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Michael Wayne Plant

Primary

  • Portfolio Overview
  • Selected photography projects
    • City of London
    • Creative Londoners
    • Henley Royal Regatta
    • Margate – English Seaside
    • Whitechapel Mission
    • Social Landscape of Contemporary Life
    • Street Photography of London
    • Guangzhou, China
    • What is British?
  • On Photography
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  • About
  • Contact

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© Michael Wayne Plant All rights reserved.

This mate­r­ial may not be published, broadcast,
rewrit­ten or redis­trib­uted with­out prior writ­ten per­mis­sion of the author/photographer.

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton January 29, 2023

Thinking on PhotoZines

I have been thinking about PhotoZines and I have decided that I want to experiment with making them. As I have two project that I want to have published, I think the idea of self-publishing PhotoZines will help me with getting my books published. and I am thinking of using ExWhyZed to print them. I am also looking at adding an online store to my website to enable me to sell them. They have a rather complete ExWhyZed.com printing guide available to help in setting up the software to enable you to design your own. I am still trying to get my head around the CMYK profiles that I will need to use as this will help when I come to softproofing my images so they print as close as possible to how I want them to look,

For the Online Store I will probably be installing WooCommerce plugins for WordPress and then setting up a payment system all things to learn more about. So this process is not going to be fast, but nevertheless will be interesting to learn new skills and apply them to my existing knowledge base,

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton January 28, 2023

Server Move Completed

My move to a new server is now complete and they have been excellent in answering my questions via phone and using their online ticket system. I lost a few emails as the nameservers did not get changed as easily as they should have, that has all now been resolved, so if you sent me an email in the past few days and I did not respond please resend me the email.

I am excited to be on a new server as I chose a green server provider over other options as I believe it is all of our responsibility to reduce our carbon emissions.

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton January 20, 2023

Website update

I am busy moving server at the moment, not sure exactly when it will be completed as it also involves moving my domain name registration and getting set up on the new server. I got frustrated with my last host who I had been with for going on ten years as they removed their telephone support from the service. As a dyslexic person I find it sometimes quite difficult to clearly describe an issue when I am writing it out on a chat help line so for me having access to telephone support is a deal breaker and when it was removed then I had to go looking elsewhere. So without naming names this time I chose to move to a web hosting company that also advertises its self as a green hosting provider. I will update you all on what that means and how it all went soon.

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton November 16, 2022

Social Media

@michaelwplant@newsie.social

I have a new social media profile and place to post. I joined Mastodon.

I have been an intermittent user of Twitter over the past two years and have now mostly abandoned Facebook and Instagram. I still use LinkedIn as I believe it is the most professional of the social media sites but sometimes I want to just post a quick link to something, or I see an item I want to comment on so in the past I would use Twitter.

I fell out of love with Instagram when they changed the way the feed would display images as I wanted a timeline of posts in order that they where posted not a logarithm that chose what I saw. Facebook I never really liked and then when both these platforms became under the banner of the same company, I lost interest. Same has happened with Twitter, I don’t feel like supporting one very rich mans attempt at free speech, so I am voting with my keypad and trying out Mastadon for a different experience.

I also use a app called Discord to post links and comment on articles here is the invite code https://discord.gg/bjFnTbT to my discord server, I discovered Discord as it is used by video gamers during lockdown and really like how it enables a community to be created that is small and focused so please drop by and have a look and make a comment if you are interested in how I am using it.

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton June 17, 2022

Don’t tell my cat…..

Don’t tell my cat that I am not going anywhere, she is so cute when she packs herself, this time she climbed into my backpack ready to go!

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton June 10, 2022

My cat makes me laugh!

Not going anywhere, my camera back is sitting empty awaiting me to find the time to put it away, and my cat has taken to thinking that I should keep it out for her to use, whenever she wants a bed!
In case you are interested the camera bag is a ThinkTank Airport Traveller rolling case.I really like this bag, as every time I use it I am either doing something interesting or going somewhere interesting!

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton May 30, 2022

Leica M11 review

I’m excited to share with you all that was recently asked by Professional Photo Magazine if I would be interested in writing a review of my new Leica M11 camera from a users perspective. I was very happy to do this as I think the camera is a worthy addition to the Leica tradition of rangefinder cameras.

If you follow the link to the PDF you can read more of what I have to say about this camera.

Click to access MWPlant_Pro196_Leica-M11.pdf

Leica has done a great job on this camera in updating it while retaining its specialness which makes the rangefinder unique in the era of digital cameras.

You can access the website for Professional Photo here: https://professionalphoto.online

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton May 23, 2022
City of London Street Photography By Michael Wayne Plant

What really annoys you?

Or to put it slightly more impolitely what pisses you off?

What makes you angry about the world? Think about this and you will have a subject that could animate both you and your photography. When you are angry about something you learn about it and develop ideas about it.

For me, while not angry about it I have a real fascination in how capitalism functions, I have read about it from so many perspectives and still, I feel I need to know more about how it functions. Yes, I have read books by and on Marx, Smith and Keynes and many more, analysing how capital is created and its used, etc. I have however, come to the conclusion that our greed (both individually and collectively) and capitalism, may have become a dangerous combination for survivabilty of our species on planet earth. Why do our rich not want to change course? This is something that I for a long time I could not understand, but then again, I realise that we as a species do suffer from short termism and self interest.

