Slices of Time Episode 017: Tom Pitts

Posted on by Frederic Paulussen

Welcome to the Slices of Time Street Photography podcast. Today, I’m joined by Tom Pitts, a street photographer from Cheltenham in the UK. He is excellent at spotting the right moments and capturing them. A photo of his won the Dublin Street Photography festival recently, which kind of proves my point about his skill in capturing great slices of time.

Follow Tom Pitts:

Listen to the episodes on:

You can follow me on several social media for updates about the episodes:

Timestamps of this episode with Tom Pitts

00:00 Introduction to Street Photography and Tom Pitts

03:00 Journey into Street and Documentary Photography

06:03 Influences and Inspirations in Photography

09:01 The Role of Photo Books in Artistic Development

12:02 Winning the Dublin Street Photography Festival

14:49 The Impact of Martin Parr on Tom’s Work

18:00 Approaching Street Photography with Confidence

20:56 Building a Community in Street Photography

29:03 Exploring Cheltenham Races: A Unique Subject for Photography

34:15 The Intersection of Street and Documentary Photography

42:22 Capturing Intimacy: The Art of Proximity in Photography

50:16 Evolving as a Photographer: Learning Through Experience and Workshops

01:00:44 Conclusion: The Journey of Growth in Photography

Photographers, resources, and gear mentioned in this episode:

Thank you for listening to this conversation with Tom. Don’t forget to subscribe to be updated about upcoming episodes. Reach out via social media if you want to share any questions or ideas.

Don’t miss any episode by subscribing to the podcast on Spotify!

Podcast Transcript

Frederic Paulussen (00:01)
So, welcome to the Slice of Time Street Photography Podcast. It’s the ⁓ 17th episode already, so I’m very happy with that. Today I’m joined by Tom Pitts, a street photographer from Cheltenham in the UK. I hope I pronounced Cheltenham in the UK.

Tom (00:17)
Yeah, it’s pretty good.

Frederic Paulussen (00:19)
A photographer who is excellent at spotting the right moments and capturing them and to prove that point a photo of his recently won the Dublin Street photography festival so that’s kind of like proving the point that he’s at least very good at if not great at capturing these moments. So hey Tom could you introduce yourself for a second?

Tom (00:41)
Yeah, well, thanks a lot for inviting me on. ⁓ So I’m Tom Pitts the, I suppose, street and documentary photographer from Cheltenham in the UK. I’ve been kind of taking street-based pictures probably the last three years, I’d say. And before then, I’ve gone into photography more from travel, because I lived overseas for a long time. ⁓

for about 15 years as well as living outside the UK. So I got into photography and travel and then over the last few years I’ve gone deep into kind of street and documentary based work. So that’s kind of what I’ve been focusing on. that’s, yeah, that’s me.

Frederic Paulussen (01:24)
Yeah, that’s very nice. I find often that travel is like a good spot for photographers to start. so what got you into documentary industry photography? It’s similar genres, but also different, but yeah, we can get into it.

Tom (01:31)
for sure yeah.

Yeah, so I suppose I

started out because I was living in the Middle East for a long time and that’s why I’m kind of, when you get to know me, I’m quite an international family. So I have an Australian wife who’s from Italian background. We met in Dubai like in 2007 and then we ended up staying a long time in the Middle East and we only moved back to the UK in 2020. initially picked up

camera just to more document traveling to places. So we’re going to a lot of interesting places like Japan and Nepal and places like that just the two of us traveling. And so I wanted to be able to record what I was seeing and so first picture of a digital SLR doing stuff like that like an old Nikon, I think D810 or 50. So I was doing that for a while but it was only because in the Middle East they got very strict privacy laws. You can’t really take street photos in there so

Frederic Paulussen (02:33)
Okay. ⁓

Tom (02:34)
So if you take a picture of someone on the street and they report you to the police, you could get arrested for taking someone’s image in the Middle East. So you tend to find people take pictures of things there or architecture or landscape or stuff like that. You don’t get really street documentary based work in the Middle East particularly. So when I moved back to the UK, just in time for the COVID pandemic, I moved back, yeah, yeah, in 2020.

Frederic Paulussen (03:00)
Great timing, yeah.

Tom (03:04)
That ended but during the co-pandemic that’s when I started really finding stuff on YouTube and other platforms where I was like, oh, okay, there’s different styles of photography that I wasn’t really fully aware of. Up until then it was more like Steve McCurry or National Geographic type stuff. yeah, so after the pandemic ended, I bought myself a Fuji X-Pro3 and away I went from there at the time. So that’s kind of when I went into it.

Frederic Paulussen (03:21)
Yeah.

Tom (03:33)
Yeah, it’s a interesting place to go into because it’s so spontaneous, I suppose, compared to other things. You never know what you’re to get. So London was a nice place to start with. then I now live in what’s a relatively small town in the UK. It’s only about 100,000 people who live in the town I’m in. And we’re a couple of hours from London. But interestingly, one of the things I’ve found is you don’t necessarily have to go to someone like London to take…

Frederic Paulussen (03:52)
Okay, yeah.

Tom (04:01)
interesting pictures you can do it kind of anywhere and it took me a while to get to that level of understanding around it but that’s kind of where I’ve got to today so yeah so really only the last three years or so has been like kind of proper street and documentary based stuff for sure.

Frederic Paulussen (04:18)
Okay cool. did you like, was it because you mentioned those privacy laws so you already were like into street photography more or less at that point but couldn’t practice it or was it…

Tom (04:29)
Yeah, I don’t

think I’d really discovered it to be honest. was because, and this is one of those things where I think I was still in the Middle East, I wasn’t even really using Instagram much at the time or anything or, so I was aware of some work like, you know, a Martin Parr for example in the UK or, you know, a Matt Stuart know, some very big names, that the scene around street photography or, you know, like people who you’d be aware of if you’re into street photography.

Frederic Paulussen (04:45)
Yeah.

Tom (04:57)
I just wasn’t aware of any of it really. It was only over the last three years that I’ve kind of discovered the world, if you like, of street and documentary photography. And subsequently I’ve built my library of photo books and stuff behind me and gone really deep into the collecting and stuff like that. But yeah, it’s only really been last three years or so. I haven’t had any influences through family or other things to kind of push me in that direction. It’s, I suppose, my creative outlet outside work.

Frederic Paulussen (05:04)
Yeah.

Tom (05:26)
I work for big engineering company, so it’s nice to have something that’s a genuine creative activity outside of like what’s a fairly kind of regimented job, if you like, in terms of what I do day to day. Yeah.

Frederic Paulussen (05:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, I can imagine. Though

I find photography is like the sweet spot between creativity and technicality, find. But yeah, it’s… So you mentioned the books and is it like… ⁓ Because I…

also a collector kind more or less like you i’m not I can’t exit a bookshop or like a museum bookshop without ⁓ buying anything is there like a specific school of photography or or genre or or artist specifically

Tom (06:03)
Yeah.

