What kind of photographer are you?

Athabasca Glacier, Canadian Rockies, twilight

In my ongoing search for what sort of photographer I am and how to improve, I've had another professional portfolio assessment, this time from Getty Images. Although focused on stock photography, the comments apply more widely.

'Your best qualities as a photographer are working with real people, real situations and natural light.'

You have to love the stock world distinction between glamorous models and 'real people' :) and 'real situations' means acted-out situations that look real. As to natural light, I do enjoy fooling around in the attic studio with speedlights but, well, yes, 'let's go outside' is more me.

So I know how I could sell more photos as stock but who am I as a photographer, apart from stock? Sometimes knowing who you are NOT is very helpful and I've learned that photography is not just about liking the subject; it's about YOUR personality and lifestyle. So, who are you? Do you recognise who you are - or who you're not? Feel free to add some categories in your comments!

Landscape Photographer

You rise at dawn, spend the day complaining about harsh light and too much sunshine, then come alive again during the twilight blue hour and into the night. People exist to show scale as 'figures in a landscape' and are of no interest in themselves. In fact, people are irritating and you prefer there to be no people at all. You love slow exposures. Tripod, patience and natural light are your tools. You're willing and able to hike to impossible places, carrying 50kg of gear, to get The Shot.

Check out these photographers for great landscapes (and more):-
David duChemin
Chris Hepburn
Ryerson Clark
Paula Connelly

Athabasca Glacier, Canadian Rockies 6 am

Night Photographer

You come out at night, seeking places that no sensible person would go in the dark. Your partner is used to you sneaking out of bed, throwing on some clothes and going out. He/she has given up telling you it is dangerous. Whether in mean streets or trackless wilderness, you wear a cloak of invisibility that, along with your tripod, protects you from violent lowlife, human or animal. Your exposures are so slow they make people disappear and only the essential remains. You love stars. You might even specialise in astral photography.

La Belle Vie

Landscape and night photographer Tommy Dickson said 'I love turning night into day.'

Wildlife Photographer

You have inhuman patience. You could watch a patch of grass all day because three years ago a rare insect was seen on that very spot. You are a stalker. You know your subject intimately; how it behaves, where it goes; its mating habits. You have a David Attenborough commentary going on in your head at all times. You are happy to get close-up and personal with creatures that have big teeth. You think photo manipulation is cheating. You need a telephoto lens that costs the price of a house. You can lose the hiking/carrying and financial requirements if you opt for the macro version and shoot tiny wildlife, close-up.

Finalists in Wildife Photographers of the Year 2016
Check out the wildlife photos (and more) by Guenter Gueni

Street Photographer

You have no scruples about shooting strangers' private moments in public places. You shoot fast and have an eye for composing a candid scene, capturing relationships, emotions and urban settings. Usually, nobody notices you sneaking photos but every now and then a subject looks at camera with a smile, or shock or indignation. You shoot with an unobtrusive prime, probably 35mm, and you like black and white processing.

Apart from the iconic Cartier Bresson, one of the most famous street photographers is Vivian Maier, the nanny, who perfected invisibility but whose photos were never seen until after her death. Modesty? Lack of money for prints? Or scruples about the strangers whose lives she presents?

Photojournalist

You care passionately about human rights, the planet and freedom of information. You want everyone to know what's happening in 'the rest of the world' so you risk police harassment, even rape or murder to portray the truth. You started as a travel photographer but you left your viewers' armchair comfort zone and you want to change their attitudes, startle them, stir them into action. You carry two cameras, no tripod, and you like shutter priority - it's not a question of shooting fast, but rather of how fast you shoot. If you slow down, it's to photograph the people who ought to be in the news, not the people who are. Home can be boring.

Two outstanding photojournalists:-
Anna Puig Rosado
Lynsey Addario

Food Photographer

You buy vast quantities of cookbooks and food magazines for the photos. Eating is a pleasure and you see food as beautiful. An aubergine is sexy and you can see what colours would set it off to perfection. Your house is full of unmatched plates, cutlery, serviettes and other objects bought as food props. Your partner is trained to ask whether you have photographed an item of food before he risks your wrath by eating it. Outdoors/indoors; tripod/free-range; macro/telephoto lens; your choice. As long as you see food items as glamour models, you're a food shooter.

French buche de Noel / Christmas log

My food photography inspiration includes Kelly Cline, whom I met online thanks to istock, and Helene Dujardin (what a great name for a French food shooter!)