But that is my interest, what is yours? This is where you can find the motivation get out and make your own work, as a photographer. Find what you are passionate about, I believe that you already know a lot about it and have strong opinions about the subject, go and do some more research and then work out is the subject something that lends itself to being photographed. If so then it is easier, if not, then look at how you can make it into something that is possible to make images of.

This is what it takes to find a subject to make work on you need to be passionate about what you do, the other side of this is.

What do you love?

What activities or subjects do you love, and again you will know a lot about them, because you are interested in them. These to aspects can lead you into being able to make work that you are passionate about, and from that it becomes possible to make work with the dedication, and determination that good projects and work takes to make.

So stop procrastinating and go and start the research on what you are going to do next. As a creative person finding what you hate and what you love could be the key to making work that really motivates you and leads you to make the work you have always wanted to make.

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton April 30, 2022

On Commissioned photography

I was inspired to write this post by the article on The United Nations of Photography website. I have always done commercial and editorial photography and for the past few years have concentrated on my own photography and yet I had not really noticed the idea of commissioned photography and I like what Grant Scott has to say about this concept at the beginning of his article.

I never use the word ‘commercial’ to describe commissioned photography for a very simple reason. All photography is commercial, in my eyes, if a commercial transaction takes place, that includes the sale of a print, a book, or even an NFT! Therefore, commissioned is a more accurate description of the practice of being asked to make photographs in return for financial reward.

Grant Scott

I like this idea. In my opinion it has always been hard to get commissioned to do photography, particularly the kind that you as a photographer want to be known for. Often there is a conflict between the photographers artistic vision and the requirements of the client. This I actually think is a issue that photographers don’t address as they are being commissioned to make the images that a client wants and if they are not doing that then they should not be seeking the commission in my opinion. The client is paying the bills and they are asking for something so the first priority is to deliver that, then if you have time and resources it is up to the photographer to go beyond the brief and give the client that extra special magic, this is what sets apart the jobbing photographers and the ones who are both creative and commercially successful.

This article by Grain Scott also lays out a few other points, one of them is the role of the picture editor and the ways clients want to get more for less, I have to say that in all my years as a photographer that has always been the case, as it has become easier to become a photographer it has also meant more people are available to be commissioned to do the work so the rates have been forced down. I will give you an example in the early 1990’s I would do a fashion editorial for major magazine brands and the would pay between £300-£400 for a days photo session, now in is the 2020’s and they still want to pay the same amount. You might consider that bad however, it is even worse than that, because they used to also pay for film and processing, which if done right could increase the photographer income by another £400 for the days photo session. Now we shoot on digital cameras and they don’t expect to pay for film and processing so that income generator has disappeared for photographers.

I do believe that there is a future for commissioned photography as AI will not be able to make all the images that clients want or need, and stock images will never be specific enough, for a client that wants to impress and stand out with distinctive imagery. So it is up to the photographer to enhance their style and skills to be able to make distinctive images that are non generic for the clients and make these images to budgets that they can work with.

So in future instead of editorial and commercial headings on my website or promotional material, I am going to definitely use the word Commissioned, I like that as a concept as it shows to others that someone else has taken a risk and ‘Commissioned” me to make work for them.

Is There a Future for Commissioned Photography?

The portrait of Jennifer Ehle at the top of this post was made in the mid 1990’s for Empire magazine, In a Mens toilet in Primrose Hill London. I was very much into shooting Fuji Super 800ISO 35mm film, because I liked to work in low light and has some film grain to hide blemishes. This image was made before Photoshop took off and everyone wanted to be airbrushed to look even more glamorous. I was very good at getting the people I photographed to relax and look great.

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton April 25, 2022

What would you buy if you won the lottery

For me, I would probably splash out on some exotic lens and a specialist Black and White camera.

 I was recently doing a thought exercise on lens I would love to have for my Leica Camera system and I with only 5 lens getting to a cost of about £20,000, if I then add in the Monochrom M camera and it gets closer to £30,000 

So what would I want to buy for that money?

The lens are not fast, in fact they are all F2 or F3.4 aperture lens. However according to a few reviews that I trust they are lens that get the best results from the sensors that are currently available. 

Leica 21/f3.4 SUPER-ELMAR-M ASPH £ 2,470.00

Leica Summicron-M 28mm f/2 ASPH-M £ 3,515.00

Leica APO-Summicron 35mm f2 ASPH £ 6,700.00

Leica Apo-Summicron M 50mm f2 ASPH £ 6,365.00

Leica Apo-Summicron 90mm f2 ASPH-M £ 3,630.00

This is my dream list of lens for the type of photography that I do, and the question you might ask is would having any of these improve the images I make, and my answer would probably be maybe only a wee tiny bit, as I am currently only missing one of those focal lengths and for the three middle lens I have ‘cheaper’ earlier or slower versions of these focal lengths.

However, the one focal length lens that I tend to use the most, has been 35mm. So I guess if I could have one lens on my list and camera that would then be the Leica APO-Summicron 35mm f2 ASPH and my Leica M11. 

I shoot people on the streets and in their everyday lives and for that I want lens that draw the world in a way that is not to extreme and as close to life as I see it. which is why I tend to use the lens that have been most popular for photographers who have traditionally used Lecia cameras in their work.

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