⁓ So

it’s, I could spend the whole podcast just talking about photo books I think. So in terms of some of my favourites, so Alex Webb for sure is a favourite of mine. So I’ve got a number of his books like Under a Grudging Sun and some of the actual individual ones rather than The Suffering of Light, which is the kind of monograph.

Frederic Paulussen (06:12)
That’s fine. I don’t mind at all.

Tom (06:36)
This stuff like that where there’s things like Gilles Peress who did Telex Iran which is amazing. So he’s a magnum photographer but he took pictures during the Iranian Revolution and was smuggling the film out and things like that to be able to do it. It’s an incredible book. It’s not easy to get hold of now but it’s a really good one. Constantine Manos who died recently. His American Colours 1 and 2, they’re both really, really outstanding.

But then you’ve got other things like there’s a guy called Chris Killip who might not be that familiar to your listeners, but he’s a contemporary of Martin Parr in the UK and he did a lot of documentary based black and white work and he’d use a large format camera. But he would like live in a community for a year and really get himself into the life of that place and take it and he captured a period of time that doesn’t exist anymore. things like the

the big shipbuilding cities in the north east in the UK when they used to do a lot of heavy industry and they don’t do any of that anymore, the coal mining industry that doesn’t exist anymore and the strikes that happened in the 1970s and 80s. So there’s a really interesting documentary work that he does. There’s still wide angle, like layers compositionally, but really trying to capture moments and stuff as well. I mean, yeah, that’s to name a few, but the

Yeah, I really enjoy it. I use it as my main source of inspiration other than say Instagram. I think it’s too easy on Instagram to become a pastiche of other people’s work that you find interesting. So for inspiration purposes, I tend to always prefer to buy a book or something like that. And then you can learn from people who genuinely are masters in the space to do it. I find that much more, I don’t know.

Frederic Paulussen (08:22)
Yeah.

Tom (08:26)
interesting and thought provoking than perhaps just scrolling down the feed and Instagram where every other thing is an advert these days. it’s so yeah.

Frederic Paulussen (08:32)
True.

Yeah, I also think like Instagram is good for like one-offs. I mean, you can post like multiple photos in one, but I mean like in a book you have like a deep dive into an entire work of a photographer or in a specific subject which kind of enhances the photos I think. I think it’s more interesting to use books for inspiration than

Tom (08:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Frederic Paulussen (09:01)
single

photos. So I noticed that most of the books you mentioned I think were in black and white but I don’t see any of your work in black and white I think.

Tom (09:11)
No,

some of them, mean Alex Webb is very like color based as a photographer. Constantine Manos is also known for his color work as well. Gilles Peress Telex Iran is Black and White from the time and Chris Killip as well as Black and White. But then you’ve got things like Martin Parr, The Last Resort, which is a great book, is kind of classic from New Brighton. But yeah, I it’s…

Frederic Paulussen (09:15)
Yeah.

Okay.

Tom (09:37)
Yeah, it’s a real rabbit hole. mean, everything from like Jeff Mermelstein Sidewalk, I’ve got over there. There’s like loads of books like that. It’s really interesting because street photography is such a broad church. I don’t kind of limit myself to just, only like X, for example, as an area. If it’s good work, it’s good work. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s strong color-based or documentary-based or anything else. If it’s interesting, then…

Yeah, I’ll pick it up. it’s, yeah, I’d say I predominantly shoot in color, like you say. I’ve experimented a little bit in black and white, but I’m not a monochrome based shooter. I don’t really see the world like that. I see it more as a color wheel than, you know, high contrast black and white type of shadows.

Frederic Paulussen (10:07)
Yeah.

I had it this week because it was really bad weather and it just worked better for the place I was in but usually I’m also more color-based yeah but sometimes black and white just slips in for a second and then ⁓ while I’m editing I was annoyed like why is this all black and white but yeah so it’s familiar so you mentioned Martin Parr and I know you met him I think there’s a photo of you too so you definitely met him

Tom (10:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, he was the lead

judge at the Dublin Street Photography Festival, I mean, just a shout out to Paul and Des, who run that festival. They’ve done a fantastic job. It’s only their second year of running it, and the level of organisation and people involved in the festival is fantastic. Sometimes you see the festivals, you don’t really…

understand where the money’s gone perhaps for the photo competition. You know, they’re charging X amount for the photos. But for this one, they had, you know, a bunch of different talks and people, they had organized walks that you could go on that was done through it. They had a really good exhibition that was on as well. The prizes were good. You know, the judging panel was extremely strong. had Martin Parr as the lead judge. Melissa O’Shaughnessy was there as well from New York and Rammy Narula who

Frederic Paulussen (11:16)
Yeah.

Tom (11:42)
It’s based in, I think it’s based in Thailand. He did a really good, he did a book called Platform 10, which is just focused on one platform, a railway station in, I think it’s in Bangkok, an amazing piece of work, but they were all exhibiting there as well. But that’s one of the things that maybe even entered the competition was who the judging panel was and what it was about. So it was amazing really.

Frederic Paulussen (12:02)
Yeah.

Tom (12:08)
They had thousands of entries into the competition and then they may have come to a short list and then given it to the judging panel. But to have Martin Parr pick Your Image is the winner is amazing. I don’t think it’s a hyperbole, but Martin’s probably the greatest living UK photographer. He’s a member of Magnum for 20, 30 years.

Frederic Paulussen (12:30)
I think that’s a safe bet to say, ⁓

Yeah, definitely.

Tom (12:32)
He’s done, you

know, how many hundreds of photo books, et cetera. So to even have him AC your work and then B, picking out amongst all of them is pretty amazing. So that was the biggest thing for me. The nicest thing actually was I had my family with me. So I’ve got a six year old daughter and a four year old son and my wife was there. They got to see me get the award as well, which is really nice because my daughter has just started showing an interest in photography as well. So it was really nice for.

Frederic Paulussen (13:00)
nice okay, huh?

Tom (13:01)
her to see it and see that you can do something with that as well. So that was really nice. That was what made it. But yeah, incredible meeting Martin and having him look and judge your work was really cool.

Frederic Paulussen (13:13)
Yeah.

because I saw the photo of you two together and of course the photo that won which is a… I think like… Wow, I’m falling over my words. You already were on my list to contact for the podcast but I saw… I didn’t know you won the contest with the photo but I just saw the photo, ⁓ passed me by on Instagram and was like…

this is amazing. need to get back to him. And then I found that you’re already on my list. So I made work of actually contacting you. And then I saw that you actually won a contest with it. But also when I dove a bit deeper, when you agreed to this conversation, I started to do like a deep dive research in your work. I noticed that there’s like in color and in subject kind of similarity between you and Martin Parr. So in a way it wasn’t too…

Tom (13:47)
Okay.

Frederic Paulussen (14:08)
surprising to me that he picked your photo of course. it something you or was he a big influence already or and was he or like a conscious influence to you or?

