It’s been a while since I posted some photographs of little Corrina so here’s a few favourites from the last couple of months in France and Northern Ireland. As you can see, she just adores fluffy dogs (real ones and toys), loves dipping her feet in the water (bathtime and ocean) and in the last couple of weeks she has really discovered the fun of going to the swings. Never a dull moment! :)

In between my recent weddings I spent last week with Caroline and Corrina in Caro’s hometown of Hennebont in the northwest of France. It’s always great to be here – it’s where we married in September 2003 and the place is full of happy memories for both of us.

Photographs have a great power. They can bring back a memory of a person or a place. A couple of years after we married in November 2005 my Granny Sadie sadly passed away. Naturally, her big box of photographs and postcards stretching back 100 years came to me. As we sifted through it, wondering who half of the fancy people were, out popped a little postcard from Hennebont.

The postmark on the card was dated August 1986 and, unbeknownst to us, my Uncle Roy had actually travelled through France that summer. Of all the towns and villages he must have passed through he decided to send the family a series of postcards from little old Hennebont. In his typical humour all he wrote on the back was “C’est jolie ici”.

Roy lived in Whitley Bay in the northwest of England and days after he came back from France he welcomed my Granny Sadie and I who stayed with him for a couple of weeks. It was my first ever trip away from home and it was the first and last time I’d remembered meeting him. He was a tall man full of gentle humour and great care for his wife and daughter. Sadly he himself died suddenly of a heart attack just two weeks later.

Every time I’m in Hennebont I picture Roy walking along with his family and when I think of his postcard sometimes I think it’s like he sent it twice – once to my Granny and then years later, to Caroline and myself.

Here are some pictures of Hennebont – as you can see, it is indeed a pretty little place.

I seek out a lot of photographic art books as my sources of inspiration and I simply adore looking at great photographs that are beautifully printed and presented in books by the best art publishers of our times.

Most of the books in my collection are from the classic photojournalists of the last century. I own ten or so Henri Cartier-Bresson volumes, three or four by Elliott Erwitt (including a signed copy of ‘Snaps’) and all of Garry Winogrand’s recent editions – including ‘Figments from the Real World’ – now worth almost 20 times what I paid in a London bookstore back in 2003.

The latest addition to the McBurney collection is Richard Avedon’s ‘Woman in the Mirror’.

The book is a fabulous look back at the women he photographed for over fifty years – a fascinating series of fashion photography from the fifties onwards and includes many great portraits of the women he encountered throughout his life.

Norma Stevens, executive director of the Avedon foundation, wrote in the book’s foreword about it’s title:
“It goes to the heart of what I believe intrigued Dick about photography – its ambiguity. Who is reflected in the mirror: the seer, the seen, or the unseen?”

Avedon burst onto the fashion scene in the 1940s, infusing his photographs with touches of realism and the fantastic. His images were among the first to replace the stiff poses of the past with energetic action scenes that commanded the pages of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue magazines from the mid-’40s through to the 1980s.

Whilst he did work with professional models, his photographs were never boring, never static. His images were absolutely full of movement and I think that that’s what draws me to his work. Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m no lover of static images – a good photograph must have feeling, vitality and life. It absolutely should have movement.

Speaking of movement Avedon once said that:
“One of the most powerful things about photography is that it is a constant surprise. You don’t know what the fabric is going to do, what the hair is going to do and also you have to remember that when I photograph movement I have to anticipate – that by the time it’s happened it’s too late to photograph it. So there’s this terrific interchange between the moving figure and myself, that is like dancing.”

I love the idea of that – that even Avedon, the great constructor of the ‘stage managed’ photograph, still had to anticipate what was about to happen within the frame.

Anticipation obviously plays a big part in the capture of great photojournalistic wedding images. In fact, you could say that shooting journalistically at a wedding is one of the hardest things to do because you have to deal with changing lighting conditions, moving subject(s) and changing compositional challenges all without the benefit of pinning everything down in a controlled studio environment. And you have to do it all with split second timing.

‘Woman in the Mirror’ is fabulous to look at and I know I’ll spend many hours poring over it’s pages in the future. The black and white images are exquisitely printed and of course all of the women within the book are beautiful.

The best photographs in life should be just like Avedon’s – an intimate triangle – between subject, photographer and viewer.

Little Corrina is such a trooper!

In the last couple of weeks she’s been to the west of France and the west coast of Ireland. She loves flying (through the air and on the plane) and she always loves the beach – even if it’s rainy.

When she’s at home her best friend is Pluto the dog. Oh the fun!

Last week I came back from shooting a beautiful wedding in France and got to see my favourite band play in my very own hometown. After meeting the band last year and asking them to play a show in Belfast, to finally see them here was something else. A very surreal experience indeed.

Music as an art form sits right up there with documentary photography for me. And as a band, Pearl Jam over the last twenty years, are what has shaped my musical tastes and perhaps even life philosophies.

So what is it about this great rock band that I love so much? Michael Stipe referred to Vedder as “Great chunks of repeating and overlapping guitar, a meandering-until-it-nails-you-in-the-forehead-melody, and a small wave of the hand. Colossal.”

For me it’s all of that and the passion.

The passion they have for their music. Passion for their fans. Passion for how their albums are packaged. You never see a Pearl Jam album as just a disk in a cheap plastic box. To their credit they also refuse to make cheesy music videos and concentrate on making great music instead.

Consider also their early release on vinyl of their third album a full week before it came out on CD and you’ll see a band that refuses to compromise to the industry and one that cares passionately about what they do and how their art is presented to the public.

I’m also a great lover of photographs of the band just doing their thing. In their environment – the studio and on stage. The most iconic photographs of the band are from photographer Lance Mercer. Here are a couple of my early favourites (distributed under a creative commons licence).

You may find prints (of Pearl Jam and other great artists) on sale at the Morrison gallery in New York.

With Monday being a professional photographers day off :) I’m quite lucky because I get to go to baby swimming classes with Corrina and Caro. Earlier in the day I also got to see her for the first time rolling over on her front all by herself.

She really surprised herself and giggled. Here she was seconds later – still enjoying the moment!

Last week I took some time away from the business and spent a lovely few days in France with the family. Corrina got to meet her cousins for the first time and it was just great to amble the days away with the kids even though Corrina was feeling a bit poorly.

Naturally, the camera was never too far away and I managed to capture some really lovely personal photographs.

Et voici quelques unes de mes preferees.