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Last night I was asked to photograph the opening of a new eponymous restaurant called “Shaun Dickens at the Boathouse in Henley”, this request followed a successful food and product shoot for their launch website which I undertook a few weeks ago.

However, none of this would have happened without social media and specifically Twitter.

The power of social media never ceases to amaze me by producing the most unexpected and exciting results. Knowing that the time spent online talking with people whose interest may never require your service can seem wasteful, but when it works it can produce spectacular results.

I first met Shaun when he was head chef at Fallowfields Country House Hotel, whose owner, Anthony Lloyd was one of my Twitter friends and where he prepared a magnificent array of dishes to be photographed, but I had no idea how the future would develop.

When I discovered on Twitter and Facebook that Shaun was leaving Fallowfields, I really didn’t give it much thought, until a direct message dropped into my Twitter feed from Shaun asking me if I’d shoot some pictures to illustrate his website for Shaun Dickens at the Boathouse in Henley, his new restaurant, which I readily agreed to do.

Opening a new business is always fraught with delays and obstacles and true to form, despite having an opening date set, the legal completion was delayed, so our first scheduled shoot was deferred over a weekend, but even on Monday morning very little was ready for photography and the kitchens were certainly not ready to be pictured, let alone have food prepared in them.

Shaun, Abi Hough the website designer and I were in agreement that the only way we were going to get the website up and running by the opening date was to shoot what we could on that day and arrange a further session the following Friday.

The change was dramatic the kitchens were sparkling and the food spectacular which meant we could get all the remaining shots done for Abi to start working on and despite having a holiday booked she managed to get the site up in plenty of time.

So last night the culmination of everyone’s hard work produced the glamorous moment when special culinary, celebrity guest Raymond Blanc owner of Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons officially opened Shaun’s new venture and began what we all hope will be new and exciting place to eat and be seen in Henley on Thames.

If you have a new product or venture you need photographing, I’d be delighted to help build your glamour moment so call me at info@mikesamuelsphotography.co.uk

Then please sign up for my monthly newsletter – this month about how to take better auction site pictures.

Yes, uploading personal or professional images to their website is our choice and if their Ts & Cs attempt to take away our copyright, we also have the choice not to take part.

But changing the rules after people have already submitted their pictures does not give them the right to snatch away our creativity and certainly doesn’t entitle them to make a profit from them.

If the likes of Cartier Bresson, Ansel Adams or any of our other pioneering photographers had been alive in the 21^st Century they would certainly have embraced the new digital techniques and multitude of ways in which images can be presented, viewed and shared, delighting in the flexibility of Flickr, Facebook, Google, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter to name a few.

None of the great artists, photographers and designers would have accepted the theft of their intellectual property by some of these media behemoths and they too would have been forced to reconsider the safety of releasing their pictures to the digital world.

It’s many years since the BBC in the UK snatched the rights to any pictures submitted to them whether for competitions, weather pictures or as news photos sent in by viewers.

Many innocent amateur photographers keen to see their pictures on screen sacrifice their rights by freely giving images to the organisation and spectacularly erode one channel of revenue for the professional freelance who once made money from speculative submissions.

The photo scoop is no more, thanks to mobile phones and other digital capture devices every one of us is now a potential news photographer, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, because it has opened up the world to the immediacy of drama, tragedy and happiness, but the ease with which publishers now take away the commercial value of creativity is an extremely worrying trend.

As a professional photographer I am now cautious of where I submit my pictures; living in a world where legal boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred and with territorial copyright laws no longer effective there is no room for complacency.

The mighty National Geographic have signalled their disquiet by considering whether to retain an Instagram presence and the so called celebrity market are leaving for fear of the unrestricted impact the loss of control of their images could have.

Organisations like Facebook have the belief that the creativity of the human brain is theirs by right. Surely, the time has arrived when the might of all creative minds both visual and auditory, demands recognition for their skills and cannot have their intellectual rights usurped on a whim.

The wood burns brightly

I first watched ‘firewalking’ in 1962 on a black and white television during one of David Attenborough’s early wildlife documentaries when he visited a remote tribe who used it as a right of passage into adult life.

How could anyone walk on red hot coals without burning the soles off their feet? To a twelve year old this was quite extraordinary and I have to say left a question in my mind which has never gone away.

50 years on I now know the answer, because I’ve done it and it’s all thanks to business networking and a chance meeting with Tracey Miller and her partner George Swift who run a motivation and coaching business called Bigger, Brighter, Bolder.

I suppose we all have a ‘bucket list’ and meeting up with Tracey has given me the chance to cross something off mine and experience a couple of the most exhilarating moments of my life.

When she told me that George was a qualified Firewalking instructor I needed to know more and that’s why I ended up sitting in a room with seven other ‘mad fools’ at the Regency Park Hotel in Thatcham in a seminar that would culminate in walking across red hot coals.

