Open Door Multimedia

15/07/2021

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRRUFpmptlz/

28/02/2020

Shooting street portraits is a lot to do with energy. You see thousands of people and select just a few people to photograph. But sometimes the people select themselves by just........... being!

12/11/2019

Not a traditional image from a Remembrance Day shoot but

I have just started posting images to another social media site and one of the comments amused me......

"Extremely beautiful. This should be a wallpaper and must be admired by many millions of people all around the world".

Have you ever seen my wallpapering - maybe not then!

09/11/2019

There is a lot of luck in photography

Sometimes in photography as in life, you get lucky. Occasionally things just conspire to make life easy and give you a decent break. When it happens though and you analyse the situation you have (one has) played an active part in making the luck happen - you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket. I took some lovely photographs (featured) of this lady at Piccadilly Station in Manchester last week. It was difficult to go wrong really - she had a great look and a beautiful face.

I did get lucky in that I got into the right compartment of a train and by chance sat down within two rows of where she was sitting. But then planning and preparation kicked in because that day I was quite focused on taking photographs that could be included in my "Exclusively Berets" project. I had already taken some shots and come up with a format for how I want the end result to look.

Other elements of the plan included the trip to Manchester (lots of people and lots of stylish/arty types amongst them - especially in the Northern Quarter).

So I had thought things through and laid the foundations. But then luck had to play another part. For it to turn into an opportunity this lady had to get off at the same station as me, and she did. Yeah!

07/11/2019

The ups and downs of a photography project called "Exclusively berets"

A few days ago I had an excellent start, photographed two youngsters with 35mm film cameras (another project), a couple of ladies in berets and a few other random subjects including a young Australian woman (featured) getting off a train at Lime St. She told me she has been travelling the world for three years. Mind you - it was an across the Pennines train so most of that could have been used up between Scarborough and Liverpool.

Towards the end of the session I spotted another lady wearing a beret - smart, attractive - black beret. So I approached her and said "I am shooting a series of photographs of people wearing berets".

She smiled, gave me a look of absolute disbelief and walked on. Her expression told me that she had just heard the most preposterous sequence of words ever uttered in the English language. I could have told her I was a Hollywood film director and she was just perfect for my next movie and had the same reaction. When I had reflected briefly and re-established my composure I thought about running after her and in the best traditions of Blue Peter showing her some beret-related photographs I had made earlier. But in my heart I knew I had lost the moment.

You can't win 'em all.

12/08/2019

Joyous.....

These girls thought they were coming to Liverpool for a city break - a bit of sightseeing, some shopping, something to eat, a few cocktails (alcohol free for the young ones). But what they really came for was to get their portrait taken by me, on the streets of Liverpool - even though they had no idea it was going to happen and neither did I.

For it to work as it did we all had to arrive at the same place at exactly the right moment and they had to have been shopping at H & M - nice touch that! And all of it was totally unplanned well in advance with exquisite split second timing.

And the final piece of the jigsaw is that they all needed to be incredibly tall - as tall as a very tall building in fact - otherwise it wouldn't have worked at all.

The girls just didn't GET any of that planning, preparation, destiny's child stuff but what they did get and this is the really nice part....

When the opportunity to do something spontaneous, ridiculous, different and joyous presented itself they all took it and never stopped smiling from the beginning to the end!

What a lovely experience for us all.

And the feedback…....

“Ah Howard that is just fantastic. We luv it. Your work is brilliant. It was so lovely to meet you and we were honoured that you asked us to pose".

30/06/2018

I don’t drive a Hybrid but I am a Hybrid

Early start a few days ago at the Knowsley Chamber Flash Networking event

As usual it was really well attended and I had some excellent conversations and enjoyed the presentation on Hybrid cars by a couple of people from Toyota. You may not have come across it but Hybrid in the context of multimedia is a word that is used for people who offer both video and photography. This has been made easier over the last ? 8 years-ish because video cameras and stills equipment have moved closer together. You can now get excellent moving footage and photographs out of the same camera. That means that I can turn up for a filming job and shoot some stills images too and vice versa - great added value for clients who are sometimes surprised that one camera does both jobs nicely. But when I say one camera, I really mean two cameras but both exactly the same - still with me? I actually shoot stills on one camera and video footage on the other one. It helps to avoid confusion and allows me to be more flexible,mobile and quicker.