Tom (14:24)
Yeah, somewhat. I think it’s interesting because I think you can’t be a British photographer and not be aware of Martin’s work and what he’s done over the years. And The Last Resort is a really amazing book. so if any of the listeners don’t have it, it’s not very expensive. You can buy it on Amazon still, maybe for about 30 pounds or something. But it’s amazing work because it shows…

Frederic Paulussen (14:33)
Pro-Leo.

Tom (14:49)
the British seaside towns in the 1980s and what it was like then and some of the images are really powerful. So I think so. think Martin’s about showing, I suppose, I don’t know, how interesting life can be and the kind of slightly strangeness of life that you can get. And so I think it probably spoke to him a little bit. think probably the main photographer

Frederic Paulussen (15:10)
Yeah.

Tom (15:17)
compositionally influenced me is probably someone like an Alex Webb or Nikos Economopoulos I’m going pronounce his name really badly there and again another Magnum bit of a bit but with you know 28-35mm type lenses, quite complex layered images but you still have moments in there it’s not just about the composition it’s about something happening there’s some interest. So yeah I think I mean I was very lucky with the image it was

It was taken in Istanbul and we walked past a food truck that was just handing out free donuts, so they’re called lokma in Turkey, and they were kind of getting to the end. And that’s where that moment happened, where you’ve got all these hands all over the place that are kind of reaching for the last one on there.

all these nice things that come into play. had one person comment on it and said it reminded them of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel where you’ve got the two hands kind of pointing at each other. And so you’ve got that with the two hands reaching from the server and the person grabbing it. And then you’ve got these other hands kind of coming in. I quite like the look on the lady’s face on the right. She looks very determined to get the doughnut over everyone else. But yeah, it all came together. must have…

Frederic Paulussen (16:17)
⁓ right, yeah.

Tom (16:37)
stood there for probably 10 minutes and I was taking a variety of different, so if you looked at the contact sheet for that, if I was doing film, I’d probably have blown through a whole roll of film, like taking different images. But it was waiting for those kind of moments to come together because you could just see the hand reaching over the top. It’s just really one of those split second things where you’re shooting at 1.5 hundredths of a second and you’re getting the hand just perfectly framed in the sky and things like that.

Frederic Paulussen (16:40)
All out again.

Yeah.

Tom (17:06)
It was, yeah, it just all came together. It was just one of those moments where everything came together, but it did take a bit of working the scene from different angles and things like that to get to the final image, for sure.

Frederic Paulussen (17:17)
yeah, so

you weren’t there for like 10 minutes shooting more or less exact same shots trying to have people… you were really moving around? Yeah.

Tom (17:23)
Yeah, I kind of walked around and

tried different angles and things like that because it’s interesting because I actually just got back from Istanbul again. I was in Istanbul last week and I was on a workshop with Jonathan Jasberg who’s an amazing photographer. again, if listeners don’t haven’t heard of him, his Instagram, I’m going to get it wrong. It’s something like seat1aflyer.

or something like that. And it’s really, it’s really weird Instagram handle, but it’s because he used to write a travel blog on air miles. And that’s where the name came from. But he’s, his photography style’s really, really like very aligned to mine. And one of the things I’ve, I suppose, learned off Jonathan is how to approach a scene and get people comfortable with your presence being there and not just dive in straight away with your camera and, you know, take the time to.

Frederic Paulussen (18:00)
Yeah.

Tom (18:21)
be a part of the scene and then you can tend to get much better photos because everyone relaxes around you and they’re not really that interested you anymore. it’s one of the evolutions of my style is I’m now a lot more comfortable like that rather than, I don’t know, walking past and just hip firing and walking off. Jonathan would describe that as a low percentage shot of you’re likely to get anything good as opposed to you stay and work and you let all the elements come together within a…

within a frame, if you like. So it’s really interesting. suppose that was probably one of the first ones for me when it was a bit like that, where everyone was just ignoring me and getting on with their thing. But that’s one of the things I picked up recently is how to approach that and ways in which you can approach that. And I find that really interesting because it’s a bit different to the usual walk down the street, bam, take an image and walk off quickly of something else. It’s quite a different style to that, if you like.

Frederic Paulussen (19:17)
Were you more of the… because for me it’s I’m learning to slow down as you said and I’m working scenes more and ⁓ being slower and more mindful. Was it something you worked for as well? Like you were more of a fast paced…

Tom (19:27)
Yep.

Yeah, so I mean, we were having a brief chat before we started around this, but I probably went down a similar route of everyone else where when you first start street photography, it can be a bit scary and confronting, right? You’re going into public and you’re taking pictures of people in public and that’s very unusual, right? You don’t see many people walking around with a camera these days, particularly not where I live. You don’t see anyone walking around with a camera. You see people with phones, they might be taking video or pictures on the street, but not with a proper…

camera, like you don’t really see that anymore. So until you’ve got your confidence up, when I first started shooting, think one of the first lenses I bought was a 50 and an 85 mil, right? So you’re kind of much further removed from people. one of the first people I started seeing their work around was someone like Saul Leiter, who a lot of people follow in terms of his work.

Frederic Paulussen (20:02)
True, yeah.

Tom (20:30)
So it is a lot more suggesting of someone being there and it’s a longer lens and the images are quite compressed and it’s more about the composition elements and things like that. So you might sit in a scene of fish and wait for something to come into it. So I started off like that, but I gradually got shorter and wider and wider and wider on my lens choices now. And it’s taken me probably two, three years to get to that point where I’m now…

comfortable shooting with the 28s or the 35s. So in Istanbul the other week I only shot on 28, I didn’t do anything on 35 for example. And the work I’ve done in India, most of that’s on 28 as well rather than 35. But I’ve got to a point where I’m more comfortable like that and I kind of don’t mind that people like why is this weird guy taking pictures and stuff. But it’s taken three years to get into that point, right, which is almost the kind of more…

Frederic Paulussen (21:09)
Okay, cool.

Yeah.

Tom (21:25)
And one of things I’ve learned is if you approach it with positive body language, and you’re smiling, people know you’re doing it, you’re not trying to hide what you’re doing or anything, then people are a lot more open to it than they would be if you were, I don’t know, sat 10 meters away with a 70 to 200mm lens on and you’re like kind of sneaking around the corner taking pictures of people. ⁓ You come across a lot worse. Yeah, yeah.

Frederic Paulussen (21:48)
Yeah, it reads like paparazzi,

Tom (21:51)
So you come across a lot worse like that, think. So, but it’s, taken a while to get to that point. And still I find it more difficult in the UK and some, I’d find it difficult in Cheltenham other than the stuff you may have seen on my website that I do at the race course, but the horse racing and, and that, that is an environment where I get right in. And again, most of it’s on the 28th again, and people don’t mind in that environment. They, they’re kind of used to pictures Whereas if I walked along the street here, people would find it a bit more odd if I was.

Frederic Paulussen (22:05)
Yeah.

