I came across John’s work on the Times website. He’s not only a photographer but a mountaineer, lecturer, writer and film maker with over 45 years of experience. I wanted to talk with such an experienced photographer about his career and his take on the stock photography industry today. Here’s the interview:

How would you describe your photographic vision? What kind of look/atmosphere/feel do you try and create in your photos?

Photography is about ” Feeling with your Eyes ” in all senses of those words.

When did you start taking photos? What made you decide to become a photographer?

As a youngster I won many drawing prizes and as a teenager I became a keen and quite competent painter. Then the Army claimed me straight from school ( National Service was a great experience besides being a useful opportunity to grow up and learn to shoulder responsibility) A fellow officer in my regiment was art-school trained and before the Army caught up with him had worked as art director at an advertising agency.

He admired my paintings and suggested I should go to art-school to either develop my potential or get it out of my system. In Germany I’d bought a decent camera to record my travels - such things were unobtainable in Britain at the time - thus I was conversant with photography in a snap-shot, very-amateur sense.

While on a few days home leave I happened to be killing time in Guildford and I wandered into the Town Hall to see an exhibition of photographs, the work of third-year students at Guildford School of Photography. Of course they were all B/W in those days. I was amazed. I’d never seen large exhibition prints before, let alone of such intriguing and esoteric subjects. Most painters, I believed, starved in garrets but it dawned on me that photography could be a proper and obviously artistically fulfilling profession. Eureka.

I obtained a prospectus which I found extremely inspiring and during my final months in uniform I corresponded with the professor, the late, great Ifor Thomas. When finally I went for interview he seemed more impressed by my handwriting than my paintings and my snaps and assured me that it suggested promising potential.

Thus I studied photography for three years at Guildford and the rest, as they say, is history. To my lingering regret I’ve not since found the time even to lift a paint brush.

You’ve worked not only as a photographer but as writer, film-maker, mountaineer and lecturer. How did you get involved in so many creative and adventurous activities?

I started rock-climbing and mountaineering when I was 13, it’s a captivating and completely absorbing game, a way of life really. As a kid, ball games had seemed boring and pointless; tree-climbing and exploring the countryside were much more exciting. As a teenager I would carry a sketch book and sometimes even my watercolour kit over the mountains - always inspiring subjects particularly once we had started to climb in Scotland and the Hebrides.

Mountaineers have always felt a great imperative to communicate to others their experiences and the wondrous things they see, thus it’s natural to do so in words – both spoken and on paper - as well as with images. ( incidentally mountaineering has the largest literature of any so-called ‘sport’ ) Indeed, the three media are complementary and a properly rounded photographer should be adept in them all. It helps to be able to write one’s own books and talk around one’s pictures!

OK, so I was involved in mountaineering and adventure before I ever became a photographer. And since then I’ve been seriously involved in ski-mountaineering and to a lesser extent, in caving, canoeing and river-running, sailing and desert travel.

There’s quite a lively international lecture circuit on such subjects and once my pictures had got around I found invitations to lecture were appearing. Over the years I’ve spoken all over Britain and completed several lecture tours in the States and Canada and in Australia, New Zealand and East Africa. I enjoy lecturing and meeting interesting and interested people although single, distant engagements can be frustrating while concentrated tours can be physically grueling.

As for film, again it’s a natural outlet for any visually-trained person although it is a very different medium. At college I did a third-year course in film which gave me a working knowledge of the techniques. Later I formed a professional partnership with two photographer colleagues and among other activities we made short sales films on request for several of the businesses for whom we worked. When the BBC started making live TV broadcasts of climbing I was in the right place at the right time and I became part of the so-called TV ‘Climbing Circus’.

This led to many epics, including the first TV broadcasts from the summit of the Matterhorn in 1965 and from the Old Man of Hoy in 1967. Television led back to film; the film union was an awful outfit – a strictly closed shop - but despite me being on principle strictly non-union, union crews had to work with me because in those days there were no film cameramen who could climb seriously.

Although film was only a lucrative sideline, there was plenty of freelance film work, both for the BBC - who cared only about talent, not unions – for ITV and for various independent companies, for whom I was often directing appropriate sequences as well as shooting. I ended up scripting, directing and shooting several TV commercials, and eventually shooting the climbing sequences for Clint Eastwood in Eiger Sanction. But I never felt really happy with film, there were too many other people involved and everyone wanted to put their finger in to stir the pie. As a still photographer I’m entirely my own master – take it or leave it.

