Pictas Focus: Interview with the artist
Talking with Chris Patmore
Hey there! Here we go again with another Interview with the artist. Today I’m happy to talk with Chris Patmore, photographer, designer and writer.
Let’s start by sharing his socials, so you can have a look and follow him.
Enjoy!
Q: Great to have you here as today’s guest, Chris. I would start by introducing yourself and tell us a little about you.
A: Who am I? The eternal philosophical question. On a more mundane level, I’m a London-born, Australian-raised photographer (amongst other things) who is now dividing his time between London and Sicily (no thanks to Brexit). I got my first camera when I was around 11. It was a Polaroid Swinger that I won in a painting competition. I became hooked on photography as a result, but didn’t start to get seriously interested in it until my teens, when I took up surfing and wanted to capture some of Australia’s great waves. I’ve been carrying a camera with me ever since, recording and documenting whatever was unfolding in my life. In my mid-twenties, I went to art school for a few years to study photography and art, but dropped out after a couple of years to keep travelling, and I still seem to be a bit nomadic.
Q: That’s very interesting. And, as an Italian, I’m happy to hear you love my country and decided to spend part of your time living here.
I see from your profile your photographic attention goes mainly to music and nature, in particular to fungi. Is there a connection between the two genres? I mean, it’s interesting to see how your focus goes from a super noisy and crowded environment to another one which is silent and calm.
A: Back in the ’70s I was interested in nature, and fungi in particular, as it fitted in with surfing’s communing with nature, and I was also photographing a few bands, but my life went off in another direction and I dropped shooting them as I started travelling through Asia and Europe. Fast forward 30 years, and I was working as a film journalist and movie critic. One of the magazines I was working with also ran a music section and needed a photographer to cover a live gig, so I volunteered and really felt at home in front of the stage. It was the pandemic that changed my direction. Obviously there was no live music, and wanted to find something else to photograph. As the lockdown started to end, a friend asked if I wanted to be the photographer for a project she was developing, a guide to the wildflowers on a local common (a common is a large space of public land that was originally for people to graze their animals). The book was self-published last year. While photographing the flowers I stumbled upon different fungi, which rekindled my fascination with them from my youth. Being out in the solitude and light of nature is definitely a marked contrast to the music venues I shoot in, which are noisy and dark. It brings a little balance. It was also the switch to Olympus cameras that drove me to concentrate on nature shots, because they seem to be better adapted for that genre, due to the small size not weighing you down when out hiking and looking for subjects.
Q: Talking about music photography, it requires expertise and skills (and you do a great job, I have to say). But does it also require a specific gear? I mean, the environment is usually poorly lit and there’s a lot of movement on stage.
A: Music photography certainly has its challenges. The lighting, or lack of it, is definitely the biggest one. And since the introduction of LED stage lights, especially in the smaller venues that I mostly shoot in, the lighting seems to have got worse, because there is a dominance of red or blue, which don’t play nicely with digital sensors. My solution was to shoot in monochrome. When I started getting seriously into music photography, everyone kept telling me I needed to shoot “full-frame” because of the high ISO needed, so I invested in a couple of Canon DSLR bodies and fast zooms. Wide aperture lenses are something you definitely need. At big concerts you usually only get the first three songs in the pit at the front of the stage, so two bodies with 24-70mm and 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses save precious time from having to change lenses, as well as giving a really good focal length range. Flash is also not permitted and will bring immediate ejection from the pit, and a possible ban. You also need to be shooting at least 1/250 to stop the action, especially the elusive jump shots. But I find that a little movement blur can enhance the image. Not all performers are high energy, so it is possible to use slightly slower speeds, if you time the shot and pick your moment. The other challenge is the constantly changing light that can go from bright front lighting to back lighting in a second, and also there is a lot of contrast between the highlights and shadows, which can play havoc with the auto exposure, so I generally shoot in manual mode. And always in RAW.
