That's not so say I want to be an arrogant arse or someone who's difficult to work with, quite the contrary. I pride myself on my ability to work with anyone, to put people at ease and make the most of a photographic session. I also pride myself on trying to create images which satisfy my clients needs and where possible to deliver beyond their expectations. Just don't expect me to create a persona around me to do it, I am me and I'm happy with that. Sometimes boisterous and sociable, sometimes I fall into the shadows and you'll never notice me, sometimes plain withdrawn; I've got to be me.

I have notes on the cult of personality, the nature of constructed personae, all a bit incomplete. One thing that does strike me though, despite the fact that we all wear masks from time to time, is that if you're working on a persona, then you're diminishing your ability to just be, you're using the faculties that could reflect your true self to create something else. All well and good if you're an actor and building a persona is your stock in trade, but unnecessary for most of us. It strikes me that too much is made of persona (or read this as celebrity if you prefer) and not enough of talent and personality, for that is what interests me, it shows – no, shines – in a face and the more of that there is, the easier the portrait will be.

On a slightly lighter note, I'm just about to add a new gallery to my personal work section. The snow chain image below was highly pre-visualisedand a couple of other images formed into a mini-project and gave me the opportunity to play with some black and white techniques, hope you like them.

Snow Chain

I was very fortunate recently to be completely outdone by a tool I was using, it was so well crafted, so perfectly fit for purpose that my skills in using it felt woefully inadequate. It was one of mankind's oldest tools, my partner's professional chef's knife. I did not have the "knife skills" to make the most of it's potential, and I knew it. It was was a humbling moment and reminded me of the first time I picked up a camera and how different that is to how I handle them now.

I know my cameras very well. Yes, there may be functions I only use once in a while and I may need to refer to the manual for those, but the day-to-day operation is completely second nature. I have chosen cameras, lenses and accessories which are appropriate for the work I am doing. Not only this, there are other tools I draw upon. The intellectual tools from having studied photography, viewed thousands of images and seen what does and does not work, what makes a good image, translating this into the selection of the correct tool to create an image. Then there are the physical tools too, the "muscle memory" that comes from having practiced the craft for countless hours, the way my cameras become invisible to me in the photographic process. Then there are those who will create the tools they need in order to achieve the results they desire, who find what's available commercially inadequate.

What does all of this translate to? In simple terms – cost. Professional equipment is expensive, it needs to be to withstand the rigours of everyday photographic use, some of it is highly specialised and produced in small quantities. Most importantly the appropriate tool will not hinder the your ability to do the work, professional cameras just work better than budget models and give you greater freedom to concentrate on the creative aspects of photography. Which brings me to the easiest things to grossly undersell; the experience, practice and creativity, difficult to achieve but enormously enjoyable and rewarding, the work of a lifetime. I can be hard to see the value in proficiency at a skill you enjoy, the years of learning, but that is where the value of a professional lies. The professional photographer will deliver the images you want.

Which brings me to another great expression, courtesy of a tweet by Terry L White: "Telling a photographer that their camera takes great pictures is like telling a chef their oven makes great meals". 

 Firstly there was the Charlie Le Mindu show, shot speculatively to see if I could win some more business on the back of the results. That put me in an interesting position, as I've decided to move away from shooting nudes. Low and behold Mr. Le Mindu – since he was holding a Haute Coiffeur show – sends two of his models down the catwalk entirely naked, save for shoes, bag and one of his hair creations. It's one thing to move away from a particular line of work, but given a decision between what I've chosen to do and what I've committed to do for a client, the client's needs (most often) win; and some good shots came from it. This site is workplace friendly, but the full set can be viewed at my more more risqué address www.hypnagogue.com/lemindu.

Charlie Le Mindu On Off show

Just last week Mr. Flay called, in need of some head shots for his agent, we rattled a few off, I think you'll agree, it's a great likeness.

Mr. Flay

Then on to the good folks over at Diamond Jack's who were in need of some group and individual portraits promotional materials. One of the most entertaining shoots I've had in a long time, they all really entered into the spirit of it and we got some images that I hope will serve them well and draw in the customers.

The Diamond Jack's crew

I went out and shot a couple of bracketed sequences, not something I do very often, preferring to use plain exposure compensation or manual mode should the subject be a bit tricky. I had a little play with the HDR functionality in Photoshop CS5 and was impressed, it does everything I had hoped. The fact that I now own a copy should be sufficient evidence to how much it impressed me, despite it breaking my camera.