You’ve travelled a lot. What are your favourite places?

Patagonia is superb. Southern Chile has a climate and an atmosphere not unlike Scotland – lakes, fjords and mountains – but the mountains are unsubtle by comparison, so much more spectacular yet on a still reasonable scale, not even as high as the Alps. But the light has that special quality that you find only in the far north and the far south.

I have a long-standing love affair with Nepal. I’ve done 17 expeditions there over 40 years and seen it change – for the worst – from a secluded and tranquil little kingdom inhabited by content and charming people to a fashionable tourist destination complete with all that that entails and where money talks. But there are still remote areas and happy people undiscovered by the trekking companies.

Name three photographers you like and why.

Vittorio Sella, the great pioneering Italian mountain photographer. In 1882 he shot the first panorama from the summit of the Matterhorn using 12 wet plates and a tented darkroom actually on the summit. He had a superb eye and he used tiny figures to good effect. He worked in the Caucasus and circumnavigated Kangchenjunga with Freshfield in 1899.

With the Duke of the Abruzzi he photographed three expeditions to Alaska and in 1906 explored the Ruwenzori – the fabled Mountain of the Moon. He was also with Abruzzi when he attempted K2 in 1909 and his Karakorum panoramas are especially spectacular. While hardly modern in concept, Sella’s images are still as good as any and they were made with such primitive equipment. They were men in those days.

Bradford Washburn, an American, was born in 1910 and died earlier this year. I knew ‘Brad’, a charming man free with his advice, he was the doyen of aerial photographers although primarily a professional cartographer.

He had an exceedingly fine eye and typically working with large format aerial cameras, the results, originally conceived for purely functional purposes, became works of art. His best images, to my mind, are those of the detail of large, snowy mountains in Alaska, the Alps and elsewhere, the most memorable including tiny figures to give scale.

Adrian Warren is neither a mountaineer nor especially well-known but his landscape photography from the air is the best yet. He lives on the Somerset Levels, flies his own plane and publishes his own beautiful books under the Last Refuge imprint. The sole attraction of most aerial photographs is that they are familiar subjects but seen from a novel viewpoint.

Adrian’s pictures however are a photographer’s rather than an airman’s images; he uses the light and the weather, he stalks his landscapes, his angles are typically oblique and always subtle and he selects them with infinite care. He really feels with his eyes. And he’s a dab hand at wildlife too.

Master both subjects – both the photography and the adventure or certainly the field in which you wish to specialise. A lot of people travel, enjoy adventures and successfully sell their photographs although precious few of them can shoot great pictures. Undertake other photographic work even if it seems mundane – even pack shots - but you’ll be going through the motions and the lessons learnt and techniques developed will prove invaluable.

Make your pictures different from the rest, publish, get your credit around and get noticed – even in a different field. You’ll certainly need both perseverance and the luck of being in the right place at the right time. Many are called but few are chosen.

Did you sell your work through other stock libraries before starting your own? At what point did you decided that you wanted to run your own stock library? What were the main reasons for your decision?

No, if a few stock libraries did exist I wasn’t really aware of them. There were several press agencies in London such as Camera Press who did ask to handle some of my pictures with some success. The stock photography scene then was very different from what it is today.

I’d been a member of the 1971 International Expedition attempting the South Face of Everest and the expedition’s unofficial photographer and the BBC and the Sunday Times were among our sponsors. My exposed film was flown home every week and after the expedition I was invited to lunch by the Head of Stills at the Beeb.

“What do you do with the out-takes from your regular work?” he asked.

“They sit in yellow boxes in a drawer” I replied.

“Why don’t you start a Picture Library?” he said.

“What exactly is a Picture Library?” I responded.

“We’re just starting one” he said ” come and see how it’s done.”

What obstacles and difficulties did you face when you started your own stock library? How did you overcome them? How did you market your business and establish a reputation in the early days?

The Beeb, bless ‘em, gave me a hundred hanging files and lent me a librarian for a week to get me set up. I had little idea of methods, practices or picture library etiquette which were in any case, still evolving at the time. So I learnt by trial and error and was seriously ripped off several times. Only when I eventually joined BAPLA did I master the business of running a specialised stock library.

