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"Connecting With.... " Jason Hawkes Aerial Photographer & Photo Library

"Connecting with.... " a new series of industry specific interviews.
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PAN exclusive interview-

Name: Jason Hawkes
Photo Library: Jason Hawkes Aerial Photography
Position: Owner
Location: Oxfordshire

Jason has specialized in aerial photography since 1991, is based just outside London in the UK, and works worldwide. He has produced over 35 aerial photographic books for publishers such as the BBC, Random House and Harper Collins. Jason's clients include brands such as Nike, HSBC, NatWest, Ford, American Airlines, Rolex, Toyota, Smirnoff, Mitsubishi and BP.
Jason has a catalogue of over 100,000 images by location or generic keywords available as RM stock.

Introduce your photo library in one sentence.
Aerial library, shot over the last 20 years encompassing 1000's of graphic generic aerial views.

When did you start in the picture library business?
Back in 1996, everything was on film and nobody even had email.

What were you doing before that?
I had been working as an aerial photographer since 1991.

What stock are you shooting this month?
I've shot images over London, and more graphic work particularly concentrating on roads.

How much free time do you get to shoot stock?
I shoot around 2 - 5 books per year and whilst working on these shoot an awful lot of stock, so I suppose 40% of my flying will be for stock.

What's the next commission shoot?
I've just finished a quote for a lot of work in Germany, so hoping that will be signed off shortly.

How many full time picture people work on your library?
Just one other person who will spend most of their time captioning.

Are you the only contributing photographer to the library?
Yes. I used to have a few others, but it's very difficult to get work of a high calibre. I can only think of five other aerial photographers whose work I like, and they are all signed with Getty / Corbis.

How do you prepare for a day's aerial stock shoot?
As little as possible. The images I find work the best, and can sell again and again tend to be views you just happen to come across. So I'd rather just go flying around an interesting area with as little flight planning as possible and just see what we can find. Its the most expensive way to work, but it gets the best results.

What is the cost to rent a helicopter and pilot for a London night shoot?
I use the Eurocopter AS355. Its around £1200 an hour and you have to take into account positioning time to get into and out of the city which is around 20 minutes, assuming you don't get held up by air traffic.

How long are you in the air?
Over London it's between 1.5 and 2.5 hours, out of the cities you are looking at around 4 hours in a normal day.

Do you use a fixed camera attached to the aircraft or are you shooting 'free'?
I have a range of mounts when shooting at night, some are fixed some are hand held. In the daytime everything is hand held. You shoot out of the side of the helicopter having removed the door. Obviously you are wearing a harness, and headset to talk to the pilot. On the camera I have various GPS units and sometimes shoot tethered to a MacBook Pro. What with the noise and vibration, and also using mounts at night its not the easiest environment to shoot from, but its great fun and the views you sometimes see are breathtaking.

What camera format and lens are best for shooting an aerial city scape at night?
I only use Nikon. I shoot with the D3, D3X and D3S. Lens wise either a 14-24 or a 70-200 mm. The Nikon equipment is fantastic. I recently shot a book of New York at night entirely on the D3S which has the most amazing low light capability.

Does the ad agency creative or client accompany you in the helicopter on a commission shoot?
Most of the ad work I've done in the last six months has been from stock, which whilst its great for my bank balance, if I was honest I'd rather shoot it from scratch. I'd say about 50% of the time the art director will come on the flight and pretty much everyone Ive taken up has loved it. Although there was one art director who sat right on the side seat with no door attached who was obviously not enjoying the ride.

Any scary moments?
I had a very very near miss in South Carolina a few years back. We were on finals to land at a tiny aerodrome when a light aircraft came within 40 feet. He was not even aware he was flying in restricted space and never even saw us, it was quite hairy.

Do you use general stock shots for your books?
I had my first book published back in 1992 when I was in my early twenties and all but a couple have been commissioned and shot from scratch.

How many books have you published?
It's around 40.

Any more books planned?
I've got a couple of ideas but nothing signed off at the moment.

Describe the first hour of a typical day in the office.
Make double expresso on my Delonghi coffee machine ( best £500 you can spend in my opinion ), read photo blogs, reply to a few of emails.

