Latest / The Photography & Video Show Podcast / 34: Minisode: Tom Oldham on those Thierry Henry portraits, plus the month’s camera news headlines

Transcript

34: Minisode: Tom Oldham on those Thierry Henry portraits, plus the month’s camera news headlines · The Photography & Video Show Podcast

• 0:09
  David McClelland: Hello, hello, welcome to the Photography and Video Show podcast B-Roll.
• 0:13
  David McClelland: It's me, David McClellan, it's July 2026, and yes, we're back with another hot, hot, hot podcast mini sode featuring this month's news headlines and some never-seen before bits from our incredible guest photographer and filmmaker interviews.
• 0:28
  David McClelland: We will be back with a brand new season of the full-length podcast from next month, building all the way through to the next in-person photography and video show at the XL London taking place between Saturday 13th and Tuesday the 16th of March 2027.
• 0:42
  David McClelland: More on that to come, but first let's take a look at this month's news headlines.
• 0:58
  David McClelland: It's a 44 megapixel full-frame hybrid capable of 40 frames per second for stills and 8k open gate for video, but alas, no red dot on the body.
• 1:09
  David McClelland: Still, it's unmistakably a Leica.
• 1:12
  David McClelland: Meanwhile, in software news, Adobe has agreed to acquire Topaz Labs, the maker of the AI-powered sharpening, denoising, and upscaling tools that many already have in their editing workflow.
• 1:25
  David McClelland: Adobe says that standalone Topaz apps will continue, but the creative community will be watching this one very closely.
• 1:32
  David McClelland: In the Pocket Gimbal Camera Wars, the Insta360 Luna officially landed at the end of June, and DJI marks the occasion by immediately filing a patent lawsuit.
• 1:45
  David McClelland: Insta360 fired straight back.
• 1:47
  David McClelland: Ladies and gentlemen, the gimbal gloves are well and truly off.
• 1:51
  David McClelland: And finally, remember the oh so cute Kodak Charmera keychain camera that Kim Booneman featured recently on the podcast?
• 1:58
  David McClelland: Well, it's back this time with a Y2K makeover.
• 2:03
  David McClelland: Six new Millennium themed metallic blind box designs, same gloriously lo-fi 1.6 megapixel sensor, and only£35.
• 2:14
  David McClelland: It's absolute camera chaos, but somehow we love it.
• 2:18
  David McClelland: We'll be back next month, and if the grapevine doesn't lie, then it looks like Sony will be back too with exciting launches for both photographers and filmmakers.
• 2:27
  David McClelland: But for now, you're up to date.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: If I was going to describe my work, um it's strictly portraiture, I would say, um, based around my core practice, which is mainly sports people and musicians, let's say, but it expands far beyond that.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that'll be commercially.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do that for advertising.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: It may be editorial.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: I work with quite a lot of charities and NGOs and kind of voluntary projects like that, and um projects of my own instigation, uh, foolishly or otherwise.
• 3:26
  David McClelland: How did you fall into the music photography piece?
• 3:28
  David McClelland: Because obviously it's a very aspirational line of work, and people dream of having one-to-one time with the these musicians that you know maybe people have got pinned up on posters in their bedrooms.
• 3:40
  David McClelland: Was that something that you aimed for as you were working your way up the ranks, or is it something you sort of fell into?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh every photographer starts from a place of passion, and the most obvious and sort of linear progression you can make, I think, is to photograph things you know about and you care about.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And just at that time I was really into music, I still am, ri really into dance and kind of rave culture, which was exploding just as I was getting into music, so it was really logical that I should pursue that, and also a desperate desire to be on the guest list, I think.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I was never gonna be backstage ligging unless I had a camera with me, I think.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that that that kind of uh was my green light.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and mu music has just been uh integral to everything I do, and I was uh nightclub photographer in magazines for a long time and and and then kind of expanded beyond that into event photography and then but kept music and kind of transitioned through uh live music photography into portraiture through a project called On Off that I did, um, which was photographing bands the second before they went onto stage and the very second they came off.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: So um that really kind of informed my practice and pushed it forward into portraiture.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's always been music, yeah.
• 4:59
  David McClelland: And we've certainly seen some of your music portraiture work uh in large on the London Underground and billboards around uh Liam Gallagher, John Squire from the Stone Roses uh for a big that that was an album launch of theirs last year or so, wasn't it?
• 5:15
  David McClelland: How was that to work on?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um really, really exciting.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh incredible to be photographing your heroes and just to be seeing them up close.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the grand privilege of being a portrait photographer is having your own opinions about these people and being in the room with these people, and so that you can say what they were like on that day, anyway, in that experience.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm really proud of that.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the shots were beautiful as well.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it just they they they came ready to work, and uh you do have that, like you're looking through your camera again.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Look, there's Liam Gallagher and John Squire from the Stone Roses looking straight back at me, and uh that's an exciting thing.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Still, I've been doing this forever, as you might sense, and uh it's still very exciting.
• 6:01
  David McClelland: And of course, as well as the music stuff, there is the sports stuff.
• 6:05
  David McClelland: Uh, you you sp you spoke about how music came about because of a passion of yours.
• 6:10
  David McClelland: There's uh just looking through your portfolio, there's a few um Arsenal and Man United shots in there.
• 6:16