Get nice.

Tom (22:21)
of taking a picture in that environment. Whereas again, if you’re somewhere like the Racecourse or in London, people don’t mind. You see tourists all the time with cameras. It’s a bit different. But yeah, it’s probably taken two to three years to learn how to approach things in a way that puts people at ease and get your confidence to a level where you don’t mind being close to people. That’s okay. I think my wife still finds it weird. She finds it weird if she’s out and I’m taking pictures in that environment. But I’m kind of…

Frederic Paulussen (22:43)
Yeah.

Tom (22:51)
It’s okay now, it’s got to that point.

Frederic Paulussen (22:53)
because she

sometimes joins you or… no.

Tom (22:57)
No,

so it’s pretty much a solo pursuit for me. So I will occasionally meet up with friends. There’s a very good friend of mine who you might be aware of called Tim Jamieson and he does a YouTube channel that’s quite popular now. A very good photographer in his own right. He shoots mainly on film. So Tim actually lives in Cheltenham as well. So it’s quite strange. No, he lives here with me. So…

Frederic Paulussen (23:00)
Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

I thought it was London based, yeah.

Tom (23:24)
because I moved to Cheltenham out of London and then we just connected over Instagram because we saw each other on tags of things locally and I’m actually meeting him tomorrow evening just to catch up because I haven’t seen him for a while. But it’s really nice because there’s two of us here who live in a small town and then we both have a very strong passion for the same thing. So yeah, it’s nice having Tim locally as well. It means you don’t have to go down to London.

Frederic Paulussen (23:37)
nice, yeah.

Tom (23:53)
all the time just to meet up with people, which is good.

Frederic Paulussen (23:56)
Yeah,

it’s something I’m actually working on in my city as well, making like a little like casual community, like not something to rigid or something, but just to have people around. Yeah, which is nice. Yeah.

Tom (24:06)
Yeah, it’s nice to meet up for sure.

Yeah, yeah, because I think it’s nice if I go to meet people, I know I’m not really going to take pictures. I’m going more just to hang out and talk about photography and have a nice walk during the day. But if I’m going to take pictures, I tend to just do it on my own. But for a few reasons, one, because you don’t feel like you’re slowing anyone else down or if you want to stay somewhere for ages, it doesn’t matter, right, because it’s your own time.

And I suppose the other thing is if you’re going out with someone who’s got a similar style to you, you’re both kind of seeing similar things and you’re kind of tripping over each other a little bit on the same street. I’ve been on workshops before where you might be one of four or five people in a workshop and because the person running the workshop kind of keeps you all together, you’re all walking down the same street, you all see the same stuff and you’re all just tripping over each other. And I think that’s a bit confronting.

Frederic Paulussen (24:40)
Yeah.

Tom (24:59)
It’s really nice to hang out and meet people. what I’ve found, the festivals are really good. So, you know, the Dublin one was brilliant. I met loads of people there who I’d only met on Instagram before. So it was nice to meet people in real life. And there’s one going on in Brussels at moment this week. There’s a lot of stuff on Instagram with that. nice. Okay. Yeah. There’s a lot of those. I think those are great. There was one in Oslo last week, I think as well. So those are really good. I think that if you’ve got the time to go to one, ⁓

Frederic Paulussen (25:13)
Yeah, I’m going there tomorrow, yeah. ⁓

Tom (25:29)
definitely encourage people to go because you meet a lot of people and it’s all people who are like-minded and share similar interests to you and it’s a nice way to connect with people. They’re trying to create a little community wherever you are. I think it’s really positive. You’d be surprised how many people actually do have similar interests to you in the area you might live in but you don’t know unless you put yourself out there to meet people, right?

Frederic Paulussen (25:53)
No, exactly, yeah.

That’s also why I started this podcast, because was like, everyone, every street photographer does this alone. It’s, as you said, like you want to be in the ⁓ focus, don’t want to bother anyone, you don’t want to slow down anyone. So we all do this alone, but we all also like to talk about it lot and we all like to share our thoughts and our visions and everything. And we all have questions for each other as well. So I figured like,

Tom (26:02)
Yeah.

Frederic Paulussen (26:21)
there should be a way to do this and the podcast seems ⁓ yeah it’s a good medium for it so I think that’s why I love I feel like that the street photography festivals are popping up ⁓ everywhere as you said like Dublin is only two years I couldn’t imagine it if that it’s only two years but I know Brussels now is nine years something so it’s like a fairly ⁓

Tom (26:26)
Yeah, yeah, it’s a good medium for it.

wow, okay, yeah.

Frederic Paulussen (26:51)
fairly new thing I think to make like community around street photography at least because street photography is very old ⁓ but yeah to me it’s nice and it’s fun that even in a smaller town like Cheltenham there’s talented people like you and Tim so it’s yeah amazing wait Tim Jamieson yeah that’s always get his name wrong

Tom (27:17)
Yeah, Tim Jamieson, yeah.

Yeah, and his YouTube channel is very good. So for anyone interested in a good YouTube channel, as long you’re English speaking, it’s very good, like the content he does. But yeah, it’s a nice community in the UK. I mean, I don’t know if you have the same in Belgium. There’s quite a few photographers based in Belgium I’ve connected with through Instagram. yeah, there’s a nice scene. There’s the guys who run Framelines magazine, who you might…

Frederic Paulussen (27:20)
Jamie Timison, yeah, yeah.

I can recommend it too you.

Yeah.

Tom (27:46)
seen Josh Ed Goose, who’s Spicy Meatball on Instagram and then Shane Taylor. They’ve developed a community in the UK now where they’ve got a course of the zine that comes out. They do monthly photo assignments that people submit their work to. And then they pick ones they like and they get published or they talk about them on their YouTube channel and they’ll do regular meetups and things like that. it’s really nice. There’s some guys who come out of that who ⁓

now are running exhibitions and they’re getting people who work might not have been seen before and they’re doing it through that. It’s really built some momentum. if people aren’t doing it, wherever you listen to this, I would encourage you to think about how you could because you never know who you’re to meet unless you put yourself out there to do it. And it’s great. There’s a really strong community now on the Frameline stuff where it’s even got a private Discord where people…

will share work or talk about stuff or they might be sharing something or even locations to go and shoot etc. it’s really nice. I think that’s a really good part of it is to have the community around it as well as the solo pursuit like you say of actually going out and taking photos. The community aspects of it are really positive.

Frederic Paulussen (28:59)
Yeah.

Exactly. ⁓ So to get back to your work and street photography in general, you mentioned the Cheltenham races and there’s two questions I have around it. So first of all, ⁓ did you know about those events or were you regularly visiting these already or was it totally new to you or what made you choose it as a subject?

Tom (29:15)
Yeah.

