Lucy Hamilton Lead Reporter & Interviewer @BlankCanvasmag London Team.

Lucy Hamilton
Lead Reporter & Interviewer @BlankCanvasmag London Team.

Tim Everett has always loved photography here he tells me all about his upcoming exhibition and what he thinks it takes to get a great photo.

https://www.islingtonartsfactory.org/whats-on-at-iaf.html
https://www.facebook.com/Timsimages/?pnref=lhc

There are a lot of so called ‘street photographers’ around nowadays, but what does it really take to get a photo that people actually want to look at? According to Tim it has to be something out of the ordinary. “I try to look for something unusual, something that catches your eye. If I see characters that stand out from the crowd, they attract my attention. I saw a girl on Brick Lane and she had hair like Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons. She’s stood holding a cup of coffee with a painting of a face behind her. She had real bright red lipstick, what struck me was the colour. I like the contrast of her and the mural behind her.”

But, unfortunately not everyone wants their photo taken. “I vary my tactics, sometimes I just take the shot and move on but sometimes I engage with them. I sort of break the situation, and I started talking to this girl. She was happy about me taking a photo, you have to be careful some people, they seem a bit paranoid about it. I just make a joke and ask if they’re wanted by the police.”

Even though Tim has always been interested in photography, it wasn’t until he was thirty that he really caught the bug. “I started a BTEC at the local college and the more I learnt about it the more interested I became. The tutor was absolutely useless I stuck it out for about a year. It was actually having a negative effect on my photography. I think you have to photograph what you want to photograph, they were giving us all these different assignments to do which is all very well, but as I say he wasn’t a good teacher. So I thought sod this I’m just gonna go and teach myself.”
So, was it just through experimenting and trial and error that you learnt yourself?

“Yeah well first of all you have to master it technically, there’s a lot to it. But having said that as long as you know how to get the best out of your equipment, that’s all you need to know. After that it’s all about being creative to get good shots.”

After putting together a collection of 45 of his best street shots Tim approached Brick Lane gallery. “This was late on in the year about November and they said in the New Year they had a show coming up, I left them my card with all my details and they got back in touch more or less straight away. They said we love your work we want you in here, but they wanted over ￡600 and I thought for a collaborative show it was a bit too much. So I had to give it a pass, they were really disappointed but they gave me an open invitation to exhibit with them which was good.”

Determined to exhibit to a wider audience, he kept looking for places to show his work. A friend told Tim about a gallery in Islington that were looking for people to exhibit their work. With London being his preferred location to display his photographs it couldn’t have been a better opportunity. “I contacted them with my proposal and they said they’d love to have me exhibit with them. It was a lot cheaper than the other place so I arranged to meet and went and drew it up.”

But it’s not always Tim who makes the first move when it comes to people interested in his work. “I had a gallery in New York email me saying that they’d seen my work online and they were interested in trying to sell it for me. This was about my landscape stuff, street photography is my favourite but I also do other stuff. I thought it could be a wind up so, I googled the name, it’s called Agora in the Chelsea district, and it was all genuine. I’ve been to New York a few times, I have some friends and relatives there. But, I can’t afford to go there anytime I want. So, the only way I could’ve done it would be by emailing them a full size JPEG, and I didn’t want to do that because that’s like giving away your copyright. I wouldn’t know how many they were printing or selling so I gave that a pass.”

You’ve taken so many good photos, what’s been your favourite thing to photograph?

“When I took a photo of a guy in Leeds and he had a massive beard and he was carrying a woman’s red handbag and had this real dandy walking stick. He looks really cool and you think that stands out, I don’t know you just know when you’ve got a real good shot and it makes you feel good. I feel a bit like a hunter, you’re going out hunting for good shots. I’ve had some really good landscapes, I’m not so keen on landscapes because I think it’s pretty easy to do. If you’re in a real nice beautiful landscape you’d have to be a real rubbish photographer not to get a good picture, you know what I mean? I don’t find it all that challenging.”

Tim’s exhibition ‘Street Life’ is on at the Islington Arts Factory until the 27 of May, so make sure you go and check it out.@Blankcanvasmag 2016

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