A quick update on my silence and absence these past 12 months

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On gap or rebuilding years...

Quite a number of you have messaged me - and thank you, from the bottom of my hear - asking why I have not been posting updates or a lot of images in the last 8 months or so. Because there are some very real reasons for this, I thought I would write something to explain. Let me assure you there is nothing sinister about this absence and slow-down - it is just life. In some ways, while I have been forced to put photography in the back burner, I have been far from idle... and while the challenges I'm facing are far from over, there are some rays of hope in the near horizon. But, let’s take things from the top.For reasons I’m going to try and explain here, the last couple of months of 2023 and the first 9 months of 2024 became a sort of firefighting against a dozen fronts, refocusing and rebuilding and, unavoidably, a “need to catch up with a million other things” year. Now, taking what is essentially almost a year away from any sort of professional work, especially in this climate (and with everything that’s happening around us) is usually absolutely devastating, especially when followed by an amazing, profitable and award-winning year. For me, having been through that once before in my career, I know how potentially crushing it can be. Oh sure, some of your more loyal customers will stick with you, some projects may work out even if pushed back, but whichever way you look at it, you’re going to take a hit. How big that hit will be depends on a lot of factors, few of them entirely in your control. Right now, as I'm writing these words, I'm working on an information campaign - this post is just a part of it - to update and inform both my personal and professional contacts.Now, if you’re insanely famous you might be able to get away with this unscathed (so to speak) but I certainly am not and while I really needed to take these months off, I know I have probably pushed my photography career and business back by anything between 2 and 4 years (based on previous experience anyway). At the same time, I have been very fortunate to have recently landed 3 new projects, two of them literally out of the blue - interesting ones too - based on the work I did in 2022 and 2023, but honestly, that’s just not enough.So, what have I been doing these past 10 months?Let’s start from the bad news: I was hit with two really serious family crises both of which needed me to drop everything and focus exclusively on those. I don't want to go into the horrible details - trust me, you don't want me to go there either - but I'm sure you can come up with a few horrible scenarios and alternatives. Choose two and think of how you would feel and react and then maybe, you'll get an idea. There was little to no energy - or time to be honest - to lift up a camera or think about photography apart from jealously browsing the work my colleagues and friends were producing and wishing for better times... which were sadly not to be had. The fact I managed to fight depression was, I'd like to believe, a miracle.Throughout this however, we managed to do something extremely hard but also very rewarding. In what turned out to be a really big thing, we finally fulfilled a long-time dream and bought a house in France. It's an old farmhouse in southeast france, in the middle of a national park, with 11 acres of land around it, a barn, a small forest, a creek and a lot of potential. For me it became a pressure valve for everything else and I spent almost 10 months drawing, planning, purchasing, project managing and actually doing work on the house. The plan? Restore the house using period-authentic and/or appropriate furniture, clear some of the land, rejuvenate the forest with oak, chestnuts etc, plant a small orchard and use maybe half of the land for vines.Now, obviously I did not - could not - do the actually building work myself, but I would spend most of my spare time organising materials purchasing and logistics, scheduling over 100 different deliveries over the course of 4 1/2 months, with most of them needing to be timed to the day, travelling back and forth to review and supervise and, as the house started to resemble home, it served as an incredible counterbalance to everything else. We faced 2-3 major curveballs which overshot our budget by about 10%, but all in all, come August (yes, this August), we were finally able to spend 5 weeks there, something incredibly necessary. The work is not yet 100% finished - loads of landscaping and planting to do, exterior works etc., but overall we’re now at a stage where I can focus back on work and get back to what I love (and pays the bills!).

A view of the house as it stands today

But, amidst all the building dust and mud, something very interesting happened: while in France, I connected with the local farmers in my area (some really wonderful and interesting characters) and managed to build, pretty much out of nowhere, a wonderful long-term project (funded too!) to create great visuals of farming and the people it involves for the regional department our farm is in. So, while this will never make me rich or anything, it gives me reason to work out of our house there when I’m not travelling, connect with the people and craft images unlike my usual ones. If I’m being honest, I am really excited about this and very eager to start this early in 2025.Finally, on photography-related news - not good ones - NG cancelled pretty much all long-term projects, effectively removing 3 upcoming trips from my calendar. At least when this happened I was not in the field - I spoke to two other photographers and they received the cancellation email while they were photographing... can you imagine? All your plans, thousands of dollars in deposits and arrangements all gone with a short, two paragraph, email. Brutal but, if I want to be honest, pretty much expected the way things have been going. I mean, almost 50% of the images in the magazine these days are sourced through image libraries for peanuts and this has had no impact to the dwindling readership and subscription base, so... For me, it was, as we call it, the cherry on top of the shit cake...a truly horrible way to cap the first six horrible months of 2024!So, in a nutshell, that’s it. Almost 11 months of dealing with bad, horrible, soul-destroying and some sort-of-good things, here we are. In these 11 months I’ve taken, maybe, 20 photos and while I’ve kept my equipment clean and charged, I would oftentimes look at the equipment rack with sadness and a bit of despair. Hopefully, this may be about to change. Why? Because while all the above was happening, some really interesting things also happened:

Benin Voodoo AssignmentAfter almost 12 months of research and planning, six of which spent on negotiations and scouting, I finally organised and completed (!!!) my trip to Benin to photograph voodoo. Now, I realise this may not sound very exciting, especially as there are loads of photos from voodoo priests and dancers from Togo and Benin - some of them good ones too - but that is not what I wanted to do. What I ended up doing took an enormous amount of effort: it involved permission from various head-priests and abbots from some of the more esoteric sects, a number of scouting visits (thankfully most of them done by my local fixer and his contacts and done by video) and a lot of pre-visualisation (so I could adequately communicate to the people what it was I was looking for).But, after all that, in late July, I found myself in Benin working with 8 different voodoo sects with near unprecedented access. In this trip I was also joined by another amazingly talented photographer and it was wonderful to compare our distinct styles and approaches.The results and associated story are, I believe, quite interesting and, for me, at this stage, extremely rewarding. They gave me hope when I was struggling to find any.

Product Collaborations

Following my recent work in Japan and my work with Kobaien, a pretty cool furniture designer, who’s using Kobaien inks to stain his tables, has approached me (funnily enough, through Kobaien) to not only use my photos but also to collaborate with him and photograph the workshops of some of his other suppliers all over Europe, some of them as traditional and niche as Kobaien.We’re starting with a father-and-son tiny wood-working workshop in Kosovo in early spring but there’s a lot more to come. Very exciting and a testament to the fact that if you do quality work, work that’s different from the countless other images out there, then business will come and it’ll be interesting.

Three new extreme assignments

Almost by accident (you know, the ones which “happen” when you spend a lot of time reading and then following up hunches with a lot of research - those ones) the concept for an amazing story documenting the lives of an ancient people in one of the world’s riskier destinations (cannot say more at the moment) has started taking shape. While enormously complicated in terms of security, logistics, on-the-ground arrangements and much more, when it comes into fruition in later in March or April (our current target dates) it will make me one of the very few photographers to have ever ventured there!I’m actually not afraid to admit I’m a bit apprehensive about this - the security implications alone can appear, on the face of it, quite daunting, but I’m sure it’ll be okay in the end. After all, following the year I've had, how much worse can things get?There's also another challenging story in Africa which came out of the blue and we're trying to organise - it's a bit outside my comfort zone as it involves massive crowds, chaos and situations probably way too fast-paced for lighting. And yet, that's exactly what I will have to do, so wish me luck. And no, it's not a tribal assignment, does not involve masks or performances...but it is a human story and a really interesting one.

Finally off to Algeria

I finally managed to find what I hope will be the right local fixer to help me travel into the Algerian Sahara and finally spend some time with the local Tuareg to try and capture how their lives and culture has changed as they slowly trade their nomadic desert ways for a more settled, farm-life existence. It’s taken a long time to get this organised and there’s a lot of uncertainty still around this, but hey, we’ll find out soon, right? I’m looking to schedule this for my only gap period in mid-December, before Christmas if possible, so time is running out, but I remain hopeful.Update: due to things continuously going from bad to worse, I have had to postpone the trip to Algeria for later in 2025, but the trip will go ahead. Eventually. Hopefully.

Working with CNN Asia

CNN is currently planning a feature on Kobaien and their 400-year old history and Kobaien were kind enough to bring me together with their producers to advise and collaborate on the visuals and photography. It's still early days but it may turn out to be very cool.

Brand New - Exciting - Workshops

It's true that I never really advertised my workshops and for a really simple reason: I don't run photo tours and I would traditionally run workshops following demand rather than schedule them in advance. I would always keep the groups intentionally very small to ensure the learning experience was the best possible for each participant and, let's face it, it was hard to balance those with the actual assignment work.However recently I have been inundated with requests for new workshops to the point that if I were to try and accommodate them all, I'd leave home today and return in 4-5 months. At the same time I really, really enjoy teaching and I am truly passionate about lighting so, after working with a few of my truly trusted local fixers, I have put together 3 upcoming workshops, with 4 more coming in the next couple of months. All workshops will take place within 2025 and i expect them to sell out quickly, so...Me and my team are incredibly excited about them - we intend them to be high-end (but not high-priced) and provide participants with a really great learning experience. I truly hope you will decide to join me there so we can create beautiful images.

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