Studio Photographer

You're a perfectionist and control freak. There must be no light or shadow in your image but what you allowed and intended. You can shoot beautiful studio portraits but, if you're honest, people are a little difficult to control and what you like best is a perfectly lit product shot. Your studio does not only have lights and every kind of modifier known, including mirrors and gobos; it has a beam and rail systems. You know how to name and use every piece of technology you have and what you most want is a smoke machine. Your assistant takes his/her shoes off at the impeccably clean threshold and whispers while you work.

You know who you are :)

Portrait Photographer

You're a people person. You can make someone relax in front of a camera; talk, laugh, fool around. People trust you and show you who they are, who they want to be and then magic happens. A portrait is an interactive threesome and, unlike food or landscapes, the subject has opinions and can hate the photo. Relationships can hurt and if you don't know what the other person wants, you can both be disappointed; if you work together, you can have more fun than ought to be allowed when working. Studio or natural light; tripod or not; still or movement; your favourite portrait lens (mine's an 85mm f1.4) Just steal somebody's soul!

Check out the portraits (and more) taken by Richard Clark

Architecture Photographer

You get excited at diagonal lines and architraves. You have the urge to lie on your back and shoot a cupola or skyscrapers. Stairwells induce pleasure overload. You are THE mathematical photographer, always aware of symmetry and straight horizontals. If a human being is in front of you, what you see are circles, verticals and curves. Sorry, did it say something? Your weapon of choice is a tilt-shift lens but you'll settle for a wide-angle that doesn't vignette.

Ceiling, The Palace of Joy, Zaragossa

Fashion Photographer

Designer labels and colour co-ordination make your shutter-finger twitch. You know about handbags. Only young, beautiful people exist and you can charm them into impossible poses to show off the real subjects - clothes and accessories. Star-jumps on rooftops and clinging to a cliff-face are only some of your ideas to display voile floating. You are inseparable from your favourite stylist and make-up artist.

Check out three-times-winner of Malta's Fashion Photographer of the Year Kurt Paris , and stunning work from Nils Kahle

Sports Photographer

You don't just support one team; you support twenty and you know the rules of every game, underwater, over hurdles and in the sky. You love action, motion, effort and achievement, winning and losing. If it moves, you shoot it. You like panning, tracking and motion blur. Forget the tripod and sell the house for a super-fast telephoto lens.

Check out Charlie Mann's work.

Of course there are overlaps and specialisms within specialisms; timelapse, underwater, lo-fi, baby-mugging and Pellier Noir are just some that came up when I googled photography categories!

My photographic adventures in 2016 have included organising and shooting professional models in Paris with some amazingly talented photographer friends; giving a ten minute presentation on my work at a Getty Images event; and testing my landscape skills in Zaragossa, Northumberland and the Canadian Rockies. Next weekend I'm attending a portrait workshop with Anna Puig Rosado who lives only 30 minutes from me and is not only internationally respected as a photojournalist but also a warm, friendly person and a great teacher. Watch this space!

Barred in Paris

One of the treats for my big forthcoming birthday was to visit the photography exhibition in Paris: 'Qui a peur des femmes photographes' (Who's afraid of women photographers) The tongue-in-cheek reference to Virginia Woolf was echoed by a portrait of her mother, taken by one of the photographers featured. The hint of an allusion to the big, bad wolf was no accident either.

The exhibition challenged, informed and inspired me. We think our digital cameras are state-of-the-art but Kodak happily targeted the mass photographer market a hundred years ago with tag lines like 'You press the button; the camera does the rest'. Queen Victoria thought photography an appropriate hobby for ladies and as long as the ladies kept their cameras focused on family and flowers, everybody was happy. But women did not stay confined within their Brownie - or any other - Boxes. Nor did photography remain a bourgeois hobby. If you are lucky enough to see the exhibition, you'll find photography beyond gender as well as imagery exploring gender; from war journalism to smashed dolls.

Maybe the ghosts of Margaret Bourke-White, Lee Miller and Lisette Model whispered in my ear as I re-visited Paris. For many years, I have focused beyond the bars - made them disappear. If I didn't see them, they couldn't stand in my way. When I am described as a 'woman writer' or - ironically, in view of this wonderful exhibition - a 'woman photographer', bars are created. Is the glass ceiling there if I behave as if it's not? 

