Lucy tries to escape from Godzilla

Stuart Spalding said to me “of course it’s all about the retouching now”.

“Well it bloody shouldn’t be,” quoth I.

I can’t quite remember what he said to me, it wasn’t as cruel as, “dear god woman you’re a dinosaur”,  he probably said something like, “Oh you’re old school” or “not many like you anymore”,  you get the jist. However, given that I am no great age at all (and indeed younger than him), is rather worrying in terms of not just photographic practice but in terms of photographic education.  I did indeed learn the old way.  On a Pentax K1000, processing my own film, printing my own contact sheets and prints and so and so forth.  I then discovered film and worked in TV/Film and made video art and short films for some years.

In film only shit directors says “we’ll fix it in post”.  As soon as a director says this, he’s lost the respect of his crew, he’s basically lost the whole film.  I’ve worked boh as a director and also in post as an editor and SFX supervisor.  So if there is one thing I’ve had istilled into me is the idea of you getting it right in camera. Film making is far too costly and difficult a came to fuck up on set, you’re shooting multiple frames for any given shot, you get it right or you get it wrong, despite what people may think, there is no fixing it in post.

So why is it that in photography you constantly hear “Never mind we’ll fix it in Photoshop?” on sets around the world? I would like to start a campaign amongst assistants, make-up artists and other on set crew and clients to repeat this when they hear that phrase:

“Ah you mean you fucked up!”

Please, have the courage of your convictions and say it loudly.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Luddite, Photoshop is an incredible too and more to the point it is an incredibly creative tool allowing one to work more as an arist or art director than purely as a photographer and if you look at the Loro Piana shoot, Photoshop was at the heart of that shoot, and yes there’s a bit of a joke about shopping in Godzilla..she’s a dinosaur. You can have a look at the work on the following pages on my site

http://www.eliziavolkmann.co.uk/page5.htm
http://www.eliziavolkmann.co.uk/page6.htm

There are things that you cannot avoid fixing in Photoshop, stray hairs, creases in paper, footprints on the colorama, of course. There are interesting tweaks and effects that can enhance your work and create or strengthen a particular look you’ve been working on.  A good retoucher is an artist, and just as I previously worked with post-graphics and paint experts, a great creative relationship can develop.

So when a pretty established photographer turned to my beloved favourite make-up artist and said “don’t bother spending time blending in your make-up, I’ll fix it in Photoshop”, she nearly dropped her blusher brush, this was also followed by a curse upon male photographers.

No mate you cannot fix that in Photoshop, the make-up is either right or it’s WRONG!

Sam and I spend a long time getting it right, if the day goes on, well tough, it goes on, though on the whole we work pretty fast and WRAP on time, but if the make-up and hair need longer to be perfect, then they just need that extra time, I’ll shoot fast and think harder to make up that time, but that hair and make-up is as much my responsibility as it is Sam’s. Sam like me trained in film and we share the same ultra anally retentive ethic about “getting it right”.

For a long time I shunned the very anally retentive side of me, it’s not always a pleasant characteristic, I fooled myself with my relaxed air and easy going nature that I wasn’t an uptight anal retentive perfectionist (though of course I always was really).  Then one day I embraced it whole heartedly and blimey, how much did my photography improve?  …exactly.

I love photography because it is an art where the learning and experimenting never ends, you will never get to know everything, you will never get to that point where you can say “I’ve done it all, now I’ll rest”, an art is not about that it is always about bettering yourself and that is what I hope I do with every shoot that I do and with Sam I have a fellow creative who feels the same.

The other week I was sitting in on a retouch and my retoucher friend showed me some work he had been doing for another photographer (I cannot reveal names on this one kids, sorry, I protect my sources).  Well it looked slightly interesting and I looked again at the lighting, something wasn’t quite right.

“Oh I built all of that up in photoshop,” he says.

“OK show me the origial RAW scan,” says I. “Oh my god that is fucking shit, one lamp? One bloody fuck off lamp, that’s burning the model’s face out? What the fucking Fuck?”

“Yeah it’s shot with one HMI,” quoth he

“Oh dear, I know how that conversation went with the client,” sneered I.

Basically as a photographer our job is to paint/draw an image with light, so of course collaborating with a retoucher to create some dramatic effect is part of the creative art, but as a studio photographer, the real art is in the lighting and shaping your subject with your lights.  If you can’t do that and all you want is the glory and to hide behind fancy light names and your retoucher then you should ask yourself:

“Am I a photographer?”