31/05/2018

Face - this is Harriet from Home Instead an outstanding social care provider in Ormskirk and Chorley. Who says so? - the Care Quality Commission. I did some filming for owner Robert Godson a couple of weeks ago and this morning was feedback time. Robert and his team were absolutely delighted with the footage content. It just needs a little bit of tidying up, some topping and tailing and it will be all good to go - no shortage of social media content for the foreseeable future. Harriet knocked it out of the park with one of her pieces - delightful, emotional, moving and a real credit to Home Instead, and herself of course. Watch this space when that film is released. I also took some photographs of some of the people who are supported. They were real characters and it showed in the images.

29/05/2018

The art of conversation - you don't need electrodes

From the mid sixties to 1980 my Nanna lived with us and on Tuesdays she would go into town for some shopping. At the end of her day she would leave her heavy bag at the shop under the Town Hall and I would pick it up after school. At tea time she would tell about the person she had talked to on the bus home. We were always shocked about how much she found out about people during a fifteen minute bus ride, though she was always quick to point out that she never asked them questions. Extracting that amount of information without the use of electrodes was pretty impressive. Now roll forward 40 years and the same thing is happening to me. In Liverpool a couple of weeks ago with the camera I had a chat with a middle aged bloke in very summery shorts, flowery T shirt and a baseball cap. He told me he lives in Brazil and by occupation he was a dancer. He went to Brazil because the Brazilians are natural dancers. Many years ago he worked with Pan's People who all UK men of a certain age will remember well. Staring at the TV screen every Thursday night for the duration of Top of the Pops was pretty significant for all of us at the time.

Nanna would have been proud of me - about the conversation, not the Pan's People thing.

27/05/2018

A question of arithmetic

If a client books me for half a day of filming (4 hours) and I need 1.5x that time for the edit and I charge £50 per hour.......

How much does it all cost?
How much will the VAT be?
When will the first draft be available?
When will the whole project be finished?

Answers

£500
Nowt
Couple of days*
4 days*

*As long as the client gets back to me quickly with feedback.

How much can we get done in half a day of filming? A lot.

So if you like those numbers call me on this number 07795 252797.

22/05/2018

Straight to DVD, straight to social media
I can't remember when it started but a few years I heard about feature films made for the cinema going straight to DVD. It was usually an indication that the film was not expected to do well at the box office. Something similar happened to me recently. For the first few years of Open Door Multimedia I used to make one film for a client - always destined for that company's or charity's website. Then about 18 - 24 months ago things evolved and I started producing suites of videos for clients - 5, 8, 12 and in one case 39 (that's another story). What was going on? - simple really - people were starting to use video in social media which in turn was getting more video friendly and receptive and hungry too. Then two weeks ago I worked with a client in the social care sector who for the first time in my experience said he wanted his filming project to "go straight to social media". His focus was going to be on FB though there would be plenty of potential to use the video assets on other platforms too. In one day of filming we produced 30 pieces that will convert into social media assets. And the interesting thing is that many of them would be equally at home on the company website. So maybe "straight to social media and back again".

21/05/2018

Talking about Dementia in Dementia Awareness Week

I have been working with West Lancashire Dementia Friendly Community for 2 - 3 months and we have produced 6 videos based on conversations with people affected by Dementia or providing support on either a paid or unpaid basis. The films will be released over the next six days to mark Dementia Awareness Week. The first one features a conversation with Mike who has been diagnosed with Dementia and his wife Doreen. Mike is active in his own community and a key member of the West Lancashire Dementia Friendly Community. Keep watching for a new film every day this week. This Linked In upload is a one minute introduction - to watch the full film, follow the instructions at the end. Awareness Week Lancashire Dementia Friendly Community

10/05/2018

Looking forward to filming tomorrow with Joe Sherville - Dementia Friends Champion. He will be describing his role and explaining how other people can make a contribution to making life a little bit easier for people with Dementia. Thanks to June Sears-Jones and Faye Cooper of Stocks Hall Nursing and Care Group for providing the filming venue at Mawdesley, near Ormskirk. We used it for filming a suite of films for West Lancashire Dementia Friendly Community so I know it looks fab

08/05/2018

This is Sophie Tickle - one of two talented actors who starred in "A Day in the life of a Bottlehand" which I filmed at Rainford Library a couple of months ago. This project was developed by the Friends of Cannington Shaw. The Friends are working hard to preserve the Cannington Shaw bottle plant (next to Tesco at Langtree Park in St Helens). In its day it was the biggest bottling plant in the world. For more information about the Friends contact Caroline Platt.