As we sat and listened and self analysed our reasons for being there and what we wanted to get out of the experience, George took us through an emotional roller coaster of highs and lows of our lives and how these influence self esteem and confidence building.

Raking over the coals

After about 2 hours we all went outside to see the fire being lit and begin to understand the magnitude of what was going to happen.

Back inside we were all mentally prepared for the firewalk but George had another challenge for us before the big one, each one of us would break an archer’s arrow simply by placing the point in the soft part of your throat with the other end wedged against a block of wood and walking onto it. Testing how strong the shaft of this arrow was by placing it between two hands and pushing was quite alarming especially when I realised the metal point would be in the most vulnerable part of my neck.

It seemed strange putting on protective goggles to save my eyes from damage when I was about to stab myself in the throat but in fact we all successfully met the challenge without injury.

With time now ticking and the fire outside reaching its hottest point the time had arrived to face the great challenge.

A mound of red hot embers greeted us and James, one of George’s fellow instructors, began to prepare the fire bed by shovelling these onto the turf. Still glowing red, a laser directed thermometer checked the temperature and gave a reading of 1300 degrees Celsius.

The fire awaits

The moment had now arrived and carefully following our instructions, one by one we walked confidently over the coals, about 4 steps, into the supporting arms of George and having any pieces of ash rinsed of with a hose.

What did it feel like, my memory was not of heat but of the sort of crunch you get walking on deep snow, yet I had walked over red hot coals which by now were around 800 degrees and still had skin on my feet and no blisters.

Knowing I may not get the opportunity again, I walked a second time and in fact when fresh coals from the fire were added to bring the temperature back up I walked a third time and myself a sneaky look down at my feet on the red glowing coals, to see what I was doing.

I walk the coals

This was a truly momentous challenge and the empowerment I achieved with that first step onto the coals cannot be adequately described in words.

How could I have expected when six years ago my good friend Nigel Morgan of Morgan PR introduced me to the power of business networking for my commercial photography business it would have led me to achieve something so personally amazing.

With special thanks to Tracey, George and James who made this happen.

The broken arrow and my certificate

Is this what Google really think about their customers or should they be more aware of hand gestures and how they are interpreted?

Nearly all professional photographers will have encountered the character in the back row of a group shot casually giving a two fingered salute which sometimes escapes the eagle eye of the editor and gets published but this slip by Google illustrates how important it is to check your pictures and videos before you publish them.

Some people use their hands in an expressive way and used properly this can be a powerful addition to any visual presentation but we need to be aware of how these movements are seen by the viewer.

When I first looked at  this video my unconscious mind was suddenly jolted by what I thought I’d seen on screen; now some would say any offence is in the eye of the beholder and maybe my mind is not as clean as it might be, but I can’t be alone in being momentarily shocked by what I thought Google was saying to me.

The lesson from this has to be make sure you examine any picture or video carefully before you publish, and always get several other people to look at it too in case, like me, their minds are not as innocent as they would like.

One Rotten Apple can ruin you

The incredible power of electronic media for recommendation or condemnation can easily make or break a business.

Being a commercial photographer based inWest Berkshire, I understand how important visual impressions are, but these are secondary to the perceptions people get from other sources about the way companies support and assist their customers.

Following my post about British Gas and how they didn’t react to my comments on Twitter, I have since discovered they do have a social media awareness and they do monitor it.

Soon after my ‘tweet’ about them not following up on telephone complaints and asking if anyone knew if British Gas were active on Twitter they ‘tweeted’ me asking how they could help and that if I followed them and sent a Direct Message (DM) with the details of my complaint they would look into it.

Bearing in mind I had waited days to no avail for a telephone call from the British Gas call centre I realised how quickly criticism launched on a public social media platform evoked a reaction.

Now, I’m delighted that with Twitter’s intervention I’ve been able to get my complaint dealt with satisfactorily and agreed a settlement for my lost time, but I have concerns that anyone in business who isn’t keeping their finger on the social media pulse could find their reputation being damaged without them knowing.

If you’re not on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin or don’t have a social media presence , you may never know what people are saying about you on the internet, yet wonder why your product or service isn’t selling and customers seem to be avoiding you.

For this reason alone it’s essential that you monitor key words about your business, even if it’s only the company name, otherwise you could be the last person to know something’s wrong.

We all love recommendation and positive reviews but we must also be aware of malicious comments that can destroy a reputation. How many restaurants and hotels have suffered as a result of bad reviews on sites like Trip Advisor?

We should never forget that as individuals all our tastes are different and what we think is good may be someone else’s worst nightmare; but without knowing what’s being said, what steps can you take to correct any problems. This is why it’s essential that any business that relies on word of mouth recommendation understands and acknowledges the power of electronic media and no matter how large or small has an active policy of monitoring what’s being said about their company.

The greatest photo in the world showing the most fantastic product or service cannot overcome negative perceptions created by words so always listen to what others are saying about you and know how any people working for you are handling complaints.

Image is not just a picture it’s all about looking  after your business and caring  for your customers.