Here are a few images from some lifestyle test shoots I've been up to in the past few weeks. My set-up for them was very portable and lightweight - a Canon full-frame body, 70-200mm lens and a single diffused flashgun. Models were Vicki @ MD and Rachel @ Base.

In a few spare moments I had in London over the last few days, I headed west of the centre to find some quiet mews streets for a location shoot later this month. Well, I was in luck! It's amazing that only a few minutes walk from the crazy hustle and bustle of the Kings Road and Knightsbridge are these time-warp locations with no traffic. The cobbles and old houses have so much character. It's absolutely vital to scout out potential locations before a shoot - it allows the day to run more smoothly and makes sure you get the very best images!

Here are some snaps to jog my memory:

Here are some of my favourite frames from yesterday's shoot with Mareaka.

I thought I'd let the dust settle a little after the latest chapter in the stock photography story, as the stock photography giant, Getty Images, opened its doors to the masses. Now I feel it may be time to make my contribution to the discussion.

There has been a great deal of buzz (e.g. A Photo Editor and Bohemian) surrounding this latest news in a couple of years that has seen Getty morph from a 'by invitation only' top-end agency to a crowd-sourcing photo seller. 

Originally a photographer would, once proven in the industry, be invited to contribute to a Getty house collection, be assigned a Getty editor and work directly with them. In 2008 Getty decided to make the big jump and tap into the enormous commercial resource which is the billion+ image strong Flickr photo site. This involved editors inviting photographers to provide specific photos exclusively for the Flickr collection. Reports suggest that this was plagued by editors being swamped with submissions and therefore editing turnaround was very slow. Finally, in the past days this relationship between Getty and Flickr's top photographers (pro and amateur) has made way for a mass-participation policy whereby any image on Flickr can be requested by photo buyers. Many photographers have complained that the slice paid to the photographer (as low as 20%) is unfair due to the negligible marketing effort Getty puts into these 'request' sales.

When I first stepped into the world of commercial photography in 2004 aged eighteen and gained my first agent, it was a very different landscape. Digital cameras were only just starting to replace film as the work-horse of a professional. Everything just seemed a lot slower and less manic. Stock was still an area few hobbyist photographers had even heard of - placing your images with a library and waiting for them to be licensed (not sold - subtly different) for either editorial or commercial use. It required, and still does, high levels of technical skill as the images need to be suitable for any use, even up to bill-board size.

Summarising the change over the past six years is a tricky task, especially since the stock industry had barely changed for the twenty years beforehand. That was the world of stock houses holding duplicate transparencies and sending clients CDs or slides of images to choose from. Stock photographers were professionals, mostly full-time, and in far shorter supply than today. Now, anyone with an SLR camera can play - but to what end?

So what do the major players in the photo library industry; the photo buyers, photo agencies and photographers each want out of the deal?

Photo buyers: Cheap prices, high quality, option for exclusivity on image, bulk discounts, quick and easy deal completion.

Photo agencies: Large quantities of images, high return per image sold, low overheads for sourcing and selling photographs.

Photographers: Limited competition with other photographers, royalties which reflect the cost incurred in creating photographs, ease for selection and upload of photographs to agency.

Clearly these conflicting motives do not lend to each party being able to have an optimum outcome. The truth of the matter is that there are thousands of photographers and only a handful of major photo stock houses such as Getty Images, Corbis, Photolibrary and Alamy.

Photo buyers are likely to be sure-fire winners in this constantly changing marketplace as the prices endlessly drop and choice expands. Their only annoyance may be that due to the recent oversupply of very average images, they have to wade through more to find the high-value gems.

Agencies, but only the large ones, also win. Smaller agencies are instead outcompeted and engulfed as they struggle to keep up with instant download and fulfilment of 21st century stock. Getty, Corbis and the other giants appropriate hundreds of smaller libraries to increase the size of their collection and gain a near monopoly. This power leads to an ability to give photographers a 'take-it or leave-it' decision on contracts which leave photographers with as little as 20% of sales. Serious photographers really can't do anything except give in as they feel they have to sell through Getty etc. or perish. Niche photographers can still work with the top-quality specialist survivors such as OSF (who are owned and allowed to exist as before by Photolibrary, another giant).