  David McClelland: Are you a sports fan or did that work coming through a different route?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: It came via the music music aesthetic, which was really, really nice.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: That um some people, uh Puma it was, wanted a sort of cooler aesthetic to their output, and we applied up, applied a sort of rock and roll tone to what we were doing in with lighting and and the sort of polish we were putting on it, and that really escalated to some great relationships and just an ongoing body of work with more and more um musicians.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've had some really incredible moments with people like Ronaldo and Messi and Usain Bolt.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've probably photographed Usain Bolt more than more than anybody else, um any other subject, I mean, and you know, we did a massive personal campaign last year that was everywhere with Usain, and we shot that in Jamaica, so yes, you know, lucky me.
• 7:06
  David McClelland: Lucky me.
• 7:07
  David McClelland: Something I just want to ask about because as a portrait photographer, particularly when it's not the commercial shoot stuff where you are controlling as much as you can, but when it is those shots of musicians, of uh of sports people or whatever, I'm curious about how sometimes it's the off-the-cuff remarks or off-the-cuff suggestions.
• 7:27
  David McClelland: You can plan as much as you like, but sometimes it's a oh, I've got two minutes, I've I've got to go.
• 7:33
  David McClelland: When you go right, just you know, just jump in the air or just pull a funny face.
• 7:37
  David McClelland: And it's often those unguarded moments that are the ones that yield the most insightful, unguarded yet uh I guess truthful images.
• 7:47
  David McClelland: Is that your experience?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: It really, really is.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And those are the circumstances under which we um might reach deeper into the locker than we would normally when we're under that bit of pressure.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, you know, I I did a portrait once with um Thierry Henry and he he uh a cover shoot and he didn't want to do it.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think, wasn't it?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, well it was actually before that, yeah.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was okay.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was the it's that from those it was used in 442, but um it was for um shortlist magazine and uh he kind of expressed a um general air of reluctance when we started, and and I was like, Why don't why don't you don't you want to do it?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and and he said, Well, I'd like I don't know why, you know, I don't know what this is and I don't know why.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Well, if if you don't want to do it, then I don't really want to do it.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll tell you what, why don't we just give me ten frames, give me ten frames and you can go.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you can choose which ones we keep.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Yeah?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Yeah, yeah, right like there's no point if you you know, it's fine.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And he was really like, okay.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: So he came in and did like all these expressions, like ten, like that I would never if I had asked, I'd never have got them.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: So he offers up these incredible ten shots, he blinks in a one or two of them, he and we look through the ten, he chooses six, of which one of them later became the cover of 442 magazine.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're beautiful, they're amazing, I love them still, and he got to go after about three minutes.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: So everyone was happy, you know, really, and and and the portraits uh the portrait photographers arsenal is one of these little mechanisms uh that we have just to kind of just get a quick response and a quick action, and indeed it was the same with Black Francis.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Please express your exasperation at having to talk about yourself all day.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he just went, Oh, and and and that there you go, thanks.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew that everything after that shot was a waste of time because you you you know you've got it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so yeah, there you go.
• 9:50
  David McClelland: It's interesting.
• 9:51
  David McClelland: I've spoken with a number of uh portrait photographers, particularly of celebrity sports people, portrait photographers, and each of them have got different ways to kind of unlock, I suppose, the connection between them and their subject.
• 10:05
  David McClelland: And sometimes you just don't have a chance, you know.
• 10:07
  David McClelland: Sometimes they're just so much in their own mind and they've got so much in their world going on that it is, you know, it is down to luck or at least the luck that you make for yourself if you get those shots.
• 10:18
  David McClelland: Whereas whereas others, I think we spoke, well, we spoke with Andy Gotz uh a a few weeks ago, he's there with a glass of champagne and he's trying to play the almost it seems as though the level I didn't chat this through with him, but if if you're playing a game of cards, a kind of game of status cards, he's trying to meet them where they're at almost.
• 10:37
  David McClelland: And that and that's a that's a dangerous game to play.
• 10:39
  David McClelland: Yeah, he's done a pretty good job out of out of playing that.
• 10:42
  David McClelland: But I'm fascinated by those different strategies you have to try and get your subject where they are in a place for you to get a successful shot.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh like that that that's absolutely right.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: You go toe-to-toe.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're as professional at your job as they are at theirs, and you don't go there with a load of stuff to get it signed, you know, and unless you know them really well, because that that that isn't what this opportunity is, you know.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: They need to see you as an equal, and that's what Andy Gotts will be doing, I'm sure, because you cut you're not there as a fan because that sets you up as being an amateur, I think.
• 11:18
  David McClelland: Big thanks to Tom Oldham.
• 11:20
  David McClelland: Look up Tommy O Photo on his Instagram to see some of his recent work, and do check out season two, episode 10, March 2024, for the full interview with lots, lots more chat and insight.
• 11:32
  David McClelland: That's all for this month.
• 11:33
  David McClelland: Great to be back again, and we'll be back on the first Thursday of next month, August 2026, for a brand new season of the Full Fat Photography and Video Show podcast, which we're all very excited about here.
• 11:45
  David McClelland: Make sure you put a mark in your diary for the London show at the XL from the 13th to the 16th of March 2027.
• 11:52
  David McClelland: More on that in due course.
• 11:54
  David McClelland: But for now, from all of us here, bye bye.