As the pandemic ended I was looking at upgrading my cameras to new mirrorless models, because Canon was finally making decent ones, but the native fast lenses were not only limited in range but also very expensive. I also wanted something lighter because I’m not getting any younger. Having always shot with Olympus film cameras, I had another look at their Micro Four Thirds offerings, which goes against common thinking for music photography. I tried one at some gigs, with f/1.8 primes, and was surprised that there was very little noticeable difference in image quality compared to my old Canon DSLRs, except under extreme pixel peeping, and no normal person looks at photos like that. It made me completely rethink what equipment we do really need. When I first shot bands in the 1970s, I was using Ektachrome 400 pushed to 800, which was really the usable limit, with f/1.8 or f/2.8 primes. Now, being able to shoot at ISO 3200 and above is amazing. So, I just changed my mindset to shooting as if I was still working film, and I still shoot film. As long as you are using fast lenses, it doesn’t matter what sort of sensor you have, whether it’s M4/3, APS-C or “full-frame”. If you want to shoot bands, don’t let your camera hold you back because you think it’s not as good as what everyone else says you need, especially if it’s only going to be posted online. The trick is to find the light and timing, which is the essence of most documentary photography. With music, you also need to best capture the emotion of the show, which can take time to learn, and not to cover the singer’s face with the microphone.
Q: Wow! That definitely sounds challenging. Also true that, in the end, each genre has got its own peculiarities and difficulties.
I see you also publish zines from the gigs you photographed. Can you tell us about this project?
A: Zines have been very much part of the underground/indie music scene since the days of punk, and probably even before. They were very much a scissors and glue thing that were then photocopied. Times have moved on. I first started working with digital print on demand back in my days as a film journalist and graphic designer, when the magazine I was working with wanted to find a more economical and ecological way to print and distribute the mag. When the magazine folded I thought I’d start my own little music mag for my photos and any interviews I did with bands. Print on demand let me produce something glossy without any outlay on my part. People could just order a copy and it was printed and posted out to them. I called it Piano. Apart from obviously being a musical instrument (even though the mag has nearly all guitar bands in it), the word has lots of different meanings in Italian that I felt suited my ideas and temperament. Initially, issues were very sporadic. The more bands I photographed, the less time I had to make the zine. 2022 was the first year I actually managed to do regular bi-monthly editions. Last year I only managed to do one at the end of the year, as I was in the process of moving to Sicily but, thanks to Brexit, it was more complicated than anticipated. Now that we all shoot mostly digital, making the zine is one way of having a tangible record of the gigs I shot, rather than have them just on social media or my website. I mainly use social media to drive traffic to my website, where there are more photos than were posted on socials or printed in the zine, as well as links to buy the zine. When people ask to see my photos, instead of telling them to look on Instagram or Vero, I can show them the zine, which has a lot more impact than scrolling through a website or social media feed.
Q: That’s cool. And indeed a very beautiful way of sharing your creations.
Are there any other projects you are working on or you will start working on in the near future?
A: At the moment, because I’m slightly nomadic and spending three months in Sicily and three months in the UK, then back to Sicily, then back to the UK, it makes it hard to concentrate on any long term projects. Autumn in the UK is fantastic for fungi, and spring has fresh wildflowers and nature awakening from winter, plus music gigs. This winter in Sicily I started a project of photographing the old alleyways of Ortigia in Siracusa at night with my medium format film cameras. I have another idea for a year-long one, also in Siracusa, along the coast, but as I said, not being able to live here full time at the moment has put it on hold while we try to get visas. But I have been scouting out the area and making some digital test shots. The aim is to make these into books rather than a zine. But everything is up in the air.
Q: That’s awesome. I look forward to seeing these come to life!
Thanks for sharing all of this with us. And good luck for everything!
A: Thank you so much for inviting me!
No need to say I highly invite you to check Chris’s work at the links shared at the beginning of this wonderful interview.
Learn, create and inspire together!