04/05/2018

Video for Social Media - times are changing

Up to around 18 months ago I would make just a single video for a client. Lots of really nice footage never actually saw the light of day which was quite a waste. More recently I have been producing suites of films for clients - 8, 10, 14 projects at a time. They are more often than not based on a similar amount of filming to the early years which is usually half a day or a full day. What happens is that I make the composite film and also make more specific (sometimes single message films) from what was once unused but high quality footage. My clients now get a much bigger video resource for only a small additional outlay. Then came a project earlier this week when for the first time the client said he wanted to focus on several separate resources/ assets for social media without going for a composite project. So lots of smaller, shorter, quicker, cost effective films that take very little time to put together were the order of the day. Did it work? It certainly did and we produced upwards of 30 (yes 30) pieces of footage - maybe even 40. They may never be built into one film but they will certainly come together to make a cohesive and impressive social media library that will just keep on giving. Interested? Ring me.

03/05/2018

Being authentic to your self

I follow a photographer called Sean Tucker on You Tube and recently watched him talking about making it as a freelance photographer. Sean’s view is that the vast majority just aren’t going to get there, especially by trying to copy the few successful ones. His best advice is to photograph what you enjoy, do what feels right for you, create your own art. In 1977 I was penniless and unemployed and walked into a meeting with a bank manager and asked for a loan to buy a camera which at today’s prices would cost around £3,000. The bank manager asked if I was going to use it to make money. I said “no” it was just for my own pleasure (pretty daft but I was a bit naive in those days). When I got the loan my mate gave me a lift to a camera shop in a van he had paid £8 for (he had been working for 5 years while I had been at school and college).
This week I had a meeting with a prospective client. He had asked to connect with me on Linked In and then suggested a meeting based on one photograph I had posted to Linked In! When I asked him which one he said it was this one - a shot I took purely for my own pleasure in Liverpool on Grand National day. After 40 years I am still shooting for pleasure but maybe Sean Tucker is onto something.

30/04/2018

The Decisive Moment

Henri Cartier Bresson is widely regarded as the greatest ever photographer. He produced a book - The Decisive Moment. Go back a couple of weeks to Grand National day in Liverpool. I walked out of Lime St. station and took a shot featuring a pro Brexit presentation (front), with horses from the Midland Bank billboard (back) and a group of young race goers in the middle. It was a mess - no structure in the young people. An hour later I took a shot of 3 random guys in a cafe window. I checked the shot in the back of the camera and when I looked up they had dragged a very pretty girl with a beautiful smile into the window - she was part of their group. So I took another couple of shots with her included. Three young guys looking a bit chaotic and the lovely girl in the middle of the frame. By chance in one of the shots there was a woman’s reflection in the window - laughing at my group as she walked by. Half a second earlier and she would not got there. Half a second later and she would have gone past. The gods of photography were smiling and I hit the decisive moment. When I got home and checked the shots, totally by chance I had stumbled across three guys and the pretty girl who were part of the group in front of Lime St. Spooky!

10/04/2018

Filming last week with Ben Coker of Ben Coker International

Ben had booked a room with a nice set of curtains, a clean white wall and a clean light grey wall so three backdrop options. Plus an on/ off switch for the noisy air con - oh joy of joys!

During the session Ben described me as "a hard task master" which I took as a compliment because to me it meant that I had high expectations of Ben and how he presented. People very often describe my approach as quiet and gentle and supportive and I am, but I have to balance that with the “hard taskmaster thing” because the post production process is anything but quiet and gentle and supportive. It highlights the small imperfections in delivery that we all make so the more I can do at the filming stage to avoid any blips the better.

I have known Ben for six years, he is confident in front of the camera and generally emotionally resilient so I could use comments like....... nah!, I need a bit more from you, I think you can do better than that, it needs more umph - not all at the same time of course. Those comments do make a difference and it was very obvious when we reviewed the footage. Take 1. pretty good, Take 3. much stronger. That made post production a quick, easy and uplifting experience.

07/04/2018

Videos about pamper parties for girls? Nah - sorry I don't do that.......

A lot of the films I make are talking head-style projects which feature professionals. The aim is usually to help the featured people to come across partly as well informed, competent professionals but probably more importantly as decent, approachable human beings whose services potential clients might be looking for.