Self-portrait: Going through the glass ceiling

Even if the exhibition hadn't got me thinking about women's exclusion in the past from e.g. The National Geographical Society, being in a city always makes me feel constrained, regardless of gender. I love the explosion of culture and contrasts in cities - for a maximum of five days. Then the feeling of being trapped becomes too much for me. In Paris, this time, I let myself see the bars. Here are a small selection of the images and all twenty-six can be seen in my new gallery. 

Paris, the honeymoon city

Notre-Dame behind locks; Pont de l'Archevêché

Since 2010, the craze has spread for couples to declare their love by attaching a padlock (!) to a bridge and throwing the key into the Seine. I'd be tempted to throw the man in with it if he offered me such a 'romantic' gesture. Despite the removal of padlocks from one bridge, which was breaking under the weight, the craze continues and entire bridges are covered. Any railings are now starting to display padlocks. 

The Seine at Night

City gardens and parks are forbidding places behind their fences and walls, prohibitive signs and controlled access. Plants and flowers live behind bars.

This sign for 'Keep off the grass' reminds me of political posters protesting repressive regimes. But we are in France...

Don't Kill the Grass in Winter

Such signs arouse the instinctive rebel in me. Before I saw the 'Don't pee in public' sign, I never considered doing so.

The City and the City by China Miéville describes two cities occupying the same space, the inhabitants of one city pretending not to see the inhabitants of the other, and that dislocation is what I felt, sitting in a cosy bar, drinking a glass of wine, looking at this window. 

Nouvel Arrivage

You can see the whole gallery here in the Photography Galleries on my website. If you find my photos interesting, you can see a selection in my illustrated collection of shorts One Sixth of a Gill, free if you sign up for my newsletter. 

amazon link

Taking Stock as a Photographer

What do you really want to photograph?

To answer that question, I spent last weekend in a workshop with Ana Puig Rosado, an amazing photographer who lives only 30 minutes' drive from me in the beautiful lavender valley of La Roche St Secret. This is my photo of her house, reflected in the window of a typical Provencal cabanon. She maintains two websites to separate her photo-journalism from her weddings and other projects. Both are stunning.

Fears that my French would let me down diminished as I discovered that 'RAW' is 'RAW' in French, pronounced 'Roe', evidemment. Camera settings and menus are all in English so it's my French friends who have to get used to S for Vitesse (or for Canon shooters TV, which I always think of as Toute Vitesse).

Ana travels. Sometimes commissioned, sometimes with a project she hopes to sell afterwards and sometimes because she just 'wants to go to Tel Aviv.' She is a photo-reporter, working usually with natural light and an emphasis on getting it right in camera. She is the antidote to stock photography, in which I've been semi-conditioned for the last 6 years. Her notion of editing is to choose a small selection of photos that make a coherent collection.

Here's the portfolio that Ana put together showing the workshop behind the scenes as well as mini-galleries from each of us (mine is the first one).  

Until recently, I saw each photo as a one-off. Albums were 'best of'. Influenced by reading David DuChemin, I have started to think about collections as a whole, in the galleries on my website; in the selection chosen with my Editor for 'One Sixth of a Gill'. You can imagine how pleased I was with the reviews from the Wishing Shelf judges; 'A worthy finalist... 5 (of the 31) judges thought that the photography was the best part.' It is time to ask more of myself as a photographer.
If you'd like a free copy of 'One Sixth of a Gill' please sign up here for my newsletter.

With perfect timing, I received a professional report on the portfolio from LensCulture, whose portrait competition I'd entered. By happenstance, this is also the organisation which featured Dead Season on the Edge of the Black Sea by - guess who - Ana Puig Rosado! Some things are just meant to be.

The opportunity to receive a review was given as a bonus for entry and I was asked to submit a portfolio of 10 photos. I chose the 3 portraits I'd entered for the competition (that hadn't won) and 7 others I liked, showing the range of my work.

Don't cheat. look at these photos and decide what feedback you would give. Then read what I was told. 

Reviewer Feedback

I found some of these individual images very interesting and was drawn in by your innovative approach to self-portraiture. The mix of work here is very eclectic. I can understand it is hard to summarize your work in one edit and you may have wanted to demonstrate the depth and breadth of your practice, but I suppose we are just very used to seeing series of work in photography where you see one body of work explored in-depth. There are many images here that are very singular and beautifully taken shots particularly image 5 and 6. But I would encourage you to move from picking an individual good image to thinking about your work as a series.

