Morgan Silk Interview - F2 Freelance Photographer

Morgan Silk:

AOP Gold award winner Morgan Silk has an impressive list of corporate clients, and believes that if you want to get ahead, investing in personal work will pay dividends.

When Morgan Silk first discovered the darkroom, he had no idea that he’d spend the next five years retouching digital photographs for the advertising sector. But his urge to get back behind the camera fuelled his personal work and career, and he’s turned it around so that now he’s the photographer travelling the world taking pictures.

“I grew up in Burton on Trent, and started an art foundation course there in 1988”, says Silk. “I used to like to draw and paint, but when I was introduced to the darkroom, my interest switched.

“My mother worked for a wedding photographer when I was younger, but I didn’t get really into it then. Because of the stress that I saw that came with them, shooting weddings didn’t interest me at all, but during the foundation course I realised that photography is an art form, and was what I wanted to specialise in.

“My drawing background divided my lecturers. Some encouraged me to concentrate on graphics, while my photography tutor backed my decision to study an HND in photography at Blackpool, on the basis the quality of work I saw on the walls on the open day. I went on in the third year to do a Professional Qualifying Exam – the then equivalent to a degree.

“After getting myself truly into debt while a student, I went back to Burton on Trent to do some part time lecturing. I enjoyed helping people progress their photography, but the educational system was frustrating for me at times.

Development

“I was shooting personal work at the time, and I remember when Photoshop first came in as a serious tool. I met a fellow part-time teacher who was teaching desktop publishing. He had a small design company, which was equipped with scanners, Photoshop and Macs. He gave me some retouching jobs, and I’d get to use the company’s equipment for my own work between jobs. When the company went under, I bought one of its Macs.

“I set about learning to use Photoshop, and after a couple of years, I moved to London and began assisting a few photographers, but I ended up being offered more retouching work, and spent about five years doing this in the advertising sector.

“I would surprise clients with the stuff I could achieve on my home computer, using a fairly modest setup. High end retouching houses charged a fortune at the time, based on the idea they had to use expensive, bespoke technology, but I knew Photoshop would develop - and look where we are now! Looking back, I could have built a larger business out of retouching, but I knew I wanted to shoot pictures instead.

The change

“With the money I made from retouching, I bought myself a Mamiya 7 6x7 medium format rangefinder, and went travelling around Europe. I’d invested in a decent printer and high-end monitors and computers, so I thought the time was right to get out there with a camera. I shot landscapes as a way of getting back into photography, because I knew I didn’t want the constraints of selling and marketing just then.
“I think I was going against all the ultra polished compositing I had been doing for other people. I could see how it was becoming very stylised, and I wanted to shoot real stuff that I found interesting. I still worked on my images in Photoshop, but wouldn’t gloss them over or comp elements together. It was more about a heightened reality and, rather than getting rid of them, actually enhancing the blemishes and imperfections.

Progression

“I shot mainly landscapes between 2002-4, and around that time a friend introduced me to Seamus Ryan, who was opening Lupe Gallery. I showed him my prints. He was very encouraging, and picked out some images he wanted. One or two images sold really well, which boosted my confidence and got me thinking that I wanted to make more of a career out of shooting.

“My photographs started to get noticed, and people began to contact me about my work. I soon joined the AOP, entered the Awards and started to tout my portfolio around London advertising agencies.

Zoo

“I was en route from the Midlands to London one day. Near to my hometown is Twycross Zoo, which is famous for the PG Tips chimps - they were bred there. I’d only been to this zoo once when I was a kid, so it’d been years and years since I’d been there. I was driving past it on the way back to London with not a lot going on, and I just decided to pull in and have a wander round with my camera.

“There was hardly anybody there, except for one of my ex-students from Burton. It was weird bumping into him there, and I learned he’d joined the police force as a photographer. I had a wander round, and before I knew it, I’d shoot all the film in my bag. The place was so moody without people there, and it hit me when I got the film processed that I was onto something interesting, so I pressed on with the project, and then entered it in the AOP Awards project category.

“The project won Gold, which is quite prestigious as it doesn’t give many out, and was quite a major stepping stone for me. Gaining recognition in the industry and from peers is good. It’s not the be all and end all, but it helps. After winning the Gold, I eventually got my break with Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe - shooting for Land Rover.