How involved are you in every day stock picture sales decisions?
Very involved in everything. My library only has my work in nowadays, and I try to get in touch with every art buyer, designer that signs up to my site offering to help in the searches and sending them any new work that we have not got online yet.

Are you scanning anything at the moment?
My poor Imacon scanner gets very little use these days.

Which picture library web site has caught your eye recently?
Its not a library as such as software. I'm thinking about changing the back end software of my library. I used to run it with Digital Railroad who had a great service. Unfortunately for 1000's of very small stock libraries they decided to change their business model and compete with Getty. Within a year or so they went under. I had my own software written but am now looking at Photoshelter and a new service still in Beta called Photodeck.

Which newspapers and magazines do you subscribe to?
I read the Guardian, Times, Macuser and the fantastic new BJP in print.

What are you doing when you are not thinking about aerial images?
I spend most of my free time shouting at my three children, or so they tell me.

Best shoot to date?
I did some really interesting branding work for Hydro about five years ago. Very open brief and amazing locations.

Dream shoot location?
I'm still hoping to get to Dubai.

Cinema or Pub?
Cinema.

Ideal Sunday afternoon?
Just hanging out with my family and a few friends, ideally in the sunshine.

What one piece of advice would you give to a budding aerial photographer?
Flying is expensive, there is no getting around it. The cheapest flying you can do is in a microlight, that's how I started. So join a local microlight club.

-ENDS-

www.jasonhawkes.com

Jason is a Photo Archive News subscriber

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PAN 60 Second Interview: Carlo Irek - 4Corners Images

'At 4Corners Images we specialize in high quality travel and travel related photography of the world's most important travel destinations. Our collection is especially strong on the Southern Europe and we have one of the finest collections of contemporary travel pictures of Italy available anywhere'.

Name: Carlo Irek
Agency: 4Corners Images
Position: Owner/Director
Location: Chiswick, West London

When did you start in the picture library business?
Aged 19.

What were you doing before that?
Trying to establish myself as a photographer.

What’s new at 4Corners?
We’re working on some exclusive Solomango stories, and editing some beautiful work from new contributors.

How many full time picture people work at the 4Corners?
In London, there are six. Our own IT and web development guys are in Italy

Describe the first hour of a typical day in the office.
Good morning coffee and email, and a plan for the day.

How involved are you in every day picture sales decisions?
I’m very close to them, but a lot of my day is spent editing new submissions and looking after the agency’s marketing. As a relatively young agency, marketing doesn’t quite take care of itself yet.

What are you scanning at the moment?
The most recent scanning we did was work from celebrated food and travel photographer Lisa Linder. A lot of her work is interestingly cross-processed in a way that’s not so easily replicated when shooting digitally.

What content gaps in the library are you looking to fill?
The UK and France.

How would a photographer contact the library to introduce their images.
An email with a link to some of their work in the www, or low res images on disk.

Which picture library web site has caught your eye recently?
Panos, Arctic Photo.

Which newspapers and magazines do you subscribe to?
PDN, BJP, Creative Review, New Scientist!

What one thing sets 4Corners apart?
Editing and technical quality control.

What are you doing when you are not thinking about travel images? Cycling or looking after my twin girls.

When did you last pick up a camera?
This morning to snap one of the twins.

Cinema or Pub
The pub.

Ideal Sunday afternoon?
Tennis, a barbecue lunch, and games with the girls.

What one piece of advice would you give to someone setting up a new picture library?
Make sure your content is exclusive.

- ENDS -

Visit 4Corners Images

"Connecting With.... " Russ O'Connell Picture Director - Q Magazine

"Connecting with.... " a new series of industry specific interviews.
Sponsored by:

-A PAN exclusive interview-

Russ O'Connell, 32, Picture Director Q Magazine

How long have you been at Q Magazine?
Just gone 18 Months.

What were you doing before that?
Picture Director of Heat magazine – the weekly celebrity gossip mag. I was at Heat for nearly 7 years, I actually started there on work experience after completing a degree in photography and worked my up to the top, it taught me a lot about the industry from the picture library side of things, to spending hideous amounts of money on excusive sets of pictures of so called celebrities doing the most mundane things. It gave me the experience and confidence in coming up with great visual ideas for photo shoots that has helped me get where I am today.