Editing into a coherent series would enable the viewer to see more of you and how you work and also what you have to say. As we are so saturated by images all the time we need to work out what we are looking at and how to position it easily. I notice you do not have an artist's statement. It might be a very helpful exercise for you to write one. I realise they are hard to do as they in part require you to be concise and clear about what you are doing and you may work in a more organic less premeditated way. But the advantage is they force you to consider what might connect your work, and help you to develop confidence in your own voice.

Perhaps that is why the self-portraits interest me, they tell me more about you ( I am assuming they are of you). They make me think of Bill Viola's moving and slow studies of faces which take on a religious or spiritual edge and are very powerful. I like the idea that a single fixed image of self is never enough. We change so much over time and expressions alter our faces completely and you capture this well with this group of 3 images. I hope you will continue with those more in the future.

What do I think of the review?
I'm chuffed! And I smile now at my naivete in putting the collection together in such a random way. I'm writing this blog for everybody who's shared in my progress as a photographer - and for others who still think of one photo at a time.

Compliments like those in the review are really motivating me to carry on experimenting without worrying about what will sell in my istockphoto portfolio. 

Thank you to that anonymous reviewer, who made further suggestions. I would love comments from other photographers on the blog, on the review, on the idea of collections. I haven't answered the question of what I really want to photograph but I have some ideas!

These were the additional recommendations

Recommended Books

The Family of Man, curated by Edward Steichen

The Art of Photography: An Approach to Personal Expression, by Bruce Barnbaum

Here is a good article on things to think about when creating a photo essay.

Publish Your Photography Book, by Darius D. Himes and Mary Virgina Swanson

How to write an Artist's Statement

The Artist Statement: How and Why to Write Yours by Jennifer Schwartz

Other Resources to Consider

5 workshops, 5 days, 5 women in Berlin

Don't make your books into trailer trash

Welcome to Rachel Bostwick, the designer of all my book trailers and also an author in her own right, who's accepted my invitation to share some tips for authors on making pro book trailers.

Rachel's website

Graphic designer by day, aspiring novelist by night, R. L. Wicke explores the fullness of life set against the compelling beauty of a post-apocalyptic Earth. Her writing has been described as rich and filled with reverence for the characters who struggle and fight at the end of one world and the beginning of the next. She lives in Amish Country, PA with her husband, a million cats, and four feral children. She seeks to help out fellow writers and lovers of fiction by offering her pro design skills and her natural talent for encouragement. I need intro music for Rachel and she is just the right person to choose it. What would you like as your theme, Rachel, and why? My husband would choose Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong by the Spin Doctors. He always gives me that wicked look in his eye when it comes on the radio. I would choose Hallelujah by the Newsboys – it’s about having faith when life gets tricky and it’s the one song that I’ve always felt was actually written for me. The first trailer you made for me, One Sixth of a Gill keeps to your basic template ( which can be ordered from Rachel at fiverr for only $5 ).

One Sixth of a Gill

Can you talk us through your creative process?

Well, working with you has been amazing, Jean, because as a photographer as well as a writer, you have an eye for beauty. 

(I'm blushing here but thank you for the compliments!)

I try to get a feeling for the tone of the book – is it funny or dramatic or sad or compelling or adventurous? Then I choose music and images that will communicate that directly to potential readers.

What can authors do to help you make more compelling trailers?

Communication is key. Tell me what feeling you want to pass on to the reader so I can work with the right ideas in mind. For example, yesterday a client told me that his book appeals to the Sex and the City crowd. That gave me the exact right idea for choosing music. But even simple things like 'My book is humorous and appeals to women in their twenties,' is helpful.

What makes your work more difficult?

The hardest thing to work with is images that are too small. I can have a basic book trailer done in a single day if I start with the right images. Free images of highest quality can be found on www.pixabay.com or on www.pexels.com. Better yet, if you want to make a striking impression, you can buy images on one of many stock photography sites out there. If you feel like that’s too much of a time investment, I am able to choose and even license professional images for you.

(My photo portfolio,mentioned by Rachel, is with istock and that's where I buy images )

Authors can ask you to customize trailers for a few dollars more. In our work together, I’ve really appreciated the way you see the story and show it, using my images and your choice of musical theme. You were especially pleased with this trailer: why? 

Faithful through Hard Times

How did you get into making trailers?

I’ve been a professional graphic designer since my late teens, but I never did much video. When I decided to pursue writing, I made friends with many other authors and was exposed to some book trailers that I felt were poorly done. I started making my own for fun, just to inspire me in writing my drafts. A good friend mentioned that he thought it was something I could do professionally, so I started making them for friends, just to see if I could. And I could :)

Rachel's fivver link for trailer design

You’re a writer too. How do you combine working at home with looking after young children?