Yeah, so it,

think it was, just coming back to the Martin stuff that like one of the things he was saying in Dublin was project based work. And I think that’s one of the things that I’ve started to understand. So instead of just going out during the day and trying to get one shot you think might, people might like on Instagram, I’ve kind of moved away from that now to say, okay, well, what’s something that made other people might find interesting that has more

I don’t know, more weight to it. So something that could become potentially a book or a magazine or get published in some way or exhibited in some way. And so I started to have a think about, what could you do locally? And I’m quite lucky in Cheltenham in that in the UK, Cheltenham has a horse racing festival every year that takes place in March and it runs for four or five days.

Frederic Paulussen (30:07)
Yeah.

Tom (30:25)
And over the four or five days, they’ll have best part of 300,000 people attend the races. So it’s a really big event. It’s like one of the biggest ones in the UK. But the horse racing starts in October and then it kind of goes every month up until the festival in March. And that’s the kind of end of the horse racing season. So it kind of goes over the winter. So, you know, every like Saturday when it’s on, you go along and there’ll be 60, 70,000 people there.

Frederic Paulussen (30:32)
Yeah.

Tom (30:54)
like on a day and you’ve got every different type of person you could think of like so young people who just want to go and enjoy themselves and are out drinking you’ve got old people who are really serious and into the racing and one of things they you’ve probably noticed in the photos there’s quite a unique dress sense to the people what they’re wearing like you’ll get people wearing 1950s style hats they’ll wear these like tweed

coats and countryside coats, they’ll carry binoculars with them to watch the horse racing. And so you see this dress code that maybe in 20 years will go because the horse racing establishment removed the dress code. So if you went back 20 years, like in 1980s, everyone would have been dressed like that. But now to encourage more young people to go, they’ve said, it doesn’t matter, you can wear what you want now. So it’s only really the older people who still wear that type of stuff.

Frederic Paulussen (31:47)
Yeah.

Tom (31:51)
But it just struck me, it’s one of those places where you see every human emotion happening. You see people having fun and going out drinking and they don’t mind and they’re just having a good time. You see people who are really seriously gambling and they’re either really happy afterwards or they’re really sad afterwards. You just see nice moments where people from different social classes are really bonding over the same thing and you just see this range of emotions happening all around you.

Which is pretty amazing really and because everyone’s there to have a good time, no one minds being in pictures because there’s people there taking pictures of the sport of the horse racing and they’re taking pictures of the horses. But one of the things that struck me is no one’s taking pictures of the people. So there’s no one there doing what I’m doing there. There’s people working for the horse racing magazines who might take a picture of someone who’s the best dressed person on the day or whatever.

but there’s not anyone there taking pictures of someone tearing up their betting ticket and throwing it on the floor and walking off or anything. Yeah, so, and that’s why it struck me as a really interesting project. So I’ve been going there for probably two years now. And ⁓ you may have seen off my website, I’m a pro member of the RAW Society as well. And through the RAW Society, I’ve been able to get hold of a press pass. So I now can attend as effectively a press photographer.

Frederic Paulussen (32:51)
Yeah, the actual stories, yeah.

care.

Tom (33:17)
But I don’t take any images that I’m selling to magazines or anything. I’m building a body of work around it. And I will have an article in the next Raw Society magazine that’s coming out, in the autumn, I think is the next one that’s going to get published. And there’ll be a kind of short version of the project I’m working on in the magazine. So there’ll be a story-based article and a series of pictures as well.

Frederic Paulussen (33:40)
Yeah. Okay, that’s nice. Yeah.

Tom (33:45)
But yeah, it’s a great place to go and take pictures because no one minds you taking pictures there and you get some really interesting subjects and things going on. So that’s why at the start I said street and documentary because I consider that more documentary based work. You’re still effectively out on a street in inverted commas taking pictures of people in a candid way, but it’s more documenting life than the project and the subject of what you’re taking pictures on, if you like. So that’s why I’ve started doing that.

Frederic Paulussen (33:54)
Yeah.

That’s a nice segue because that was actually my second question. Where does the border between street and documentary lay for you? Also because of course there’s a big, vague zone I can imagine because as you said, a lot of…

street photography is documenting live on the street so it’s kind of like documentary but at the same time this is also a bit of street photography to me so it’s yeah

Tom (34:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, it’s interesting one because I think because I’ve got a young family and I’ve got a six year old daughter and a four year old son, I don’t have a lot of spare time to go and take pictures. it was interesting, I’ve heard other people talk about this, you’ve got children now. So what I tend to do is instead of going to London on a Saturday, like randomly walking around all day and then coming back, that’s a very low ⁓ percentage.

play for me to spend my time for a day because my time away is so precious. I would rather go, right, I’m going to go to the races for a day, spend a day there, and I know I’m gonna build more content for a body of work or for anything else. So when you go to take pictures of events particularly, I would still apply the same principles I’d use for street photography, but I’m doing it in more a way to document the event that I’m going to.

to go and take pictures of. So it might be a protest or a horse racing event or, you know, there’s another project. I haven’t started it yet, but it’s one I’m thinking of where there’s a place near here that’s suffering from a lot of over-tourism and it’s becoming quite a big issue because it’s known as this place of outstanding beauty, but they’re just busing people in all the time. There’s everyone trying to take a million selfies there and stuff for Instagram.

Frederic Paulussen (36:07)
Yeah.

Tom (36:08)
And that’s another type of project you can do, right? It’s a bit like in Belgium where if you go to Bruges or somewhere, there’ll be tourists all over the place, right? So it’s the same kind of principle, but you don’t realise there’s necessarily stories there. Because if you start to think about it, we’ve got, how are the people living there feeling about that? What’s it, how is it impacting them? What are all the tourists up to? How is it impacting them? Is it having an impact on the environment around there? And is that something that needs to be captured as well?

Frederic Paulussen (36:17)
Bruges immediately sprang to mind, yeah.

Tom (36:39)
There’s projects you can kind of think of anywhere, but that’s where I’d see the substitute street to me is I’m just on the street, it’s not a planned event or anything like that. It’s just stuff that’s randomly happening around me that might be happening. Whereas documentary tends to me is more around an event or something else that’s happening that I’m documenting or a project that I’m documenting specifically around the body of work I’m trying to create, if you like. That’s to me how I define it.

A lot of the time now for me it’s probably more documentary based unless I’ve travelled somewhere to go and take pictures like when I was in Istanbul the other week where it’s I suppose building a body of work around Istanbul that could become a project but I’m spending time there just purely doing street photography I’m not going there for an event that’s happening in Istanbul if you like, a bit while I’m there. So that’s how I see the difference between the two anyway.

Frederic Paulussen (37:29)
Yeah okay.

Okay yeah makes sense. I don’t think there’s a specific right or wrong answer but I just notice because it’s on your website it was I was more asking myself maybe is this still street photography or not and I just thought maybe that’s a question I should redirect to you.

Tom (37:37)
No,

Yeah, that’s

why I’ve kind of separated the bits out, if you like, on the website, as you can see, because the Cheltenham Racing work is its own thing on there, as opposed to it being blended in with the other stuff, if you like.