Cut now to my photo shoot in Helsinki, the Rock Menus book launch. I'm in a kitchen, lots of white tile and stainless steel and – to top it all – fluorescent lighting, every photographer's favourite with a couple of windows thrown in mixed colour temperature back-lighting. That's tricky to expose for, but I'm getting some really random results, some shots are bang on, some over and some under-exposed. This is curious, I've learned my D700 well, we are partners, we work in harmony, I know the sort of thing that will throw it's metering.

I know that you can probably see what's coming, but I had a little moment of well-disguised panic, the kind you get when you're overseas with only one camera body and the client is your girlfriend. I'd been through the camera's menus twice, everything looked OK, I'd checked all the physical settings, everything was OK. Then I noticed it, that flashing exposure compensation indicator in the top display. I searched for a moment, wishing I'd brought the 300g (10.6oz) manual with me. There's something that goes through my head at these times that's a subtle combination of eureka and oh, balls! Yes, dear reader, I had left the camera in bracketing mode and yes, that makes me akin to the kind of fool I used to have to support all day during my time time in the I.T. world. RTFM as we used to say. Me; who's always willing to harp on about how much I love Nikon's ergonomics, about how important it is to know your equipment. I missed the obvious. Humble pie may not always taste so good, but it's damn good for you now and again.

The point. Try new stuff, always look for new ways to learn, new techniques to try, always Read The F'ing Manual and if you can, write a headline with misleading hyperbole to deflect the blame.

• Call created: 22 April 2010
• Receipt confirmed: 24 April 2010
• Replacement Shipped: 3 May 2010 (a UK Bank Holiday)
• Replacement Received: 5 May 2010

As you can see there was a delay before the replacement was shipped, I'm assuming this was to get the drive into testing to confirm the fault. I don't really have much more to add, it was a competent and efficient replacement of the drive and I'm still a Seagate customer. In terms of effect on my business, the impact of a delayed payment for a job and the resultant slow-down in moving data on to the Drobo I'll be purchasing has proven to be far more inconvenient!

Failing drives is a fact of life. You only have to look at the reviews of LaCie’s Quadra range of drives on Apple’s UK store to see that people get upset at drive failures, I have owned five LaCie drives and they have been universally great, contrary to what the reviews might tell you. I know that drives will fail and whilst it can be a nuisance, if you are prepared, that’s all it is, it need not become a disaster. There was something that upset me a little though, and that was the nature of the failure; it was completely silent.

Allow me to give you some back-story. I have two 1.5TB drives mirrored that I use as my primary photo storage, they were mirrored using the disk utility that ships with Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I happened to come home one day and needed to format a memory stick, so opened Disk Utility to find one of the drives in the mirror marked as failed. There had been no notification of this failure at the OS level. This is disturbing, in the Darth Vader “I find your lack of faith disturbing” way.

So, here are a couple of tips:

• If you are using Disk Utility to mirror your drives, check it as often as you feel is necessary to ensure your disks are healthy.
• Keep an eye (and an ear) out for the tell-tales of drive failures. I had noticed some “death ticks” from my machine prior to the drive failing. In case you have never heard a “death tick” it usually happens as a drive spins up, you normally hear a couple of clicks during this process, if the sounds repeat, it can be a sign of impending failure. Learn the normal buzzes and clicks of your hardware! In addition, my Mac was taking longer to boot than usual, often a sign of some type of problem.
• Invest in SMART Utility by Voltains, this will give you a good overview of the health of any internal SATA drives that support SMART data.

Where to now?

The time has come for a dedicated solution. I have my old pair of 750GB drives which will be used as my working mirror in the Mac. Given that Aperture 3.0 has made switching libraries an absolute brease, I shall be investing in a Drobo to store the projects I am not currently working on, look out for a review soon. Drobo gives you the advantages of a RAID* solution but allows you to mix and match drives and grow your storage dynamically without having to re-format the array, a rather clever bit of tech.

* Mini-rant: RAID stand for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. There seems to have developed some controversy over what the “I” stand for, some now saying it’s “independent”. If there’s one thing that disks should never be in a RAID, it’s independent. Independent shows a lack of understanding of RAID technology or a very broken RAID array.  “Interdependent” would be good though, if you feel that “inexpensive” is old hat, feel free to use that.

More time to spend musing here, growing the business and start a few kit reviews too. Just those last few shots now, then a celebratory glass or two of wine, after the post, of course.