Flexibility is the key. My kids are young enough that they still need me all the time. I set my deadlines so that I always have extra time to put something off a day or two. I know that my time with my children is limited, so I try to make sure it’s always ‘yes’ to them and ‘later’ to work. I fail at that sometimes, but it’s my guiding principle.

Tell us about your own writing. 

I am currently penning the first novel in a young adult post-apocalyptic series, titled The 7th Judge, set a century in our future. Three decades past, mankind was wiped to near-extinction overnight by a fatal sleeping sickness. Now a thriving civilization blooms in the ruins of New York City. Lux is one of the Undergrounders, a single father trying to raise his daughter in one of the poverty-stricken subway barrios. When Lux is conscripted by law to be the consort of a high-ranking official, he becomes involved in a series of murders that threaten to shatter the tenuous peace of the Boroughs and destroy his new family.

amazon link

A prequel short story Fairy Tales for the Very Young set in the world of the 7th Judge was published in The Dragon’s Rocketship scifi anthology, The Ship’s Log, available here and a popular free story prequel, titled The Last Firefly and featuring Lux’s daughter, Summer, is available on my website here 

Another story I’m very proud of is Her Betrayer, a horror short with a twist.

What are your plans for 2015?

In the last half of 2014, I helped approximately 40 authors create gorgeous trailers for their books. I’d like to help at least a hundred in the new year! I’ve also added book covers, Kindle formatting, and Facebook banners to my Fiverr store, so I’m looking forward to helping my fellow writers make a great impression in the new year. 

Rachel's book jacket design service on fivver

I also hope to put the finishing touches on the first draft of The 7th Judge and have it professionally edited while raising each of my children to individual brilliance, helping my husband find his true calling in life, and becoming an independent millionaire who owns her own island castle paradise. But I’ll be perfectly satisfied just to keep my children safe and happy and get a little writing done on the side. 

Rachel, thank you so much for joining me on my blog and for making these wonderful trailers for my books. Good luck with all your projects!

Watch more of my book trailers that Rachel has made 

Someone to Look Up To

See more examples of Rachel's work and services on fivver

Follow Rachel on twitter                       Rachel's facebook page

The Princess' 9th Birthday Celebration

9 years ago today, a puppy was born on a farm in the Pyrenees. 

For some reason, her choosing fell through. She was still playing with her siblings when someone on her breeder’s waiting list phoned for news of the next litter and said ‘We’ll take her.’ 

Jean and Blanche's family at the Neouvielle kennels

The masters-to-be drove for 5 hours to fetch her and 5 hours home. Then they suffered hours of Béarnaise folk songs howled until no-one could bear any more and a compromise on sleeping-place was negotiated (the puppy chose her place and the people got some sleep). And so Blanche-Neige de Néouvielle arrived like an avalanche into our lives.  

You always think that having had dogs prepares you for the next one. It doesn’t. If you’re lucky enough to have known the friendship of an old dog, you are doubly unprepared for the next puppy, lulled into a false sense of expertise. It’s like childbirth; if anyone remembered what it was really like, no-one would do it twice. And with giant dogs, everything is bigger.

Blanche is the only dog I’ve known who didn’t just devour books; she chose them by sniffing along the bookshelves. She had a penchant for Terry Pratchett but if she could sniff out a book one of us was currently reading, and chew the last pages up on the lawn before we finished it, she was in ecstasy. Just when we’d established some basic principles of living together, we collected her friend, Bételgeuse de la Plaine d'Astrée. And that’s when the fun really began. You’ll note that the humans look much younger in the early photos.

Out-take1

Out-take2

Official Photo - John with the puppies 2006

Before allowing us to take her puppy away, Blanche’s breeder, Nadine, asked us, ‘What sort of life are you offering her?’ I’ve written about Nadine and her Pyreneans, in The Dog who cries Wolf (One Sixth of a Gill) and she can be fierce on her dogs’ behalf.

I can answer Nadine now; this is the life Blanche has offered us, for 9 crazy years.

We prepared for our puppy.

Daiquiri preparing to train her 4th and 5th Pyrenean Mountain Dogs

The puppy had things to learn too.

So that's a cat!

