Planning Pictures

The pandemic has done away with the possibility of my commenting on new restaurants, old pubs, or any of the many fine Liverpool museums. They're all closed. Most everything here is closed. Liverpool is a ghost town, as are all the major cities in the UK and everywhere. Should I now consider myself lucky to have lost my home in New York City, where the coronavirus is out of control? Lucky today maybe. But this crisis shifts and changes every day. Today's New York could be tomorrow's Liverpool. 

So this week, I will continue to talk about photography. But instead of finding pictures (Street for Stock), let's move to the business of planned picture taking. 

Over the past six decades, I've been involved with many very different types of photography—theater, travel marketing, journalism, fashion, glamour, portraiture, as well as the food and street stock that I still do. I also worked as a photographer on film sets in Rome. Some of these things I think I was good at. Others not so much. 


The Fab Four walking away when I asked them a question about the virus.

I was never comfortable doing hard-core photojournalism. I managed, but just. My time as a PJ is way behind me now, and I plan to keep it there. Even doing light news doesn't work for me now. As a senior in retirement, I need to shoot on my own schedule. With news, events control the schedule.

Portraiture, I think, is what I did best. I began doing photography in the theater in New York, and I made a comfortable living doing portraits for actors those first few years. Several big talent agencies would send their clients to me. Changing circumstances have taken portraiture away. 

Perhaps next week I will talk at length about doing portraits. A good portrait is light years away from those soulless snapshots where people give the camera a bright, false smile.  



The famous Cavern Club shut down because of the virus.

Shooting travel for airlines (that's travel marketing) was where I've had the most success. Most photographers lust after exotic travel, and yes it is as glamourous as it seems. But there's a dark side. It can be very lonely, and I often went on trips that lasted three months. Travel is great. Too much of it is not so great. 



Remember when spring was a time for families to go outside together?

Fashion? Top magazine editorial fashion photography is a complex, snob-filled world that's hard to get into. My charm failed me with that. I couldn't make a dent. 

Glamour is portraiture with less clothing. 




Winter is over now, but what about the winter of our discontent?

Finding Pictures

There is really only one subject being discussed anywhere at the moment. However, I won't be sharing my personal opinions or unscientific guesswork here regarding the pandemic. 

Instead, let's talk about photography. 

As a retired photographer, I still spend a fair amount of time taking photographs but less time talking about it. I'm not so sure that what I have to say will be helpful to anyone . . . but here it goes. 

Good photography is about visual sensitivity. It's not about cameras and lenses and kit. Does a photographer need good equipment? Of course! Those things are our tools and to do any job right one needs good tools. However, if you have no talent, buying a great camera will not make you a great photographer. It will only make you someone who owns an expensive camera.  

These days, I produce only common-access editorial images for Alamy, a stock photo agency located in Oxfordshire here in England. Stock is a game I play with some rules that are Alamy's and some that are mine. I don't do it for the money, although I welcome any money that comes my way. 




Sometimes I follow a shot list or a plan as to what subjects I will try to capture. The picture above of the new World Trade Center in New York was planned. I've gone there at different times of day for different light to capture this important landmark. At Alamy, there are over 200 images that I've taken at the World Trade Center.  

With the majority of my images, however, there was no plan. Mostly, I found the subjects while aimlessly walking around. I'll see something that captures my interest and if I like the light, the shape, and the colors, I take a picture. A decision about this is made in the time it takes to snap my fingers. If a caption occurs to me, then it's Stock. 

If there are people in the scene, I want them to look interesting, alive, positive, and graceful. Well . . . maybe. There might be a reason to capture someone looking totally negative. Every subject, every image, is a judgment call. On most days, I find shooting Stock very interesting.



If camera carriers are set on producing Fine-art photography, they are usually looking for something beautiful or unusual, something special that will serve the artist in them. In shooting for Stock, I have one foot in that camp, that is I don't shoot or upload images that I don't like. But my other foot is firmly in the commercial aspect of Stock photography. I'm often looking for beauty, yes, but beauty in the subject in front of me. 

Shangri-La?

In James Hilton's novel, Lost Horizon (the basis of Frank Capra's wonderful film), the real point is that even in a near-perfect utopian land, people can be discontent and want for something else. In Shangri-La, the inhabitants live long, healthy, peaceful lives. But they lack adventure and discovery. They lack adrenalin-producing risk. So some of them venture forth into the unknown. 

