John Cleland Photographer

Every pho­tog­ra­pher must have one pho­to­graph which sits above all     oth­ers as their over­all per­sonal far­vourite shot in their port­fo­lio.  When a career stretches for twenty years there will be lots to choose from.  I love my cover shot from the Dark Nir­vana book, food shots from Wilkin­sons header boards and the Broadgate shot taken in Lon­don shown in the very first post of this blog.  One shot still stands out for me though, taken many years ago while train­ing at Swansea.  I set myself a project to pho­to­graph a tug boat hand who worked one of the many tugs bring­ing in larger ves­sels into Swansea docks.  I went down to the docks sev­eral days before, found a crew and selected a real char­ac­ter as my sub­ject.  I got up at 4am on the day of the shoot and made my way down to Swansea docks, an hours walk from where I was based.  The wind was howl­ing and it was still dark and I remem­ber won­der­ing what would hap­pen if the police stopped this loan fig­ure walk­ing through Swansea at that time wear­ing a black balaclava!

We set sail and imme­di­ately I started to have sec­ond thoughts about the whole idea with the tug rolling up and down on the very choppy sea.  I started to shoot my sub­ject from within the safety of the bridge but then it hap­pened — we came out from what was the rel­a­tive calm of the har­bour walls and into what I can only describe as sheer hell.  The tug rose 25ft and then dropped by the same amount — I gripped the rails as tightly as I could just to stay upright.  As we approached the large     Russ­ian ship we had been sent to bring in my sea dog of a char­ac­ter looked at me, smiled and said “you comin out then?”  I am sure by this time I had turned a lovely shade of green and look­ing back took my life in my hands and stag­gered to the door of the bridge.  Shoot­ing was impos­si­ble, every time I tried to raise my hands to the cam­era, another wave came crash­ing in and I had to return my hands to the door frame to stay upright.  My guy was treat­ing it like a day in the office, swear­ing like a trooper at his Russ­ian coun­ter­parts in an attempt to get them to throw the rope to his crew so they could bring in the ship.

‘Just another day at the office’. Seems so calm in this shot — wrong!

Half an hour later we finally reached what now seemed to be the total calm of the har­bour walls.  At this point I felt com­pelled to start shoot­ing as so far I didn’t have one usable frame.  The sun was just start­ing to rise and I got a cou­ple of really nice shots of my guy look­ing back out to sea.  Once we had docked, old cap­tain jack decided he fan­cied a walk so I fol­lowed shoot­ing all the time. And it was then and there that I cap­tured the shot that until this day remains my num­ber shot in my port­fo­lio.  Maybe it was what went before that puts this image above the rest but I think the shot stands out for its sheer story telling per­spec­tive.  I love the com­po­si­tion and my guy could not have looked bet­ter if I had brought in a model and staged the whole thing.

I hope he is still out there some­where, swear­ing a Russ­ian sailors and bring­ing in the ships one hun­dred times the size of his.  He was one cool guy!

You know, all of this snow we are hav­ing at the moment reminded me today of one of the best hol­i­days Pat and I ever had in our car­a­van­ing days.  A cou­ple of years ago we booked a long Easter week­end at a site near Bux­ton — the weather fore­cast was rea­son­able, no heat­waves yet but noth­ing to worry about.  We arrived on the Fri­day and pitched up — walked big H (our westie) and set­tled in for the night.  The fol­low­ing day we woke to a scene we never expected to see from the car­a­van win­dow — snow, lots of it!  Now its OK when you are at home — you just turn up the fire (unless its a real one in which case out you go) and shut out the cold — not so in a car­a­van.  You still have to do all of the things that car­a­van­ers do — but that’s the fun of it.  We had an absolute ball!  Even poor old Pat hav­ing to take H out for wee in her PJ’s (well I wasn’t going to do it, it was nice and warm in bed).

Well that’s our rule — Pat does the morn­ing and I do the evening!

We had some amaz­ing walks through the woods in the snow — every weather con­di­tion pos­si­ble — dull, sunny, snow­ing you name it, but it was so exhil­a­rat­ing.  We nearly lost H at one point when he van­ished right into the snow — its not easy only being 18″ tall you know!

Intre­pid expor­ers (Urr…and Pat & H)

You know we had some amaz­ing sun drenched hol­i­days in the car­a­van but look­ing back at it this week­end really did take some beating.

Catch up soon — JC

Well we are just not used to this in the good old UK — freez­ing tem­per­a­tures, deep snow and long, long jour­neys home.  My drive from work nor­mally takes me twenty five min­utes — on Tues­day of this week it took three and a half hours.  Ken, my work col­league and friend couldn’t even get his car out of the car park so he came with me in the 4x4.  The last mile of the jour­ney was spent rac­ing a guy on foot walk­ing home — we lost, he won!  Oh, how I long for the warm sum­mer days again — only four or five months and we’ll have them back and boy, will I be happy!

Taken on the drive home while doing 0 miles per hour

It has been a life­times ambi­tion to pub­lish a book show­cas­ing my work and in the lat­ter part of last year that dream was realised with the pub­li­ca­tion of Dark Nir­vana.  The book con­tains a col­lab­o­ra­tion of images depict­ing a darker mood and involv­ing a great many of the mod­els, MUA’s and hair styl­ists I have had the plea­sure of work­ing with over the past few years.

To help pro­mote the book I have pro­duced a ded­i­cated web­site to Dark Nir­vana allow­ing view­ers to read about the author (that would be me), view 54 of the images from the book, and order the book, paper­back through blurb.com and spe­cial edi­tion hard­back signed by yours truly.  The Dark Nir­vana web­site address is darknirvana.co.uk — go have a look round even if you don’t buy the book (which you should, because its great).  I would also like to take this oppor­tu­nity to say a very spe­cial thanks to Mar­tin Box (Boxxy) for all his help with the site and for putting up with my very lim­ited knowl­edge of how a web­site mag­i­cally comes together.

The site is still in progress and fur­ther pages such as print orders and com­ments will be added shortly.  Catch up soon.

JC

Wel­come to my new blog.  It seems fit­ting that it should start today as it’s 20 years ago to the very day that I set up my first pho­to­graphic stu­dio, along with Bill and ICS Graph­ics.  Spec­trum Pho­to­graphic Stu­dios Lim­ited opened its doors on Ban­croft Lane on the 1st Jan­u­ary 1990 and suc­cess­fully traded for the next five and a half years.  We worked for some of the country’s bluechip com­pa­nies such as Boots, Pretty Polly, Makita Power Tools and Sekonda Watches.  My thanks and best wishes go to every­one involved espe­cially to both Bill and June.  Also to Mick for paint­ing the stair­well — I can still remem­ber you stood on the plank sus­pended 20ft up — would have strug­gled to get back on the plane if you had fallen off there lit­tle brother.

I hope that I will have plenty of oppor­tu­nity to dis­cuss every­thing pho­to­graphic (and some not so pho­to­graphic) with you over the com­ing months.

I very much look for­ward to catch­ing up soon.  All the best and I have a fan­tas­tic New Year!

JC