Frederic Paulussen (37:56)
Yeah, well, it sense,

Makes total sense, yeah. And so it’s in all of your photos, not only the Cheltenham photos, but there specifically as well. There’s ⁓ a certain proximity between you and the subject and I don’t only mean it physically, like you’re physically close to them, but also the photos feel intimate. ⁓

Tom (38:25)
Yeah.

Frederic Paulussen (38:29)
Is that something you do consciously? Is it something you more feel? Is it something you train on? How do you think that came about?

Tom (38:37)
Yeah,

think it’s, I suppose one of the things I’d like to try and convey is that it makes you feel like you’re part of the scene. It’s not like I’m an observer and I’m so far away, you know, it feels like there’s a distance between me and the subject or something else that’s going on. And I think that, you know, I never want to do it to the point where I’m like Bruce Gilden walking around flashing people right next to them, right? So it’s done in a…

Frederic Paulussen (39:02)
Yeah, that’s one extreme, yeah.

Tom (39:05)
Yeah,

hopefully it’s done in a way that’s got, what’s the right word, respect for the subjects, if you like, and it’s done from a positive place. So I’m never trying to show anyone in a bad light or anything like that. It’s trying to convey a sense of feeling or place from being there. And it feels like you’re there, right? So if you’re quick and you can be in and out of the scene.

you can get very close to people, people don’t even realize you’re there, right? You can just, you know, if you know, if you’re going into the scene or the group of people and you know kind of what photo you want to take, you can kind of be ready to take that type of photo, in and out quite quickly. And people don’t even notice, they don’t react to you, right? So that’s the nice thing. There’s one you might’ve seen on my website, which is, there’s a girl running towards me and…

Frederic Paulussen (39:49)
Yeah.

Tom (40:02)
The thing that drew me to the scene was the goat coming out of the doorway. And it’s on the main page of my website, but it’s on also the India page as well. And that’s a really nice scene because you feel like, you know, she’s almost running straight towards you and she’s got this big smile on her face and their sisters are chasing her down this alleyway. And then you’ve got these boys walking the other way. And then just to one side, you’ve just got this.

goat coming out of someone’s house that’s tethered to it and all the colours kind of work and it’s nice. I suppose that kind of thing always quite speaks to me. It gives you that feeling of you can feel something through the photo rather than it’s just compositionally strong or whatever else. I think it adds an extra layer to the photo. You can convey a sense of feeling from it or you feel like you’re really there. I think it’s really interesting. ⁓

Frederic Paulussen (40:48)
Yeah.

Tom (40:57)
Just coming back to that Gilles Peress book, there’s a photo he takes there where it’s really interesting. I hadn’t seen a photo like it before. It’s probably been copied a lot now, but he was taking a picture of a meeting of all these elders, of kind of Iranian elders, and they’re all wearing a form of headdress. But the way he took the picture was he’s almost like on top of the guy’s head. So the guy’s leading the meeting.

you see the top of his head kind of pushing down into it. So if you search like Gilles Peress Telex Iran you’ll be able to find the image. But it’s a really powerful photo because it really feels really there. It feels like you’re the guy talking to this room of other people. But it’s a really powerful image. But stuff like that, think, is really, really interesting.

Frederic Paulussen (41:27)
Yeah.

Yeah, I’m looking.

Tom (41:51)
There’s some Alex Web work that’s like that as well. one with the, there’s a really famous one, which is the blue and white one with the kid with the ball spinning on his finger and everything’s kind of blue and white. And there’s a basketball going in the background and stuff like that. But it feels like you’re really there. the, I think that kind of lifts photos beyond just the, I don’t know, something’s positioned nicely in the frame or whatever, or, you know, it’s just purely an aesthetic thing. It feels, it takes it to another level beyond that, I think.

personally say.

Frederic Paulussen (42:23)
And do you feel that it’s… Yeah, it’s not purely photographic of course, because otherwise everyone would be able to copy. Is it because you yourself are really into the Cheltenham races or is there too specifically for this project maybe it’s easier to talk about it like that? Or is it because you care about the subject or is it because… Yeah, how do you think it happens that…

Tom (42:48)
Yeah,

yeah, so the Chelman races one’s interesting because I think it started out as a, hey, you’re missing an opportunity that’s literally on your doorstep. Like I can, I can walk there in 35 minutes and I’m in the race course, right? So it’s, it’s, it’s like, why am I missing this opportunity? Like not everyone has this on their, on their doorstep. It would be the same for you. I’m sure there’d be something.

Frederic Paulussen (43:03)
Yeah.

Tom (43:12)
unique to where you live, that I would go, wow, that’s crazy. I’ve never seen that before. That would be really interesting as a body of work. But as I’ve got more into it, that’s where you start to see stories unfold beyond it, if you like. Because there’s a few ways of thinking about it. One is you’re capturing something that won’t be there in the future. So people who might be children now, like maybe they’re a teenager now.

by the time they get to my age, they’ll look totally different. All those older people who dress a certain way, they’ll have all passed away by that point. It won’t look the same anymore, it’ll be different. And one of the things that I’ve started to notice is this interplay between different societal classes that are there. So the people who are there, the older people, they’re the ones who own the horses, they’re very wealthy, they’ve got a certain way of dressing and a certain way of carrying themselves. And then you’ve got…

the younger people today who don’t have the same money as them and they’re just there to have a good time but ultimately when the race starts none of it matters you see them hugging each other or you know they’re all in it together and it brings people together and it’s only through going there that I started noticing that type of stuff and and you and I suppose you just kind of hone your observation skills a bit more because you’re kind of looking out for certain things or

Frederic Paulussen (44:21)
Yeah.

Okay.

Tom (44:36)
For example, we’re this podcast with headphones in. I never wear headphones at all when I’m taking photos because you want to be able to hear what’s happening and then you can react to that on the street. The same with that. I think it’s interesting. think you start out perhaps with an idea for a project and then once you start to understand the subject better, can move in different directions, if you like. I think that’s what I’ve found.

start the project about that kind of over tourism thing because I don’t know where that’s going to go. It might become a very different thing to what I thought it was going to be. But I’m trying to think of things that are unique to perhaps the area I’m living in that haven’t been documented or if they have been documented, they’ve been documented in a one-dimensional way, perhaps by just a sports photographer taking pictures of horses jumping over fences, as opposed to what else is going on.

Frederic Paulussen (45:07)
Yeah.

Tom (45:31)
or people going to that place are saying like a Bruges and they’re just taking pictures of the architecture or what it looks like and selling that in a book about Bruges and saying look at all these nice buildings but they’re not talking about how the over tourism is maybe impacting the space or what that’s doing to the city and the residents living there and stuff like that. So you can find those stories anywhere I think it’s just you’ve got to start I suppose thinking about things perhaps slightly differently like how you approach photography. That’s why I think it’s…

Frederic Paulussen (45:47)
Yeah.