Is Liverpool my Shangri-La?  

Liverpool is no one's Shangri-La. This Merseyside port city is not a utopia. Even the Fab Four are here no more. It does have some good things about it but it's not been moving towards perfect.  

It feels odd writing about a perfect place when Planet Earth is being visited by a pandemic. The coronavirus has not put any of us on a path to safety or perfection. I asked Ringo what he thought people in Liverpool should do about this virus. He just stood there silently and said nothing.

As I write this, Liverpool has not yet shut things down. I can still eat in restaurants and shop at M&S and Tesco. And the shelves are still full. My friends in Italy and New York tell me a different story. Tomorrow? What will happen tomorrow? Sorry, but my crystal ball is clouded up.





In the mythical mountain land of Shangri-La, Tibetan Buddhism was at the core of things. That subject is immense. I am not a Buddhist but for those of you who are interested, this will get you started.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Buddhism

Why Liverpool?

 "Why Liverpool?" is the question I'm asked after it's been made clear that I'm trying to settle here, that I'm not just another aging, obsessive Beatles fan on holiday from the States. 

To recap briefly, I lost my rent-stabilized apartment in Lower Manhattan to a fire and I've been trying to find a place to live that I can afford and be a legal, permanent resident. I could afford Mexico and Spain but I can't become a legal resident in either country. Costs, my Irish citizenship, and the NHS pointed to Liverpool.

A friend here recently asked me to compare the NHS with healthcare in the United States. This is a huge, complex subject and I'm no expert. But let me try to point out where I fit in.

If you have a good job in the States, it will come with health insurance. That's good. But if you're a young person who cannot take on a $100,000 loan to get the degree that will get you that good job? Well, that's not so good. 

As a senior citizen in America, I had (still have) Medicare and an AARP MedicareComplete add-on policy. Yet every time I saw a doctor, got a test, picked up my medications, or went into the hospital, I had to hand over a copay. This copay was often more than the full cost of getting the same medical help I could get in Mexico. In Spain, if you qualify, healthcare is free.

In the eight months, I've been here in the UK, in Liverpool, the NHS has never asked me for a dime (or ten pence). I've not been sick, thank God, but my Rx meds cost me nothing and seeing doctors and nurses, getting blood tests have cost me the same nothing.

Yesterday, I went to the large Boots Pharmacy in the City Centre to order a new pair of eyeglasses. Four different people waited on me giving me the most detailed, complete eye exam I've ever had. Two of the people were ophthalmologists. These extensive tests were free because of my age (the NHS again). The glasses I ordered were just £70. But I only had to pay £52.50.

The last time I had an eye exam and bought perception glasses in New York City, it cost me just over $500. 

Everybody Talks About the Weather

. . . but nobody does anything about it, said the19th-century American writer and editor, Charles Dudley Warner. This thought was often quoted by his friend and admirer, Mark Twain. 

The entire UK and Ireland have been plagued by winter storms, flooding, and high winds for this past month or more and it got me thinking—have I chosen the wettest place in the United Kingdom to live? Not hardly, it turns out. But it's wet enough. And the wind blowing in from the Irish Sea can knock a person over. I've seen it happen.

Liverpudlians, or Scousers, as the locals call themselves, don't seem to notice either the wind or the rain. Some people I pass on the street are, like me, wrapped up tight in hooded rainwear and watch caps. Others are trying to carry umbrellas in the wind. Are they tourists or newbies? Maybe. But even on the darkest, rainiest days, I see lots of people walking around in T-shirts. 

This unhappy young woman seems to be frozen on that stone bench. 



Nearby Leeds and Glasgow to the north are wetter towns. The truth is the climate in Liverpool is mild, mild all year-round. There are no subzero days, as in Canada, and none of those life-threatening 40-plus centigrade temperatures in summer that you might have to face in the rest of Europe. 

Below you see a dramatic low-hanging fog on the River Mersey. Sorry, but I don't take my cameras out in the rain. No way.



Famously, Seville is the hottest city in Europe, but I was lucky in the eight months that I lived there. It hit 40 centigrade the day before I arrived and again the day after I left. Perfect timing. 

I'll finish with a snap of one of Liverpool's most famous landmarks, the Three Graces, at dusk on a pleasant, almost-dry evening. We do get them sometimes.