How many people work on the picture desk?
Myself and Ian my Picture Researcher.

Describe the first hour of your typical working day?
Work starts at 9:30, after the most important task of the day, Latte with 2 sugars, I generally open up my emails and start to receive feedback and images from shoots I have commissioned in the US. The time difference especially LA is a bit of a pain as you only have a small window of time to speak to people before you clock off, so I am often taking calls and speaking to photographers in the States during the evening, we have regular production meetings and I am often editing shoots from the previous day first thing and ordering in the hi-res’s of images we want to run in the issue. Then it’s a case of looking through up and coming features and pieces we are doing, coming up with visual ideas for those shoots, commissioning & briefing photographers, then physically going to the photo shoots myself to art direct them.

Do you actively source images from independent picture libraries for features?
Of course, although they seem to be a dying breed, a few major agencies are swallowing all the smaller agencies up so there are only a few left hanging on. You can’t beat the personal expertise of those smaller agencies though, often they are run by the photographers themselves or people who have been there for an age and know their library back to front. We often source photos direct from photographers all over the world, especially the more archival features we do. Recently I had the opportunity to go to McCartney’s offices to take a look through some of Linda McCartney’s archive for a big feature we have just done on her shooting Paul & The Beatles. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned by the diminishing number of independent agencies out there, the whole industry is changing very quickly on the photo library side of things, although technology means it’s easier to source images and communicate you can’t beat face to face conversations and actually looking through a contact sheet for that perfect frame.

Do you only use libraries you have established pricing deals with?
No quite the opposite, there is obviously a tendency to use agencies you have deals with for the smaller things like head shots etc. from a budget point of view, but quite often myself or Ian will be speaking to the photographers direct to get the images, as they often hold more of a selection or unseen frames that are not held with an agency.

Do you buy exclusive picture sets?
Not so much at Q, it’s not really geared towards that type of image, we like to try and run unseen images for some of the features we run to keep the exclusivity up and provide the reader with something new that they haven’t seen before. The access we get at Q is amazing and often involves getting exclusive access to an artist which in turn means exclusive images. The weekly market I came from is very different and depends on buying exclusive images to set them apart from one another as there are so many weekly magazines competing against each other it’s hard to differentiate between them all sometimes.

What do you pay for a 1/4 page live gig shot?
Roughly around £60 if it is from an agency, I tend to commission our own photographers to shoot the live gigs we review.

How would a picture library or photographer approach you for the first time to introduce their images?
A photo library should be conscious of the type of images we run in Q, so there is little point in say an animal or lifestyle agency approaching us as we tend not to use that type of image. I do get inundated with emails from photographers asking to shoot for us, while this is great you would be surprised as to the number of people that have never been commissioned or have never shot a band that try to get me to use them. Also you can tell when someone has blanket emailed a whole batch of photo editors, it’s an immediate delete job. I work with a very very small tight pool of photographers as we are shooting big names in the music world, so I need to know that I am going to get the results I need, this way we can control the visual style of the magazine better and keep the quality consistent. If you feel you have the experience and most importantly fit visually with what we are doing then you should get in touch, the best way is introduction then showing me your portfolio online, I genuinely don't have time to see photographers or agents so web galleries are the way forward in terms of getting your pics in front of me.

Do you get many music fans emailing you mobile phone photos? and do you use them?
Not so many fans sending in photos from their phones, personally I think they would only be usable on the web, the technology isn't there in terms of resolution and dynamic range for us to use anything in the mag, I do get a lot of photography students emailing me with their live shots. I work with a tight core of photographers that have been shooting live stuff for Q for a long time, so I tend to stick with what I know in that respect.

Are you planning to run more footage on the Q website? - if yes - what will you be (or are you) looking for.
Qthemusic.com is a great vehicle for us to run behind the scenes footage of the big cover shoots we do. We normally have a film crew on our big cover shoots documenting it and my editor Paul Rees will do a quick interview with the cover star(s) for use on the website, it gives a great way to provide extra content and access to our readers. At present we don’t buy in any stock video footage.