“I exhibited personal work in the agency, where senior creatives and art buyers saw it. A landscape job in the Lake District came up, a promotion for Land Rover and England Rugby sponsorship. The idea was to visually represent an uphill struggle, with rugby posts positioned on difficult but very English terrain. I got the job, and the image won a Bronze in the following year’s AOP Awards. I’ve since shot for Land Rover in Morocco and the US; to get paid to travel and take pictures is a dream come true.

Contacts

“It’s important to network and make contacts in all areas of the business, as well as having a close group of peers that form your community. When I first went freelance, rather than trying to pretend I knew what I was doing, a producer friend of mine handled fee negotiations for me.

“I was happy not to make a profit from the first jobs I did, because it was the job not the money that I wanted under my belt. That still happens, and my rates for a job are often negotiable if it really excites me.

“A lot of ad agencies have exhibition space, and if they like your work they’ll encourage you to exhibit regularly. I’ve got an exhibition that’s been doing the rounds for the last few months, and although it’s a lot of effort and sometimes costly, it’s a worthy investment because of the feedback and exposure your personal work gains.

Personal work

“I’ve recently shot a couple of personal projects off the back of jobs. I was in the States shooting for PlayStation. We had to use real US Navy Seals in the ad, and I ended up arranging to shoot portraits of the guys separately a couple of weeks later.

“Personal work generates interest in your portfolio, especially in the advertising world. If you create images that get seen by the right people, it triggers more requests for your portfolio. Developing your work always costs money, and I do seem to be putting more into projects these days. Rather than shooting a straight landscape, I’ll now think about using models in the shot and considering production a lot more.

“Photographers trying to get into the business shouldn’t necessarily shoot for their portfolio in the style of an ad, because the people commissioning like to be surprised by ideas they’ve not seen before. Investing in your portfolio is an ongoing process, and therefore so is the personal practice. Everyone’s bombarded with imagery, and in this era of stock photography and genre-based work, it’s good to keep turning out new work and to keep evolving. Everything’s become categorised for stock libraries and photographers get slotted into brackets. Although I’m not labelled as a car photographer, I’ve done car commissions; even though I shoot people, I’m not known as a portrait photographer. You can allow yourself to be categorised as this or that, but I don’t like to be pigeonholed.

Shoots

“I shot a Harley Davidson campaign in Minneapolis last Autumn, where the headlines were made out of parts of the bikes. We used computer generated imagery (CGI) for this, where the CGI artist fused the replaced parts with the digitally shot photography. It was quite a technical exercise, and we had to gather information for the CGI to work, making sure the lighting of the CGI parts would fit rest of the shot. The modelling side of it was incredibly complicated, but I find it really interesting to work with artists from different disciplines.

“I shot a campaign for O2 in Cape Town last year. Part of the job was shot from a helicopter, so I made the most of the experience by shooting aerials while we travelled to and from the locations. These aerial landscapes have gone down well, and I’ve been invited to exhibit the series at the 9th Shanghai International Photographic Art Exhibition in July, which is a really exciting prospect.

Equipment

“I choose equipment based on the look I want to achieve. Although it’s fantastic, I think digital is still in its infancy and has a long way to go on many levels. I take my Mamiya 7 everywhere, because it’s such a great camera. I’ve only ever bought one lens for it, and I use it to shoot personal work mostly. Less is more sometimes. I shot the aerial work on a Hasselblad H3D 39MP, which I used with a Phase One back for the Seals portraits. I also own a Canon 1DS MkIII, which is great.

Assistants

“I’ve got a few freelance assistants I like to work with. Due to the sporadic nature of the work, very few photographers have their own assistants full time, but the people I’m lucky to work with are really experienced. I like to learn from them, and hopefully vice versa. It’s all about having a good team.

Stand out

“My advice would be to have grit and determination. Everybody has an opinion on your work, but you need to have a belief in yourself. Keep on track with what you’re doing, and try not to be despondent when things go quiet. Concentrate on shooting more stuff and keep going - the successful photographers out there are those who are bloody-minded and just keep at it.

“At the moment, with the collapse of the dollar and the looming recession, things are looking unsettled. You need to pull the stops out in times like these and look to producing more personal work. At college, they taught us to advertise yourself out of recession, which has always stuck in my mind. Rather than batten down the hatches and hold your breath, get moving.

“Having said that, I’m still waiting for the snowball effect to kick in! - it’s been more of a slowly-slowly thing. Photography is a vast subject, and you can never know it all - and that’s what I love about it.”