Tom (46:00)
I don’t know, it’s such an open-ended topic. can make great photography about anything, right, really. And it doesn’t have to have people in necessarily either, to still be something documenting something or something on the street as well. There’s an Australian photographer called Jesse Marlow I don’t know if you’ve seen any of his work. It’s really good. I’m aware of him because he’s from Melbourne, which is where my wife’s from, but he’s a Leica ambassador.

Frederic Paulussen (46:06)
Very true, yeah.

I’ve heard his name.

Tom (46:28)
stuff. it just does a lot of really great work. But some of his books, they don’t have people in every image, right? But they’re still a really strong body of work when you look at it all together. The same with a lot of Trente Parks work, which again, is another amazing photographer. Like his black and white work is incredible, but not all of it’s people. And if it is people, it might be very grainy or like purposefully quite abstract imagery. So it doesn’t really matter. It’s kind of what you

what you push the genre to, to be honest, is your own creativity around the space.

Frederic Paulussen (47:02)
That’s very true, yeah. That’s what I like about street photography as well, because you can have so many different subjects in so many different styles. But also, if I will join you to the Cheltenham races, we’ll probably have such different results. Yeah.

Tom (47:16)
Yeah, very different photos. Yeah, yeah,

sure. Yeah.

Frederic Paulussen (47:19)
So that’s

something very nice. I very much like the idea of the Overtourism project, by the way. Because it’s something I read about it a lot, usually about places in Spain. But I think it’s a very interesting project to actually show what is overtourism, why it’s so annoying. ⁓ So yeah, think that, yeah, I’d be definitely looking forward to that. Maybe, yeah.

Tom (47:43)
Yeah, you could definitely do it in Bruges. I was in Bruges a year or so ago and

it’s just full of tourists. So there’s bit of stuff like that everywhere, right? Last weekend in Cheltenham, there was an event that happened just outside and I don’t know if you’d be aware of it in Belgium, but it’s so strange it’s called cheese rolling. So I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, right? So they basically, they have this really big hill.

Frederic Paulussen (48:07)
No

Tom (48:11)
and the idea is you get this big wheel of cheese and they roll the cheese down the hill and the competition is who can catch the cheese, right? So that’s the thing. And people run down this hill really fast and they break legs and they’re tumbling over each other and it’s really dangerous. But they’ve been doing this for like, I don’t know how long it’s been going for, but a very long time. But that’s like this…

Frederic Paulussen (48:22)
I have to catch it, okay? Yeah.

Tom (48:39)
one really weird event that happens every year on the same weekend on this one place, but it’s, it’s, gets the BBC coming to cover it and stuff like that. But again, they only just cover the bit where the cheese rolls downhill. They don’t cover the bits of who are the competitors and what are they doing in the buildup to the race and what happens to them afterwards and how they’re celebrating afterwards and what else is going on around the event.

Frederic Paulussen (48:53)
Yeah.

Tom (49:06)
So I’m sure everyone’s got something like that near them that, you know, to you would find really interesting. But to people living here, they’d be like, that just happens every year. know, it’s, you know, it’s just normal. So that’s what I find interesting with the going beyond just the pure street elements is that you can find stuff that people might disregard, but are actually really interesting or have a lot of value. I suppose that’s why my bookcases end up being part documentary part.

Frederic Paulussen (49:15)
Yeah, true, yeah.

Tom (49:35)
like more traditional street based work. Cause if you, if you look at Alex Webb’s work, it’s typically of a place. It’s not of an event or other thing, if you like. So you’ll do a book on Istanbul or do a book on, you know, the Caribbean or somewhere else, right? But this is something of a place and it’s usually just a series of very good individual images. They don’t tell a story altogether. They’re typically just very good one-off images.

Whereas then you’ve got like a Martin Parr book, which is of a place, but it’s telling a story of the place, which is quite different again, if you like. that’s why I suppose I’m influenced by both, if you like, in terms of the way my work’s gone.

Frederic Paulussen (50:16)
Yeah, I think it’s good to have multiple influences and not just copy one photographer. So yeah, I’m thinking because you haven’t been doing street photography for that long, three years, more or less, or… Yeah, and did you do like the other photography regularly before that or…

Tom (50:24)
for sure. Yeah.

Yeah, about three years, yeah.

Not

really, it was more taking pictures when I went on holiday to do it. And if I look back on the stuff I was doing three years ago, it’s funny how you can evolve quite quickly if you like, because it wasn’t very good. The stuff I was doing three years ago, know, it with a long lens. None of it’s really on Instagram anymore. My stuff on Instagram is like over the last probably 18 months or so, I’d say, and the same with the stuff on my website.

Frederic Paulussen (50:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean.

Tom (51:13)
But it’s interesting because one of the things I find with photography is you can evolve quite quickly. You get this really rapid progression because like, that’s very different to take a picture of my camera phone or something. And I can now work out how to use manual settings on my camera or I can now shoot with a really low aperture and blur the whole background out and look at that. And so you start off doing that kind of stuff. how I evolved has been through

I suppose, and I’d say this to everyone, it’s easy looking back on it. So if knew three years ago what I know today, I’d tell myself, don’t worry about gear or lenses or that kind of stuff, right? There’s a friend of mine called Eduardo Ortiz, who you may know through Instagram, a brilliant photographer. He uses a really beaten up Fuji X-Pro2 with really old lenses on it and stuff and takes incredible images, right? So you don’t need to worry about that. So that’s probably…

Frederic Paulussen (51:58)
Yeah.

Tom (52:12)
something I would have told myself three years ago is don’t worry about gear, it’s not a key thing. And save your money and spend it on experiences or workshops. So spend it on travel or going and doing workshops with photographers that you find really inspiring to you. And so I’ve done a lot of international-based workshops now. So I think I’ve three internationally. So I’ve done one in Calcutta and two in Istanbul.

which have been really good. And then I’ve done a few in the UK. So I did one with Matt Stuart in the UK, which is really, really interesting. But you can kind of take something from all of them. And it’s, that’s one of the things I found is accelerated things more and particularly the international ones have been really interesting because you’re spending like five days with someone in their presence and you can’t help but learn or pick things up in that environment. And you’ve got

five days of solidly shooting to practice and try things out. And you’re not there necessarily to take amazing photos that might end up in a book or something. You’re there just to practice and learn and stuff like that. And that for me, I think has accelerated me the most, but then also trying different things like shooting at a race course or going on the streets or not doing the same thing every time or exposing yourself to new environments. And I think that’s been the thing that’s…

accelerated my journey the quickest. Because it hasn’t been that long that I’ve been shooting this style of photography for sure. Three years ago I was terrible, right? If I show you some of my images from three years ago they were awful. But yeah, think you can progress relatively rapidly but I think you need to just keep pushing yourself to learn more and stuff like that. There’s another photographer I’d love to do one of his workshops called Magic Dakovic and he’s a Polish photographer.

Frederic Paulussen (53:45)
Yeah.