Is there a Q 'style' of image?
Since I started at Q, myself and our Creative Director have tried to push the photography in the magazine to make it more fresh and exciting, we were getting bored with the same old standard “rock photography” that was becoming a bit stale and wanted to inject more energy and polish to the photos, the feedback we have got from the public and other photographers has been great, it’s nice to know people appreciate the work and effort you put in.

How much photography in the magazine is commissioned?
All of our covers, main features and big interviews are commissioned, all the live reviews we shoot ourselves, we also have a regular feature in each issue called “New To Q” which is an introduction to 4 new bands and musicians which we shoot every month.

Who is the most famous person you have commissioned a shoot of?
Probably Paul McCartney, David Bailey shot him for me, it was an experience in itself standing next to one of the most iconic photographers of our time photographing one of the most influential musicians of our time.

Who was the best studio subject?
Richard Ashcroft was funny, I imagined he was going to be like Liam Gallagher, but he was the total opposite, really charming and funny. I often find that generally the older the band or subject is the nicer they are, some new bands and musicians think they have to have an ego because they are in front of the camera, gladly they never make it far in the industry.

Describe the most 'interesting' shoot you have been on?
I won’t mention Lady GaGa, Lily Allen and a pair of Black Panthers wasn’t your every day photo session, but I think it has to be Bruce Springsteen in America. I was lucky enough to be invited by Bruce to travel with him along with my editor and photographer on his private jet, from Houston to Denver, then Denver to New York, we were shooting him for our Glastonbury cover last year, it was a taste of how the other half live.

Which independent picture library web site has recently caught your eye?
There are some agency websites you are completely comfortable with and can near enough navigate without even thinking, Rex being the main one for me, their website is so easy and intuitive to use, I hope that doesn't change though now they have been bought out by Getty.

What do you do when you are not editing rock photos?
The majority of my time I am coming up with visual ideas for up and coming shoots, I work very closely with our Creative Director, but he also gives me the freedom to see my ideas through from concept to completion so I have a certain amount of free reign which is a breath of fresh air coming from a creative background. I also scour new photographers portfolios on line and am constantly looking out for inspiration for the next project.

When was the last time you picked up a camera?
I’m actually quite active with my personal photography, I have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with camera’s much to my wife's dismay. I am currently trying to convince her to let me buy a Leica....I must try harder or change my tactics as it still isn't working!

Which websites do you visit daily other than Photoarchivenews.com ?
Flickr is great, so many fantastic photos, also I find it a great way to learn about different film types, lenses etc (again the camera obsessive is coming out in me).
www.dpreview.com is great for up to the minute camera news & technology, the forums on there are great.
http://ffffound.com/ for inspiration and amazing photography & design.
www.life.com - I love looking at those old Robert Capa pics.
aphotoeditor.com is a good update on the state of the industry from across the pond.
Ooh and www.qthemusic.com, apparently it’s a really great music website affiliated to a really great music magazine, you should check it out haaa!

Which newspapers and magazines do you subscribe to?
125 magazine
LFI magazine (Leica’s mag)
My wife subscribes to Country Living which I think has some really nice photography in it, I can often be found hiding taking a sneak peek but don’t tell anyone.
I love photography books too and tend to blow a lot of my money on them, I have just bought the new Don McCullin book which is outstanding.

Cinema or pub?
Pub first, fall asleep in Cinema, then pub on the way home.

Ideal Sunday afternoon?
Going on a nice country walk with the family, taking some photos of my daughter and anything else that catches my eye, then end it relaxing in front of the TV or watching a good film.

Lastly, what photo library website feature would make life easier for picture editors.
IDS has saved a lot of time from the research point of view, it still doesn't have everyone signed up to it or each agency's key wording in sync, it’s surprising how many websites still don’t caption properly, sometimes you know an agency has an image but can't find it on their site because its not key worded properly.

- ENDS -

Picture agencies and Photographers can contact Russ here: russ.oconnell@qthemusic.com - please NOTE his suggestions for contacting him in the interview.

Russ is a PAN subscriber

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Thanks to Russ for taking time out on a busy shoot to do this interview.