October 7th, 2009 
Workflow 
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Sadly it seems that a combination of the rapidly changing marketplace for photographic services and the tailspin that has taken control of the Spanish economy has caused the sudden closure of my local professional lab, BN Profesional in Valencia.
Known to many simply as ByN, the Spanish acronym for B&W or Black and White, this lab had been the prime professional resource in Valencia for many years, and I have been a client since February 2002 when I moved to the city. Obviously B&W processing, which had once – judging by the name – been the main business, had diminished in importance over the years. I sometimes got the impression that I was the only old-school customer they had left. But the company had invested heavily in digital output. They could produce the huge colour prints so beloved by galleries these days, but also even larger prints for the commercial market.
A company that was looking to the future, then. So what went wrong? Who knows. All I can tell you is that after a few days calling and getting an engaged signal I visited the place on Monday. The familiar office had the appearance of a place rapidly vacated. The piles of papers always on the desks had been knocked over, display stands upset, that sort of thing. It wasn’t as if the place had been trashed exactly, just that the occupiers had left in a hurry. The security shutter hadn’t even been pulled down.
Meantime I’ve been digging out my old dev tank and trying to track down a photo shop that still stocks chemicals.
Tags: darkroom, lab, valencia
October 3rd, 2009 paulhardycarter.com admin no comments
Well, after months of pretending things were going to get better just by themselves, I’m putting some time into making the Client Area of the website work properly. It’ll be back up and working in a couple of days.
You don’t have to be a client to have a look by the way!
Tags: website
July 7th, 2009 paulhardycarter.com admin no comments
I’ve had big problems with my web host since Affinity sold my account to Hostway a few months ago, and I’ve been trying to find a new home. The good news is, I’ve found one! I’ll discuss this more later, but right now you may notice some problems with the site, in particular the Client Area isn’t working.
Please be patient – I’m working on it!
Tags: website
June 23rd, 2009 Photography Paul 6 comments
A few weeks ago a regular email bulletin from Magnum announced that several Magnum photographers would be holding portfolio reviews in London, ahead of this year’s AGM. There was a fee to attend – £135 – and you got to select which photographers you wanted to have critique your work. Finding valuable criticism is a big problem for me, as it depends on who is giving it. If your friends are complimentary about your work they could be just being loyal, if someone else doesn’t like it, it could be they they simply don’t know what you’re trying to do. So the idea of getting the opinions of three people who knew what they were talking about, and had nothing to lose by giving it to me straight, sounded like it was worth the money.
So I pitched up at the new home of the Photographer’s Gallery on Sunday morning clutching a copy of The Constant Eye, a pile of work prints and a large bag of curiosity. I was to see Larry Towell, David Alan Harvey and Susan Meiselas. I’d never met any of them before, but of the three it was Towell’s work that I was most familiar with.
The café room of the gallery was full of people already and Fiona from Magnum’s London office, who had organised the whole thing, greeted us all, introduced the photographers, and got us organised. Suddenly I was sitting at a little table facing Larry Towell, with my book lying between us. I think we were both wandering what was supposed to happen next.
Well – we caught our breath – and Larry looked through the book. There were some pictures he thought were good and some he thought shouldn’t have been included. He took a lot of care over explaining to me what does and what does not work in a book – the captions, the design, the visual impact of the pictures. After many minutes had passed I realised that we hadn’t really discussed the merits of individual photographs, and I asked for his views. What struck me, as he described what might have been improved in certain pictures – a change of composition, a shift of focus, a vertical format instead of a horizontal one – was that I already had, in many cases, the improved pictures he was describing. They were on the same rolls of film, a few frames either side. I had eliminated them during my editing process. Clearly, I need to work on this aspect of my photography.
In the blink of an eye our allotted time was over and I was packing up my wares. I thanked him for what had been a very helpful review. It put certain things in their correct place which I, working away on my own at my own work, had overlooked. “I sometimes wonder” I said, “whether I really am a photographer.”
“So do I,” he replied. “I wonder whether I’m really a photographer too.”
Back down in the café I met Mark Seymour, who had also just finished his first review, and Marcus Brierley, who was waiting for his scheduled time to go in. I was buzzing with the ideas that Larry had sparked off, and Mark, who had just seen Constantine Manos, was similarly excited. I’d never before met Mark or Marcus, but one of the great things about gatherings like this is the people you bump into.
After lunch I sat down with my book at a little table again, this time with David Alan Harvey. David understood quickly that The Constant Eye, Vol.1 is purely a collection of pictures from the last few years, and that what I really needed to do was a book with more of a story. I hadn’t realised how much David had worked in Spain – the work prints I’d brought, from my Bous al Carrer project, sparked interest.