Okay.

Tom (54:06)
He’s done a couple of books, one which was at the city where I went to university in Cardiff and he does these amazing workshops in places like Dhaka in Bangladesh and he goes all over the place. But again, he’s got a book that came out through iShop which is also really good. But he does very ⁓ moment-based, compositionally strong wide lens, like 28-35mm type photos.

A bit like Jonathan Jasberg again, really good, really, really strong work, but he predominantly just teaches now, that’s all he does, but his style’s great. So yeah, the more workshops you can do, the more you can learn off others that, whose style you resonate with, I think that’s really interesting. But the one thing I caution people on is make sure you book a workshop of people who are actually gonna be out on the street with you and show you what they’re doing.

because while I was in Istanbul, there were two Magnum photographers doing classes there, like Harry Gruyaert was there, who’s obviously, know, probably Belgium’s most famous photographer. Yeah. And so he was there. And I think just before Gueorgui Pinkhassov was there as well. So they had like two very well-known Magnum photographers who were there at the same time. But I’m not sure if this is the case for Harry and…

Frederic Paulussen (55:10)
He’s from, yeah, he’s from around my corner, yeah. He’s from around here, yeah.

Tom (55:30)
Gueorgui’s workshops, I don’t want to do them in disservice, but some of the very famous photographers, you pay lots of money to go on the workshop, but they don’t spend a single minute with you out on the street. They will send you out for the day and say, come back with 10 images. They’ll look at it in the evening and then they’ll just send you out on your own again during the day. So you don’t get the value of seeing how they might approach you seeing, or they could just talk to you. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Frederic Paulussen (55:52)
Which is the most interesting part, yeah.

Tom (55:57)
So that’s the thing for me is the workshops I’ve gone on, I’ve had recommendations from other people who’ve been on them. So I knew kind of what to expect from it. But that’s the ones where I think you get the real value is literally walking down the street with someone else and they’re going, that’s interesting to me. Here’s how I’d get into that scene. Here’s how I’d set it up compositionally. Here’s the kind of elements I’d be looking for to make this interesting or wait for this type of moment to occur.

And that’s the bit where I you learn the most for sure is that kind of approach to things.

Frederic Paulussen (56:27)
Exactly,

Exactly. It seems like you’re very ⁓ conscious about your growth and your decisions in photography. that’s something… Well, I don’t dislike people who don’t do that because I think there’s also a part of instinct and after some kind of feeling to it. to me, I’m more of a…

I’m not gonna say over thinker, but I’m also like always thinking like is this right? Should I do it more like this? I’m very conscious as well. So it’s nice to have that represented ⁓ in a photographer.

Tom (57:05)
Yeah, well, it’s

interesting because I’ve had two quite different workshops in Istanbul. So the first one I did was with Eduardo a year ago and Eduardo, he’s from South America, right? So he’s from Chile and his style probably orientates to his background, right? So he’s a lot more free, I suppose, in the way he would approach.

Frederic Paulussen (57:14)
Okay, nice, yeah.

Tom (57:32)
photography, which is really also really interesting. So he has a similar approach to how he approaches people and gets himself into a scene and kind of becomes part of the scene. But up until it was funny when I first met him, he was like, did you used to shoot landscapes? And I was like, no. And he was like, everything you take is completely straight. Like everything’s straight. But these lines are straight and the horizon straight. And one of the things I learned from Eduardo is that doesn’t actually matter. Right. It doesn’t it doesn’t matter. Right. You can actually add

dynamism into a scene by just slightly tilting your camera right so you don’t don’t overdo it but it’s just enough where if you’ve got a kid running or someone jumping for a pigeon or something else if it’s always flat it doesn’t feel as dynamic as just having a little bit of a tilt on it and it’s it’s stuff like that where I was always quite rigid you know and I was always like looking for these perfect lines and having you know you know something following a pattern on the screen or thinking too much about

Frederic Paulussen (58:17)
Yeah.

Tom (58:31)
placing things along the rule of thirds or whatever. And no, that really matters, right? You can’t be, moment is always gonna beat composition for stuff, right? Nine times out of 10. And just being freer with how I approach things. So I got that from Eduardo, right? And I never used to do that before. And then with Jonathan, probably the biggest learning with Jonathan was how he interacts with people.

which is really interesting, right? And so he will go to the extent of learning certain phrases that he’ll be able to say in local language, so whether it was being like Flemish, for yourself, or French, or Dutch, for example, but something that as a tourist you wouldn’t say, right? So he’ll… And the phrase I learned for Turkish was a phrase which is… I’m going to pronounce this really badly, is Kalei Gelsin.

and it literally means have an easy day at work. So if you say that to someone in the shop or something, they start smiling instantly because one, it’s a nice thing to say to someone, and two, they never would expect someone who’s from the UK to say that to them. So one of things I learned from Jonathan was you build a rapport with someone in the scene who becomes your ally or friend in that environment. if anyone says, don’t want…

Frederic Paulussen (59:30)
Okay.

Tom (59:54)
So and so they go, no, no, he’s okay, he’s okay. You know, you said Kalei Gelson to me, he’s a nice guy, right? And that was something I learned from Jonathan, again, was like, well, how do you put yourself in a scene, make people comfortable with you being there before you even get your camera out? And that was probably one of the biggest things I took away from that one was how would you approach that and what type of things would you say to people? And that’s not even really photography, that’s just social interaction and…

other things with people. So I just find it really interesting. for people I’ve found who I like their work, it’s nice to understand how they approach it, what they do. But you can take something from everyone. So I’m probably like, my style is now like a component part of lots of people who I’ve been lucky enough to spend some time with. But you can learn something from everyone, right? So it’s, yeah.

Frederic Paulussen (1:00:44)
Yeah, but I think that’s

the way to go in the like from books or from workshops like pick the things that interesting interest you from people and combine it to to make yourself that sounds very So yeah, I see we’re An hour in so I’m gonna wrap it up because I try to keep it. Yes, it’s it’s it happens Yeah, that’s that’s why I started to aim for one hour because I have episodes of like an hour and a half

Tom (1:00:57)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Well, that’s gone quickly.

Frederic Paulussen (1:01:14)
And I got messages saying, telling me it’s just too long. So I’m trying to keep it to an hour. So thank you Tom for your time and insights, plenty of insights. I think ⁓ we could do like another one in a year or so and have totally new conversation, I think.

Tom (1:01:23)
Thank you for inviting me.

Oh for sure, we could do one just on photo books.

Frederic Paulussen (1:01:32)
Yeah, exactly. And if anyone wants to follow Tom, of course, his links are in the description. So to his website and to his Instagram. Make sure to follow his fantastic work and I’m sure more will follow. Also make sure to follow the podcast on your favorite platform and follow me on social media for updates about new episodes. And again, all the links for that are in the description. So see you in the next episode and thank you, Tom.

Tom (1:02:02)
Thanks very much. Thanks for having me.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.