Like most aristocratic demoiselles, Blanche went to finishing school in Switzerland. Here she says thank you to top dog trainer Michel Hasbrouck, at the end of 2 days of Dressage Tendresse (I translated his bestseller into English as Gentle Dog Training)

Blanche and Michel

The only time I've ever dressed up a dog was when Arsenal reached the Champions' League Final and I became over-excited.

Thierry Blanche Henry

The dynamic duo grew up together... and grew... up. 

... finishing at 50kg and 70kg. Weighing a 6 month old male Pyrenean is fun.           

The games Bétel invented with Blanche lived on after we lost him to health problems and visitors can still enjoy being ambushed by white lightning. She hides behind the hedge then surprise-bombs them.

In her middle years Blanche perfected her modelling skills for my istock portfolio and can be found on many leaflets and websites, the face of pet care and dog training, both on her own and with her friend Lou.


When I told John my idea for this shoot, his get-out clause was 'You'll never get the dog to do it.' Blanche gave an Oscar-winning performance and I love this family portrait. She was actually obeying a long down-stay but the expression shows total immersion in the role. This photo features in a French article about homeless people and their dogs 

Blanche has welcomed two shelter dogs into her life, always confident in her relationship with us. We've holidayed together and we've grieved together. A year ago she had a stomach torsion, an emergency which is usually fatal. The operation was successful, despite her trashing her stitches and her cage the next day at the vet's, and refusing to eat until I was summoned to take charge. 

Blanche and Sherlock on holiday, Lac Ste Croix

She has a BIG character and an even bigger sense of fun.She inspired the character of Snow in Someone to Look Up To and committed some of the funny crimes attributed to Sirius. On one occasion, Bétel barked in the middle of the night to alert me; I threw on my dressing-gown, expecting burglars, and I found the door to the spare bedroom ajar. Blanche was curled up on the sofa in there, tucking into a box of dog treats she'd filched from the wardrobe. She still tests me out and she's still happy when I win. Dogs!

Her latest modelling credits include the book trailer for One Sixth of a Gill which also includes some of her photos; and a cameo role in the trailer for Someone to Look Up To, acting Sirius' brother. If Belle in the famous film can be played by a male, I don't see why my star actress can't change gender if required.

She is even going to be a pin-up girl. The 1st edition of the new International Magazine for Pyrs will be printed in March - with Blanche and Bétel featuring on the cover. You can see Blanche. The beautiful male featured on the left is called Romeo.

The magazine will also feature Someone to Look Up To in serial form. Check it out!

Subscribe to Pyr International Magazine

Happy 9th birthday, princess.

Among amazon.uk top dog books since 2013. 
'A wonderful dog story'

Amazon link

The genial logical detective returns - interview with Steve Robinson

RELEASED TODAY 'The Lost Empress'

No 1 Bestseller in Historical Thrillers

amazon link

Meet Steve Robinson – bestselling author and a man who has confessed here that he shoots from the hip (see interview below). He has also finally appeared in public wearing the infamous 'writer's hat' mentioned in his first appearance on my blog, and again when I last interviewed him. 

Steve Robinson drew upon his own family history for inspiration when he imagined the life and quest of his genealogist-hero, Jefferson Tayte. The talented London-based crime writer, who was first published at age 16, always wondered about his own maternal grandfather - "He was an American GI billeted in England during the Second World War," Robinson says. "A few years after the war ended he went back to America, leaving a young family behind and, to my knowledge, no further contact was made. I traced him to Los Angeles through his 1943 enlistment record and discovered that he was born in Arkansas . . ." Robinson cites crime writing and genealogy as ardent hobbies--a passion that is readily apparent in his work. He can be contacted via his website or his blog 

Welcome back, Steve. I see you're wearing your writer's hat. It's very you :)

The truth about the hat and more photos on Steve's blog

It's a bit embarrassing really. After Kindle Direct Publishing made a mini-documentary about me, a photo of me in the hat appeared on twitter so the hat is really out of the bag.




Since you last visited, you’ve written another two books in the Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery series and, after being a huge self-publishing success, you’ve signed with amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint, bringing out new editions of your backlist alongside matching audio-books. What made you jump ship from self-publishing? 

The short answer is a four book deal with Amazon Publishing’s mystery thriller imprint, Thomas & Mercer, but I don’t really like to think of it in terms of having jumped ship. I still feel ‘indie’, and that will always be a big part of my journey as an author. Signing with Amazon seemed to offer the best of both worlds. I’m still very much involved in the process, from book cover designs and blurbs, and I even got to pick the narrator for the audiobook editions from several samples that were sent to me. Signing with Amazon Publishing has helped me to focus more on my books, and of course it’s great to have editors waiting to help me shape them up for publication. I also felt that Amazon was better placed to help my books reach a wider audience.

