A Moment in Time: INTA Exhibition Photographer

Posted on: 15th July 2024, By Helen Hopper

Among the images on show in the charity exhibition at the recent INTA annual meeting was a photograph titled “Ginza Nights”, by Richard Connor. Richard is the Project Manager at WebTMS and a keen photographer. He has also explored new ways of commercialising photographic work, experimenting with offering non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of his work. We caught up with Richard to learn more about his photographic journey…

How and when did you get into photography?

In 2019, I was lucky enough to spend three weeks in Hong Kong with my then fiancée / now wife; it was a dream trip and also the chance to meet my future family-in-law. I had just upgraded my phone and the cameras were top of the line. I was using it to document the trip, but I quickly became mesmerised by the atmosphere, the architecture, and the way the city was lit up at night. It was like I had been dropped onto the set of Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell. After the trip, I used the web and YouTube to learn how to edit the images properly to draw out the vision I had when I took them. That was it; I bought myself a little Fujifilm X-T30 and a couple of kit lenses and threw myself down the rabbit hole learning all about how the camera worked, lens technology, lighting, etc. I never looked back!

What’s your preferred subject to photograph?

The city streets at night. It’s what drew me into photography to begin with and remains my favourite thing to create images of. That said, I live in a village far away from any significant urban environments, so to scratch the itch, I also love wildlife photography, with frequent visits to the zoo and Hawk Conservancy Trust, which are both within an hour’s drive of home.

What’s the backstory of the image exhibited at INTA? What made you choose it and what do you particularly like about it?

Spend a couple of minutes looking through my portfolio and you’ll see that I love to play with colour; either enhancing what’s already there or injecting something extra to create the mood. During a trip to Japan last year I would frequently head out into the streets in the middle of the night and on one walk came across this salaryman clearly on his way home, a little unsteady after a night out with colleagues. The way he was isolated, with the signs and crowd well behind in the background, reminded me of the poster for the Korean movie Oldboy from the early 2000s. I took the shot and used the edit to inject some colour and subject separation to complete the look. I chose it for the INTA exhibition because if there’s one image that could be considered typical of my style and who I am as a photographer then it would be this one.

Why did you decide to explore NFTs and what has been the result?

This all came about due to Covid and lockdown. When we were all kept indoors that fateful spring of 2020 I wasn’t taking new images, so I was drowning myself in YouTube channels of other photographers I had begun following. A couple of them had talked about Crypto and NFTs broadly and how they were using these digital ownership ‘tokens’ to put their images up on the blockchain to sell for crypto currency. It seemed like a logical connection to me; my night photography is all about conveying cyberpunk or neo-noir scenes, where technology is a big part of those worlds, and NFTs were using technology to turn images into something that even nobodies like me could use to earn a little on the side.

For a couple of years it was fun. I was making enough extra on the side in crypto to invest in new camera gear and take my wife out for a couple of nice meals every month. As NFTs and crypto started to make it to a wider audience, and larger corporations like Nike, Ubisoft and Coca-Cola brought them to the masses, it became much harder for small artists like me to have any impact in the NFT space. Couple that with the (mostly justified) negative public perception and numerous crypto scams in circulation, I just didn’t have the energy to put into it anymore. I’ve kept in touch with some of my fellow artists and photographers, reinvested my remaining crypto, and effectively dropped out of the community. It all just became too toxic.

What are your thoughts on IP in AI and photography?

I’m watching what’s going on with Adobe and their new Ts & Cs around generative AI / image rights / ownership with great interest! The new language effectively seems to give Adobe carte blanche to scan, review and look at any image going through their software stored on the cloud. The suspicion being that they will be using all that to feed into their generative AI mechanics and give them a plethora of content to learn from. That’s one issue, but the big one, of course, is how that affects artists working on projects under NDAs or other sensitive projects that aren’t yet for public consumption.

Interested in more of Richard’s photos? Head over to his website: www.richjcphoto.com