He suggested I should approach my next book in the same way as I would a novel. Don’t be too tied to a strict journalistic approach – let the story live it’s own life. “It’s not the story that is interesting, it’s how it’s told,” were his parting words.
Again, I felt I was buzzing, more excited about my work than I’d been for many months, and ready only to give myself the time to sort out all the thoughts and ideas generated by talking to these folks. Time for a quick coffee then back in the review room with Susan Meiselas.
Susan’s opinion of my pictures contrasted in some ways with the earlier discussions, which re-enforces what a subjective business this is! She was very clear about the pictures she liked and the ones that shouldn’t be there, and why, and also why I should work on a book with a common theme. The landscapes in The Constant Eye were the most comfortable, she noticed, which is dead right. I am much more comfortable taking pictures at a distance, for instance:
River Sava, Belgrade, Serbia. February 2004.
and
Karadjordjeva, Belgrade, Serbia. February 2004.
work better than:
Elmeyer Dance Academy, Vienna, Austria. November 2003.
Susan was also the only person other than myself who has ever said they liked this one:
Michaelerplatz, Vienna, Austria. October 2003.
And so, far too soon, my part in the review was over and I could go away and think through all that I’d picked up. I have to say I was amazed to find there were spare places available during the day, and that some people paid but didn’t turn up – this was the most valuable day I’ve spent for many years, and I’m very glad I was able to go. One irony is that many of the things I was told were actually things I already knew, but had lost sight of or forgotten in the course of the daily grind.
I’m very excited about getting my next book out, and the discussions of format, selection and theme were invaluable. And I love the idea of actively engaging the reader in a story. As Susan said just before I left: “Let’s see Constant Eye 2!”
Thanks Larry, David and Susan, for your time. I’m pretty sure you weren’t there for the money!
Now – what I want for my birthday is a good picture editor!
Tags: london, the constant eye
June 16th, 2009 Galleries Paul no comments
Had a good meeting with Teresa and Laureano at Galeria Paz y Comedias in Valencia on Thursday.
First of all, this is a beautiful gallery. In these days, when galleries try to make themselves resemble a white cube as much as possible, it’s refreshing to find a gallery that allows the beauty of the building to come through. It’s located on the second floor of a stunning Valencian art nouveau apartment building which has the trademark mosaic tile floors intact.
This must be troublesome on occasion when it comes to selecting work that won’t fight with the decor, but works brilliantly for most shows.
Teresa Legarre, gallery owner and curator, was also a breath of fresh air. She was appalled by my Spanish, of course, but very helpful, knowledgeable, and frank. I can only sympathise with her when it comes to navigating her way around modern photography, with it’s huge digital prints using size and colour to overcome deficiencies in structure and composition.
We left with a good feeling that the gallery understood what I was doing, which is rare enough, and that we should be able to work together at some point in the future.
Tags: exhibition, gallery, valencia
June 10th, 2009 Uncategorized Paul 1 comment
I try to keep this blog focused on photography, but I’ve just had a small triumph against multinational car rental company Europcar/Alamo that I’m bursting to tell you about.
I hired a car from their Gatwick office last month and when I returned it they found a bulge in the sidewall of one tyre. There is only one way such damage can be caused, and that’s by hitting a curb. Since I hadn’t hit any curbs I knew I didn’t cause the damage and so the tyre must have been in that condition when I picked the car up. Europcar had a different view. They maintained the damage was my responsibility and deducted over £60 from my credit card.
After a month of hassle, phone calls – holding on the phone to speak to people who never show up and listening to the inane garbage they play while you’re waiting (anyway, why do they think that hearing a recorded voice telling you how much you mean to them as a customer is going to help when you’re still holding after eight and a half minutes?) – Europcar today backed down, said they’d refund the charge, and wished me a nice day.
A victory for the citizen in the face of corporate bullying! Hang out the flags!
The moral of the story is that if you feel unfairly treated by one of these companies, badger the hell out of them until they realise you’re not going to give up. Then they’ll figure out it’s more hassle for them to deal with you than it is for them to surrender.
People power. Yeah.
June 4th, 2009 Photography Paul no comments
Somebody was searching for ‘Пол Харди Картер, фотограф’ and it came through to me. I was poised over the spam button when curiosity got the better of me and I tried a Google translation from Russian to English.
Turns out ‘Пол Харди Картер, фотограф’ means ‘Paul Hardy Carter, Photographer’!
I think I might get it on a t-shirt.
May 14th, 2009 Exhibitions Paul no comments
Visited Battle in the south of England, near Hastings, for Robin Bell’s birthday party on Saturday. I’m sure you know that Battle is actually where the Battle of Hastings was fought. What are the chances of that happening?
