Meetings

We are grateful to Roger Tooth, one of our newer members and former picture editor for the Guardian, for an introduction to his friend and colleague, David Levene, who agreed to come to speak to us about his work. David describes himself as a generalist and his presentation illustrated his many talents, including the versatility and flexibility required by a freelance photographer taking commissions and making a living in an increasingly competitive field. 

When the Guardian decided to use their middle pages as an 'Eye Witness' photographic spread, David was excited by the creative possibilities it opened up and travelled widely to make suitable images. He was very successful and between 2005 - 2011, many of those eye catching, full colour, detailed images were his. He welcomed the constraints of front to back focus in epic scenes, from the installations in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall to Sumo wrestling and poker tournaments, usually taking an eye-level viewpoint, in a particular ratio to suit the paper. It was fascinating to hear the details of his planning and visualisation and also of the disappointments and difficulties in always achieving the perfect shot. Often this involved avoiding packs of other photographers and some luck in being in the right place for the light and time to be right, but it was also obvious that persistence, creativity and love of humanity (and tilt-shift lenses) plays an enormous part in David's success.

David talked about how concerns about the climate emergency and budgetary factors are now limiting commissions for travel and newspapers and magazines are relying much more on agencies around the world to send in their images of issues and news. Towards the end of the evening, David showed us some examples of his portraiture, mostly of celebrities, with throw-away anecdotes about how the shoot went and why certain poses or props were involved.

From his archive of images of urban areas, David was invited to put together a book for publication and the structure emerged based on the locations of cities, from east to west across the map of the world. There are details of the book and the wide range of video, drone and other work on his website: https://www.davidlevene.co.uk which is well worth looking at, because in the course of just one session, there just isn't enough time to cover everything about this very humble, successful and passionate photographer.

The meeting was well attended and in the interval, the Tiger Trophy for the winner of September's theme, Crowds, was presented by our Chair, to Richard Eyers for his image 'Legs and Shadows'. Richard will choose the theme for November, whilst October's challenge is to submit images which are suitable for the banner on the front page of our website - still reflecting our London connection, but not necessarily a cityscape.