Are the amazon waters as infested with sharks as the headlines suggest? 

Not as far as this author is concerned. From my own experience during the year since I signed with Amazon Publishing, I believe they treat their authors very well. 

Sorry about the shipwreck metaphors but I was influenced by your latest book :) The tragic sinking of the Empress of Ireland in 1914 is key to the story that JT is uncovering. How did you discover this event and what made you decide to write about it?

When I set out to find the story for my fourth Jefferson Tayte mystery, I knew it would be released in 2014, and I wanted to find something that tied in with the centenary of the outbreak of WW1. When I came across the tragic sinking of the Empress of Ireland in May that year, I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of it before, and the need to make more people aware of it became very important to me. So many stories are told of the Titanic and the Lusitania, but here was a disaster that had all but been forgotten, and yet, excluding crew members, more passengers lost their lives when the Empress of Ireland sank than on either the Titanic or the Lusitania. I wanted to weave a story around this event, and because it happened before the war broke out, I decided that the backdrop would be the build up to war, rather than the war itself.

As always in your books, there’s a lot of research underlying the historical parts of the narrative and another thread in the novel is the WW1 network of spies. How much of your detail about spies is based on fact?

It’s all based on facts from my research – at least, it’s based on reported facts at the time. There’s a lot of speculation about the scale of spying before WW1. Britain was in a state of paranoia about the threat of a German invasion, with satirical cartoons in the press and on posters showing German spies everywhere. A number of spies were arrested and executed at the outbreak of war, although I think there were far fewer than had been anticipated. Those spies mentioned during JT’s research in the book are real, as are the details of their spying activity and their punishment. I try to keep everything as real as possible.

As a fellow-photographer, I was fascinated by the detail of spy photography in 2014 – very clumsy compared to today’s micro-cameras or even mobile phones. How did you research the details, which I assume are accurate? 

I thought I’d run into a problem when I came to the particular plot hurdle in question, for which I needed a camera that existed in 1914, which would be small enough to conceal. I had no idea whether such a camera was in use then, but was very happy to find the Ur-Leica—a 35mm film camera, built in 1913 by Oscar Barnack at the Ernst Leitz Optische Werke in Wetzlar. It was still in prototype form at the time my story is set, but having been designed and built in Germany made it ideal, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine such a prototype camera in the possession of a German spy. Necessity being the mother of invention, it was also not difficult to imagine that such a small camera for the time was  designed for this very purpose.

Once again, you interweave a woman’s viewpoint from the past, with JT’s, and I certainly found Alice’s perspective and dilemma very convincing. Do you have any tips for writing from the viewpoint of someone in another historical period? Any special considerations regarding gender?

Someone wrote to me a short while ago and asked that very question. It was about the character, Mena, in my second book, To the Grave. How do you get inside the head of teenage girl from 1944 enough to understand her mannerisms and expectations? It’s a tough question to answer because I don’t really know. I don’t even have any children of my own to draw inspiration from. I suppose it must partly come down to the research, and I think when you come to fully understand a character, to the point where they seem quite real to you, then you can better understand how they would feel and how they might react to certain situations, irrespective of gender or the times they live in. 

Your plots must be complicated to write, with 3 different storylines interwoven (the present genealogical case for JT, the past as it happened and JT’s own personal family history and relationships). How do you keep track of it all? Any tips?

The software application, Scrivener, has been invaluable in helping me to keep track of the various plotlines in my stories. I highly recommend it. When I’m faced with two interwoven timelines, I typically write the entire past narrative before I write Jefferson Tayte’s character in the present. This helps to keep me in character and I can focus wholly on one part of the story at a time. I then look at how JT is going to unlock the key elements of the past narrative and I structure what’s going on in the present day around those links to the past. The elements of JT’s own, larger story are usually written into the appropriate places as I go. The key there is not to let them get in the way of the main story. The hard part really comes down to making the often complex mechanics of the story appear transparent to the reader so that the entire narrative as a whole makes sense and it easy to follow. I love it when I see reviews that describe my work as an ‘easy read’. The writing is usually far from easy, but if I’ve managed to make a reader feel it was an easy book to read, then I consider that I’ve done my job as a storyteller well.