Great to see Robin and Lucy in such good spirits, a great day was had by all. Robin was using the occasion of his 60th birthday to hold an exhibition in the Independent Photographer’s Gallery bringing together some of his favourite pictures from 35 years in the darkroom. It was an honour for me to have one of my pictures selected for the show.
Kapitulská, Bratislava, Slovakia. November 2003.
Among many new people we met at the party was documentary photographer Colin Summers who has a picture from Banda Aceh in the show, shot in the aftermath of the tsunami. I can’t help but admire the emotional strength of people who take this kind of picture, I’m not sure I could do it. Colin’s a great bloke and deserves to succeed in his chosen field.
The conversation among the photography professionals at the event centred around the inevitable subject: nobody’s selling pictures. It’s a tough time in the photography industry, but it was great to have other people to talk to about what’s happening.
The show itself is really great. I always enjoy shows that aren’t built around a single visual theme, which I find grow tiresome by the time I’ve seen a couple of dozen pictures. The theme here is simply Robin’s taste, and an eclectic taste it is. From hardcore photojournalism (Don McCullin, Tom Stoddart, Colin Summers, Lee Miller) through to high class celebrity portraiture (Terry O’Neill, Bob Carlos Clarke, Terence Donovan), and much in between, Robin has simply chosen pictures he likes. All – of course – beautifully printed.
Go to see the show if you possibly can.
Tags: exhibition, gallery, printer, Robin Bell
April 28th, 2009 Gear Paul no comments
Forgive me if this post is a little on the Leica techie side. I’m not really that much of a Leica nut (although I use them all the time), but it occurred to me that this story might prove useful to someone else. Don’t worry about the swearing and the dark incantations and the vengeful gods of photography. I called them off.
I sent my M7 back to Leica HQ in Solms when it repeatedly jammed while loading film with the motor attached. They sorted this problem out promptly and efficiently, and for free, and sent me a little black washer with the returned camera. There was a note attached saying this was a modification that should be done to the baseplate – which I hadn’t sent with the camera (the winder was attached) – and that it should be self explanatory.
Now I pride myself on being a pretty practical sort of chap, I think you have to be when you work on your own, so without too much fear I got the screwdrivers out. The washer looked the same as an item on the winder that had appeared during its visit to Solms, so I guessed the spare washer was to be used on the baseplate in the same position, and that if Solms had sent it to me without instructions they must be happy for me to fit it, and that it would be uncomplicated to do so.
On the internal side of the baseplate, at the end with the twisting latch that holds the baseplate closed, there is a little cross-headed screw on top of the latch mechanism. On the recently returned winder there was a washer under this screw. All I had to do was undo the screw on the baseplate, place new washer over the hole, and replace the screw. A few twists of the screwdriver and the job was done. Or so I thought.
Since I was using the M7 with the winder the modified baseplate sat around for months, unused. Yesterday I needed the camera in a more lightweight form, so I swapped the winder for the baseplate. The plate was lose when fitted. Problem.
I the end, after considerable head-scratching, extensive use of expletives and much muttering of dark incantations intended to bring down the wrath of all photographic gods on whoever was responsible for such a clearly dumb device, it turned out that the twisting latch had a square hole in the centre, which had to fit over the square spigot coming through the plate from the catch on the outside. Now, in the nature of a square, this had four sides, which meant the latch could be fitted in any one of four positions. You have to find the right one otherwise the latch doesn’t close properly.
Once you realise that it’s not too difficult to figure that puzzle out, but in case you need help, here’s a tip. With the outside catch in the closed position, the gap on the inside twisting latch should face the end of the baseplate. All clear? Jolly good. Now put a film in and take some pictures.
Tags: camera, leica, m7
April 27th, 2009 Exhibitions Paul no comments
Robin Bell has made a lovely 24×2 print of a popular picture of mine (this one):
with the idea that I can get it framed and take it around to a few galleries here, to show them what they’ll have to sell if they give me a show.
The first obstacle, though, was getting the print onto Easyjet. I don’t like rolling fibre prints up, especially after Robin had gone through the process of making it nice and flat, so I was carrying it in a big cardboard envelope. I couldn’t check the thing in – not without wrapping it up much more to prevent bending and possible rain – but wasn’t looking forward to check-in.
Let’s face it, the low-cost airlines are great, and I simply couldn’t travel as much as I do without them, but they can sometimes be very fussy about what you carry on to the aeroplane. However – on this occasion Easyjet raised no objections, the envelope just fitted into the overhead locker, and everything worked out.
Now I have to find a decent framer who won’t charge me the earth, and go forth into the world to sell my wares.
Tags: exhibition, prints, Robin Bell
