Is there anybody there?

I’ve been told by a number of people that I’m not very good at self-promotion and getting my images “out there”, wherever “there” is? So this website, which was an amalgamation of my previous website and old blog, was produced so that I at least have a decent vehicle to showcase my images when people do find out about me. So the next step apparently is to promote myself and my images more, something which I feel many other photographers are much better at than myself, but I may as well have a go.

I believe that quite a few people know of me in the UK camera club world, even though I don’t enter many UK exhibitions, mainly due to my success in the few exhibitions I do enter, and my MPAGB distinction. I have now given my Have I got Nudes For You talk to over 1000 people at various clubs, and I believe I have managed to change quite a few people’s perception of the nude as a genre. I was recently at a Royal Photography Society event, and after being introduced to a lady photographer, she said “Ah, you’re the nude man”, so I think in the RPS and UK camera club world I’ve probably made my mark.

As any readers of the blog will know I also enter group exhibitions (salons), and I ‘know’ quite a few other photographers around the world from this. I use quotes around the word know as I only really know many of them through social media and online, but I have started to meet more of them in real life, with some really enjoyable trips around the UK, Portugal and Ireland. I hope to meet many more of them in person when I give my talk to camera clubs in Ireland in September, which was very kindly organised by Bill Power. I’ve had invitations from photographers in Norway, The Netherlands, and other interesting sounding places, and with our super budget airlines I fully intend taking them up on their offers, taking a model with me of course as it would be rude not to :)

(Note: On the model front, I am quite lazy often using the same models regularly, which means that I don’t really go looking for new models, thinking that models will approach me if they think that their looks are a good fit for my style of photography. Obviously it doesn’t work like that, as I have found that new models I have worked with have wanted to work with me but didn’t want to send me a ‘cold’ email, even though I thought I encouraged that in my profile notes on the various portfolio hosting sites, so have waited for me to eventually find them! So, I’m probably going to regret this, but I would encourage models to approach me if you think your looks suit my style of photography, you like working in interesting locations, think we could produce great images together, and are interested in any of the trips mentioned above.)

Quite a few people promote their work through solo exhibitions, something I have thought about and never quite got around to finding a suitable venue and organising, especially since most places that are open to the public shy away from nudes. So that’s another reason for this website, to hopefully impress people enough to let me exhibit in their venue. I’ve tried to find the right balance on the About page on this site of promoting my photographic achievements, without boasting, hopefully I have found that balance, and would welcome people’s views on this?

One reason many people do know me is because of my exhibition success, so I have now created a gallery of my gold medal winners in FIAP exhibitions. It still amazes me when I win a gold medal, it means that the judges have usually looked through between 1000-3000 images of various genres (landscapes, portraits, sports, still life etc) , and then decided that my image is either the best or one of the top three or so (there can be more than one gold medal in large sections). Quite a few people want to win a gold medal, and ask me how to do it? Well I can’t tell them how to do it, but I can show them the images I have achieved it with (just under 40 gold medals between them at the moment), and here they are below.

So, I know that I should do more to promote my work, and hopefully I am going in the right direction. Any other suggestions related to any of the topics mentioned would be most welcome, as well as approaches from suitable models.

Thanks, as always, to all the young women who create these images with me, and especially for this post to the ‘golden’ ones – Nanette McCrone, Ivory Flame, Victoria Summers, Kayleigh Lush, Katy, Keira Grant and Fredau.