Is JT going to make progress with tracing his own ancestry in the next book? Can you give us a teaser for the next JT novel?

Yes he is! I’ve plotted the book and I’ve started writing it. I hope to deliver the first draft to my publisher next summer. As for a teaser, all I’ll say at this point is that Jefferson Tayte is in for quite a shock.

JT’s professional expertise reflects your own in tracking family trees. It seems very sophisticated nowadays, so what tips do you have for readers who want to play sleuth to discover their own ancestors? 

JT faces many genealogical brick walls on his various assignments in my books, and each one has to be worked through to reach a solution that often seems impossible to find. Everyone working on their family history comes across these brick walls from time to time, and typically the answers are difficult to reach because we’re looking in all the tried and tested places, following our regular pattern of research, and sometimes you need a fresh approach. There’s usually more than one way to find what you’re looking for, however wild or unlikely it might seem. You don’t always have to climb that wall, sometimes you can find your way around it.

Do you sometimes feel the urge to abandon JT and write something different?

No, we’ve become good friends over the years, and I want to find our how his life turns out myself. I couldn’t abandon him part way through his own story. It’s a partnership, and he’s relying on me to help him find out who he is. When you create a series character, I think you owe it to that character, and of course to your readers, to see the story through.

What are you doing photography-wise at the moment? 

I recently took a backpack full of photographic equipment to the Dolomites and came back with some mountain photography I’m very pleased with. I’ve posted a blog about it with some of the images I particularly like here

Here are some other images I really like, which I’ve not shared before. 

I shoot with a Canon 5D mk3, and I like to take it into London with my 35mm f1.4L for street photography. I prefer to shoot candid images for street shots as I feel they best capture the realism, which for me is what street photography is all about.

I was walking past this lady, shooting from my hip as I passed so as not to draw attention to myself. Studying the image later on, I became very interested in her story. Her attire and the backpack she’s sitting on don’t appear typical of someone on the street. It makes me wonder about her story. It makes me want to know how this older lady wound up here. Judging from the number of roll-up cigarette ends on the ground in front of her she’s been sitting there a while.

With Coutts bank in the background, I like the juxtaposition it represents. 

I think wet pavements can add interest to a shot, and I like how the image of this man in the doorway turned out. Rainy days are great for shooting London street photography, and are well suited to black and white images.

For obvious reasons, I call this last image ‘The laughing cloud’. I was in Cornwall, having a coffee outside a hotel that overlooks the sea when I took it. It appeared for a moment and was gone again, but I had my camera with me and managed to get the shot.

Thanks, Steve! Your happy cloud looks more like a scared leopard to me but I like the street shots. All the best with the new book. Party time!

You can contact Steve via  his website  on twitter and on Google + 

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My Review of ‘The Lost Empress’

The genial logical detective returns in another page-turner

Fans of this bestselling series, like me, will find much to enjoy and even surprise them in the latest adventure of genealogical detective J.T. As always, it is the unfolding of the story set in the past that I like best. In this case, I discovered the prelude to WW1, with credible spies and a real-life shipwreck. More passengers died when the Empress of Ireland sank than in the Titanic disaster and yet most of us know nothing about it because war news overwhelmed all else. Who was it that pointed out how to bury bad news by timing its release? Caught up in these events is the subject of JT’s investigation, Alice. I found it easy to empathise with Alice and her dilemma as she struggles against threats to her family and pressure to betray her country.

The modern day antics, with murder and chases, are entertaining, well-structured to leave the past narative at cliff-hanger moments, and I believe in J.T. as a character. His sloppy shyness with women is endearing, as is his failure to discover his own family history (so far). It goes with the genre that there are twists and revelations and the reader has to be willing to accept some unlikely behaviour in the interest of plot entertainment. Given the complexity of the three-strand plot (past and present of ‘the case’, plus J.T.’s own life) I think Steve Robinson pulls it off well. 

Until three-quarters of the way through the book, I was completely gripped by Alice’s story; after that, the pace grew faster but the characterisation weaker, in my eyes. Of course, I still wanted to know what happened but I'm always going to prefer it when the writing reaches a higher level. Having said that, the sinking of the Empress is an emotional roller-dipper of a scene and I love the historical detail in the whole book. I trust Steve Robinson's portrayal of clothes, manners and machinery to set the scene. I now know what camera spy might have used in 1914 – fascinating!

Looking for your family history?

You'll also find really helpful advice in this book by author Karen Charlton on how she shook her family tree and a criminal fell out.

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