Very much at the bottom of the pile therefore are the photographers. Many years ago there were two content and happy groups of photographers; professionals who fed their families with the money made from selling photographs and there were hobbyists/amateurs. Both loved taking photos but for totally different reasons. The professionals had the pressure of having indemnity insurance etc., maintaining a good reputation and always having their 'commercial head' on. Now there is little or no distinction between the two in many people's eyes - anyone can market their work as stock, often through atrocious contracts offered by microstock agencies (who sell image licenses for below $1). An amateur sees this tiny annual accumulation of earnings as pocket money but takes hundreds of thousands of dollars of work from a professional. You can't blame photo buyers for this - they are simply getting a better deal. Neither should amateur photographers selling their work for nothing be vilified - they are often totally oblivious to what they're agreeing to.

This principle from stock is now spilling over, even more worryingly, into the assignment photography business as weekend snappers offer to shoot weddings etc. for $200 or even free. Only when the happy couple find the flaws in this 'bargain' - no professional insurance, no-shows, terrible results - it is too late. This can result in a certain bitterness from the pro photographers who lose out.

One positive to be taken from the latest agreement between Flickr and Getty is that it's another nail in the coffin, in the commercial photo world at least, for the unfair and devaluing Creative Commons movement by the 'everything should be free' brigade. It does not however stop full-time stock photographers from coming under siege from all directions.

All being said - there is no point in, as a photographer, harking back to the 'good old days'. They are gone and crowd-sourcing in the creative industry is here to stay. Photography as a profession has always been about being both an artist and a businessman and this has never been more relevant. We must instead look to the future, try and predict future changes, and evolve with them. We must try and stay ahead of the curve, rather than react to it. Quality, original photography delivered on-time and on-budget with a smile will, or should, always reign supreme. What do you think?

A photograph and a video are very different beasts. 

In the modern age of digital and online media however, the line between still image and movie is ever-blurring. Most professional photographers accept, some slightly unwillingly, that they will have to embrace the rise of online video or sink below the water. This is due in part to new high-speed internet which can allow anyone to stream high-definition video to their laptop, Mac, iPad or even mobile phone. People like moving images - they can send an information-rich message far more quickly than text and in a far more entertaining manner. 

Video is also enormously flexible. You can use it to tell a narrative or communicate a concept:

There is however a stark fact that confuses this photographer-videographer-fusing steamroller. Videos are very different to photographs. The skills and talents that make a photographer great at his or her art do not always translate to the world of motion film. I noticed this whilst researching a promotional video I needed made to promote my speaking profile. It is just not possible to cobble together a professional-looking sequence with an HD camera and iMovie unless you have experience and the right intuition. I therefore enlisted the skills of someone who did.

A photographer, when constructing their image, needs to use a very limited toolbox to convey a great deal. They have no movement or sound at their disposal - only a single, still image. Even a photo-essay sequence helps very little. They must communicate their story in that one photograph - distilling time and multiple elements into it. One great benefit of this, and the reason why I take photographs instead of make films, is that your audience can take their time and ponder each part of the image. The part of the image that you looking at is not suddenly whisked away from in front of your eyes and replaced with something else, as with video. It is a great skill, and one that few have mastered, to tell a story and convey a concept or character with this neat and simple medium.

On the other hand, videographers can indulge themselves in the movement and use both that and sound to tell their story. If you randomly freeze a video in any position and look at it in isolation, very few would stand up well as a still image (Vincent Laforet is a possible exception).

My thoughts are therefore: if you are a photographer, take great photographs. There will always be a demand for a still image, regardless of technical developments and the newest web-craze. If you are a videographer, make great videos and embrace the incredible developments that are taking place now. Just five years ago, the thought of having a camera with excellent quality 1080p HD footage and shallow depth-of-field control for £700 would have been ludicrous.

If you're talented at both, well you're very lucky.