THE TUBE - A STORY ABOUT WORKING WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT

So here is a story of making the best of things to start our first Monday of 2025..

Now like it or loathe it, no one LOVES the tube. The perennial strike action, the overcrowding, the dead air, the odour of armpit and sandwich, the awful music shared by solipsistic straphangers, the ubiquitous man-spreading and pervert leering, the furious, fizzing, amphetamine-aggressive, big dick energy of hardcore regulars, the dawdling, drooling, valium-coma, slackjawed, thoroughfare-constipating and ticket-barrier blocking of bewildered travellers, the Parisian rudeness of TFL staff, the stifling heat in summer and every kind of wrong leaves on the line in winter. On a bad day it can take me longer to get from my house in North London to Canary Wharf than it would to Birmingham. No one, no one, loves the tube.

But

The end of the year saw me squeeze in a relatively minor operation that left me barred by my surgeon from lifting anything heavier than a kettle, driving, or walking any real distance for several weeks. Where could I go? How could I take any photos? I’m a busy event photographer and corporate videographer! I don’t DO sitting still! How would I not go crazy?
Work with what you’ve got is the answer, right?

So I took a couple of subterranean trips on our beloved Underground with a ghastly, fiddly, unloved but lightweight pocket camera to produce a few photos that while not being ward-winning, were part of a different kind of creative and social exploration; I started to see, as I did as a student, how this maze of victorian tunnels and art deco stations is in fact a phenomenal wonder of design and aesthetics, is filled with beautiful stories and a long and marvelous history. Somehow, the Tube manages to get 1.2 billion travellers around London every year and, when seen through even a third rate camera lens, can be really quite lovely .

adam rowleyJanuary 6, 2025Comment

Mar 21, 2023

HOW MUCH DOES A CORPORATE VIDEO COST?

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY AND HOW YOU WANT TO SAY IT, BUT WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET?

How much will my film cost? Is inevitably our first question. The unhelpful answer is of course, how long is a piece of string? You may want a simple one-day, one-man shoot with a quick one-day edit, and you can probably get that for under a grand if you’re not too fussy and it really is just a one-day edit. Or you might want an ambitious creative concept, with lots of pre-production followed by a complex week-long shoot, filming on a RED camera, and lots of complicated compositing and animated graphics. And that could be £20 - £30 000. Or more.

Mar 20, 2023

WHY YOU HIRE A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER

So here’s the cruel irony. Even though I know I possess the kind of staggering youthful good looks that make people catch their breath and drop their falafel when they meet me in real life, on camera I look like a laboratory experiment where the mad scientist has injected the DNA of Brendan Gleason and Charles Manson into a old potato

And being self-conscious - oh my crooked smile, oh my seventy-eight chins - means I forget that my delicious eyes are like limpid emerald pools you could drown in, and I project discomfort - In short, I don’t pose well. Maybe you do. Millions of others dont. And some of them work for you.

Mar 16, 2023

TESTIMONIAL VIDEOS, WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?

WHY THE BEST WAY TO SELL YOUR PEOPLE IS TO USE YOUR PEOPLE

Back in the mists of time, every corporate video had an ambitious narrative, like a storyboarded long-form commercial, a piece of expensive, styled, authored creative in its own right. These films do still get made and they are great. I make them myself, though more usually I work in short form. Is this always how you want to disseminate your information, your brand, your company? Sometimes yes. Just as sometimes you want to Ronseal it, to say it like it is. But do you want to be that blunt? Again probably not.

WHY SPEND MONEY ON A PROFESSIONAL VIDEOGRAPHER?

WHAT VALUE DOES A PROFESSIONAL VIDEOGRAPHER ACTUALLY BRING TO THE PARTY?

Sure so this is where you get sold all the corporate and advertising cliches about brand identity and adding value to your message and blah blah blah. And you may not be thinking in those terms, but rather about just demonstrating something seemingly quite simple.

CAN ONE PERSON SHOOT PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEOGRAPHY AT AN EVENT?

YOU NEED A PHOTOGRAPHER , AND YOU ALSO WANT A CORPORATE VIDEOGRAPHER, BUT YOUR BUDGET PAYS FOR ONLY ONE OF THEM - WHAT DO YOU DO?

The short answer is of course some people can do both. The challenge is finding someone who is genuinely good at both, which is not as easy as it sounds. There are plenty of great photographers out there who can’t really shoot video. There are some good videographers out there, though they are no nearly so easy to find, and some of them are competent photographers too.

Mar 5, 2023

WHY EITHER EVERYONE OR NO ONE NEEDS TO WORRY ABOUT AI

With the announcement that China-based NetDragon Websoft says it is the first company in the world to appoint an AI as its CEO only to see stocks soar, naturally it isn’t just struggling bloggers and graphic designers who are worried about the implication of AI

This is where I’d like to reassure you that climate change ravaging the planet and making the lives of those few who survive the catastrophic flooding, wild fires and raging hurricanes that are predicted absolute hell.

THE TUBE - A STORY ABOUT WORKING WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT

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