I’ve just finished a shoot for the Masters of Linen collaboration with Savile Row. The great names of Savile Row are joining force to celebrate using Linen. Henry Poole Dege and Skinner Anderson and Sheppard, Meyer and Mortimer, Norton and Sons Huntsmen and Hardy Amies have all accepted the challenge to create new designs in linen for a month long shop window display and promotion of linen in conjunction with the European quality mark association Master of Linen.The shoot will be featured in the June issue of Twist Magazine.For more information go to http://www.mastersoflinen.com/en/ will be putting up the images before long and Henry Poole will be featuring my photography on their website.

The glue gun burns have just about healed from making these origami monster models, it was a lot of fun. I inflicted a crash self taught course in origami on myself to work out how the hell you make a cloth covered monster look like it has been folded like a piece of origami paper, I know have a small menagerie of everything from frogs, the ubiquitous cranes, sea lions, lioness, squirrels and even a manta-ray

Origami Godzilla

Florian Pessenteiner Modeling Loro Piana

Rising star in the world of model is featured on the front cover of the April edition of Twist Magazine, the international journal of luxury fashion and fabrics. This is the first time the magazine is being translated into Japanese.  We wanted to create a theme that was both appealing to the Japanese market but striking enough to cross over into mainstream culture.  My inspiration for the art direction of this shoot was the Japanese Kaiju Films i.e. Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters etc and Italian cinema.  We wanted to give an impression of ideas of Kabuki in the front cover make up but without being literal and pastiche.  Samantha Myers my regular collaborator on shoots came up with this striking make up design and coupled it with corn row twists for Florian’s hair.

Florian’s unique archetectural were a perfect match for what is a ground breaking shoot for both myself as a photographer and for the magazine.  Here Florian models a new pinstripe fabric by Loro Piana called “The Wave”, which is a dynamic multipinstripe in azure blue over the classic base of navy blue.  We wanted to create a character that had echoes of Kabuki Theatre, Samurai but also western overtones.  The hair and make up was designed by my long term collaborator Samantha Myers.

Florian also has now deposed Pop Levi as the poster boy for my photographic practice, you can view the whole story at www.eliziavolkmann.co.uk

Click on Loro Piana to read about the story of the shoot and on Loro Piana Gallery to view the whole photostory.

There’s some unwritten law that trade journals should look really bad and be as dry as dust to read and of course make an appearance on have I got news for you as the “publication of the week”.

Well I was invited to become the fashion editor for one of the oldest trade journals Wool Record.  Founded in 1909 it was the journal for the woolen textile industry which back then was centered around Bradford.  A hundred years on the woolen textile industry is international. This September after 100 years the magazine relaunched as Twist, a new fresh approach to B to B communications and now focused on the luxury textiles and super luxury fashion brands, the magazine had to look like it was a serious fashion magazine.  I became the magazine’s art director in addition to my earlier role and after working on the magazine’s evolution with Jon Dyson shot its very first front cover.  You can find out more at

http://www.eliziavolkmann.co.uk/page5.htm

and http://www.twist-international.com/

It’s one of those things I’ve always seemed to have been good at bringing people together, last Sunday saw just such an event at Resistance a Gallery a nod to the big trade show that calls itself and Art Fair otherwise known as Frieze.  I was talking to Daniella Vinci who is one half of Resistance Gallery and she asked me if I could do something for the Antifrieze event.  The downside of my rather nomadic lifestyle is that all too often important stuff is at the wrong end of the country.  Instead Daniella and I put our heads together to co-curate on the hoof with the aid of my extensive phone book.  What resulted was an intimate gathering of people I am very honoured to number as my friends showing their work including a video that I an director Luke Blair and I worked on for cult electro band Client for the release of their single 6 am in the Morning.

Luke’s brother Oliver came down in his synth pop incarnation Kindle to play live music.

Another partner in crime Jo Holland lent some of her amazing camera-less photographs from her series of work called “Hard Core” which is currently on display at Shh! (yep that would be the sex shop for ladies) in Hoxton Square.

So from a few emails and phone calls a wonderful event was born in less than 48 hours!

My very own blog wherein you can find my musings, pictures and thoughts.  I am by trade a writer and photographer, something that funds my filthy habit…art, I am it appears that filthy being an artist, but like crime it rarely pays, and a girl with bleeding eyes, is a hard woman to love.  You will probably prefer my “commercial” work, scantily clad females and pretty colours, what is not to love?

You can view the whole story on my website www.eliziavolkmann.co.uk