But a couple of weeks ago I filmed a pampering and photography experience for Tony Longmore and his team at Oculus Studios in Warrington. 9 young girls - non alcoholic cocktails, make up, dressing up, dancing, karaoke, photo booth and photography. So not really the sort of thing I do but a great learning opportunity for a) following a brief, b) working out some really nice shots (and being totally honest stumbling on some great shots by accident), c) getting into a zone I am not used to and d) working at a crazy pace that was a real shock to the system.

The project was great fun to do and after a lie down in a darkened room for half an hour I was almost totally recovered.

So no more projects like that for me - until the next time.

If you are looking for a fab birthday treat for your daughter and her mates this comes highly recommended and it is excellent value for money too. What’s not to like?

04/04/2018

“Daring greatly” - a great quotation from Theodore Roosevelt

I picked up this great quotation when I was watching a You Tube video featuring a conversation between Chase Jarvis and his guest Dr. Brene Brown........ about her book “Daring Greatly”.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

03/04/2018

Two heritage projects in a fortnight

Going back to 2011/12 I made four heritage related films about - horse logging, hedge laying, Haaf netting for Salmon on the Solway and sheepdog handling and it was an area that I thought I might grow into. But with the exception of filming a conference about the Solway Wetlands in 2017 that was it, until a couple of weeks ago. However in the last fortnight I have shot two heritage projects. The first was for the Friends of Cannington Shaw which is St.Helens group with hopes to restore what was in the third quarter of the C19th the world's biggest bottle making factory. The second video is for Joe Kay who is hoping to open the Wigan IT Museum. He is fascinated with personal computing and its history which is compressed into about 40 years. I didn’t have a Sinclair ZX80 (featured) - one of Joe’s most treasured possessions or a ZX81 but I did have a Spectrum 48k before moving on to an Amstrad 1640 which cost about £750, had a 40 megabyte hard drive and frustratingly was DOA (dead on arrival). At that time there was no system for DOA at Amstrad. If I had said it worked for 10 minutes and then crashed it would have been OK, but DOA cost me several phone calls, 2 - 3 days and a huge amount of frustration.

31/03/2018

Talking about Dementia - a conversation with a Specialist Mental Health Pharmacist

This video features a conversation with John Donoghue - Specialist Mental Health Pharmacist - Medicines in Mental Health Ltd. John describes his role and training and talks in depth about the contribution that medicines can make in the treatment of the various forms of Dementia. This film will be of particular interest to health professionals working in the field of Dementia, people affected by Dementia and their families and friends. This is the first in a series of filmed conversations about Dementia which will be the basis for my “Talking about Dementia” project. Another 6 videos are at various stages of completion and will be released as soon as they are signed off. https://youtu.be/hJs0u_Ztu98

This video features a conversation with John Donoghue - Specialist Mental Health Pharmacist - Medicines in Mental Health Ltd. John describes his role and tra...

30/03/2018

"Talking about Dementia"
Thanks to Sue Read of Ashburton Prescribing for introducing me to John Donoghue, a specialist mental health pharmacist based in Liverpool. I did some filming with John last month and that project is now signed off. It is a 30 minute deep dive into his role and the contribution of medicines in the treatment of Dementia. The film describes available medicines, how they are used and the complexities that health professionals face. This particular project feels like a great training resource for health professionals and in an edited and more accessible form it will feature as part of my own personal project called "Talking about Dementia". The film will follow shortly.

29/03/2018

Two ladies paddling on a beach

Last week I met two ladies on the beach at Westward Ho - paddling in the middle of March - like you do! I asked if I could take their photographs and they said yes. Afterwards we had a little bit of a conversation and I found out they were chilling that day in advance of a family wedding the following day - one of their sons or daughters. I can’t remember which. If they had been scousers they would probably have been getting a spray tan the day before the wedding - paddling on the beach is so North Devon! Thirty six hours later there was heavy snow in Devon and on the local news there was a story about some newly weds who had got stranded in the snow on their wedding night - Doh! Anyway I had given the ladies my contact details and told them I would let them have copies of the shots if they emailed me. Remarkably they did - I say remarkably because hardly anyone ever does. In the email traffic between us I mentioned the newly weds in the snow and I said I had been thinking how amazing it would be if the “snowly weds” were from the wedding that the two ladies were involved in. To my enormous disappointment they weren’t - Bummer!. It should have been an amazing and statistically impossible coincidence, but it wasn’t. Damn!

