: We've known Shauna Richardson for a few years now, she is the wife of a client who we've worked with for a long time and they have become our friends. We're really pleased for her, her work is amazing. We first photographed the crocheted bear probably a year or so ago. They then approached us as they really loved the Night exhibition pictures and wanted to use them in their project. We photographed Shauna’s crocheted pieces, matching the lighting for each particular Night shot and then we put them together digitally. We are going to be doing more work with them in the future.