My library was always an adjunct to my commissioned work. I’ve never done any aggressive marketing; my credits, my books, my lectures and word-of-mouth have kept me busy. The mountaineering and outdoors world is quite small and I was well known within it. Gradually the picture researchers and the picture editors in the mainstream media got to hear of me, BAPLA membership was invaluable and I was listed in all the right directories. For many years I was the only fish in a very small pond.

How do you market your work now? How important is your website to your marketing strategy?

I don’t think photographers ever retire but I’ve draw in my horns a little. I’m too old now to wish to expand my library and make further investment but it ticks over quite comfortably. No longer do I employ an assistant and there’s a limit to how much work I can handle on my own. I’m involved with Digital Railroad and in a minor way, with Alamy. Nevertheless I get picture requests from all over the world and I have a constant stream of interesting book commissions.

I have a simple website which apparently cuts ice and which seems to encourage contacts. I ought to update and enlarge it but all these extra activities take time and I work 12 hour days as it is.

What changes have you seen in the stock photo industry since you have been working as a photographer? Where do you think the industry will be in five or ten years time?

The stock industry today bears little resemblance to that of even ten years ago. For many years I sat on the BAPLA Executive where I was able to speak particularly for the small specialist libraries who form, or formed, a large proportion of the membership. Thus I enjoyed a wide overview of the entire picture business.

It was a small, extremely friendly industry and most BAPLA members would advise and assist any other despite being, in theory, in competition.

Digitalization and the advent of, at first, royalty free stock and then the huge, international players with their searchable on-line systems – Getty and Corbis particularly come to mind – changed all that.

Perhaps this is progress but yes, I do have a gripe. Images have now become just another commodity. Prices are depressed, bulk deals are done with the most lucrative clients and many small specialists, though well able to compete on quality but not on price, have gone to the wall. My own library turnover was slashed over 50% in two years.

All too frequently today I find the incorrect pictures are supplied or are published indiscriminately. For instance I monitor the print and TV media for illustrations of Mount Everest – I like to note their source because at one time I was the only supplier.

Some 30% of the pictures that I see that are captioned as Mount Everest are actually of a different mountain. Important pictures, even in the travel sections of the quality broadsheets, are all too often not what the captions claim them to be. And of course they’re supplied by the large, searchable on-line operators. Other small specialists, experts in their field, all tell such horror stories. It seems that truth and accuracy are no longer important in the picture business.

What advice would you give someone just starting out in stock photography now?

Be an acknowledged expert on a very definite specialisation, then strike up a good working relationship with a successful library which is know for your kind of subject. If you pictures are good and you’re an authority they should jump at the chance of selling your work.

What advice would you give someone who wants to run their own stock library now? I’m sure that while advances in digital photography and the internet make some aspects of the business much easier, they also lower the barriers for entry. What are the keys to success in this environment?

Don’t. But if you do, the above strictures would still apply. Join BAPLA and certainly until you’re well established and successful, don’t rely solely on the library income. Few specialists have ever lived by selling only their specialist images – really specialist markets are not usually big enough.

For instance my library has earned more income from selling, say, landform and geographical illustration than from mountaineering images for which the demand is comparatively small. Do your best to dominate your specific subject. Don’t lower your standards or your prices.

Finally – anything else you’d like to add?

Freelance photography is a very hard and much over-subscribed profession. Essentially it’s a business and you must treat it as such. Often it’s about who you know rather than what you know – there are many second rate photographers armed with first rate business acumen making good money while many talented ones with no business sense are stacking shelves in Tesco.

Don’t go into it unless you’re really committed and unless you have a good natural eye, which you’re either born with or you’re not. The camera is merely a tool, it’s the eye behind it that makes the picture. And finally a photograph may be worth a thousand words but with the right caption it may be worth two thousand.

John Cleare’s website: http://www.mountaincamera.com/

Ribblesdale, Yorkshire

Slimmer’s Chimney

 

 

 

Tsena Refien

Grand Cathedral

Great Wall

Severn Bridge Construction

Himalaya

All photos copyright © John Cleare. Please ask the photographer for permission to use in any way.

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