28/03/2018

We are all hard-wired to negative thoughts - programmed over tens of thousands of years to help us survive

There is a photographer called Sean Tucker (www.seantucker.com) who I follow on You Tube. I like his photography and I really enjoy his approach to life. His regular videos combine creativity, psychology, philosophy and spirituality. In a film I watched recently he was talking about “protecting the highlights” in his photographs. Without getting too technical he talks about featuring the lighter parts of photographs and if that means leaving big sections of the picture in near total darkness that is OK. But then he goes on with an analogy about life and being a creative and how easy it is to get isolated when he is working on a long edit at home - alone. With that isolation come dark thoughts. I am sure a lot of home/ lone workers experience the same kind of thing. He links those dark thoughts to the human condition and survival. In times gone by it was the negative thoughts that protected us from being attacked and eaten by wild animals. They are hard-wired in our brains. But he then goes on to talk about how to protect yourself. Every time you have a positive thought - hang on to it for at least 10 seconds. It’s not as easy as you might think.

27/03/2018

The long and the short of it

Working with some beautiful young things in marketing and social media last year I was asked to drop the length of a couple of promo. videos for a national charity to under a minute if possible - I did it (almost) and the videos worked really well. But recently I have been developing a personal project called “Talking about Dementia” and because the videos are about “Talking” they are much longer. Let me throw some running times at you - 6 mins. 10 secs, 6:26, 13:10, 13:21, 16:03, 19:52 and 31:16 - in this situation, quick is not where I am going. Why? - because they are all about story telling and information giving via storytelling. One film features a man who has been diagnosed with Dementia and his wife Doreen in conversation. The illness has had an impact on their lives but Mike is currently “living well with Dementia” and is keen to share his experiences to help other people. I am currently working with the support of the West Lancashire Dementia Friendly Community and when these videos are signed off they will be publicly available to help people affected by Dementia and their families on their journey. Photo - Mike, Doreen, Amanda Boult (Alzheimers Society), June Sears-Jones (Stocks Hall Nursing and Care Group).

25/03/2018

Working on a film project for the Friends of Cannington Shaw in St.Helens. Their goal is to restore a former C19th bottle making factory in the town. In its day it was the biggest bottle making unit in the world. I filmed a performance of a play called "A day in the life of a bottlehand" at Rainford Library last week. It's always good to get some shots of the talent. There were two actors in the play and here is the first one........

22/03/2018

Developing a pricing structure - Part 1.

So how do you do it? You get an enquiry about some filming and the people are totally new to it all. They have only the thinnest of notions of how it all works. Some of them are also suspicious of my financial motivations - no surprise if they don't know me.... - there is a lot of people out there who are happy to take your money especially in the dark arts of SEO, PPC and media stuff. When I ask for their own thoughts they often struggle to articulate them. But even within all those uncertainties and anxieties about going in front of the camera the enquirer still desires and needs some assurances and certainties from me. And the biggest need is a price which will not change as the process moves forward. How long is a piece of string and how much does a yard of it cost? Welcome to my life......

In reality it is not as difficult as it might seem. No mortgage, no kids in education and a bit of a pension means I have some financial flexibility to work on projects that interest me and if I under price a project (I usually do) I ain't gonna starve or get evicted. And besides I love what I do so getting paid a bit under my usual stated hourly rate isn’t a personal and professional crisis. Watch out for Part 2 soon.

15/03/2018

Talking about Dementia”

I have been bringing together a video based project on Dementia. As things have developed the project has moved in the direction of “Talking about Dementia”. That is my new working title - it feels comfortable so I will probably stick with it. The project will be based on filming conversations with people affected by or involved in Dementia - so people who have been diagnosed with the condition and their families and friends. But the films will also feature and be of interest to health and social care professionals and the national support structure that is available via the wider NHS and the charitable and independent sector. It has taken a while to get things moving but a couple of days ago we really took a big step forward. It was great to be involved with West Lancs. Dementia Friendly Community for a mammoth filming session that featured a man who has been diagnosed with Dementia and his wife, another family carer, a manager from a retirement community, the Alzheimers Society and Age UK. And a big thanks to June and Faye for hosting the shoot at Stocks Hall Nursing and Care Group's facility at Mawdesley. It is beautiful and a great place for filming. Pic June Sears-Jones (SHNCG), Amanda Boult (WLDFC) and Faye Cooper (SHNCG).