RUNNING BARE

Trevor Lansdown talks to Aggie McGuinness about her running passion

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A year later she had learnt the discipline of shooting fast on a job that can’t be re-shot, and started fulfilling wedding commissions on her own.

Aggie had also found the time to broaden her photo-experience by assisting photographers in London and Manchester. “I assisted a female food photographer but I remember her studio was about four floors up – and she said she couldn’t take me on because she wasn’t sure I could carry up all the crockery props that were necessary.”

Then came a turning point in Aggie’s colourful career.

She submitted 10 images (from one of her degree projects) in the North West Photography Exhibition – and found she was the only entrant to have all 10 selected. In the event, Granada TV ran a 15-minute documentary on her work and later The National Portrait Gallery bought several images from her portfolio.

Her work was showcased at Oldham Art Gallery and ‘Aggie’s education’ seemed complete when she was offered teaching jobs at Manchester University and the Thameside College.

She recalls: “A move into teaching seemed sensible at the time because the recession was hitting hard. I did keep my hand in with some freelance photography but threw myself wholeheartedly into teaching students from 16 years old up to MA level”.

But money was hard to come by. A divorce left Aggie bringing up two children on her own. Ever-resourceful, she talked Thameside College into letting her write a new HND course – which in turn created a fulltime job.

She says: “All went well until the Labour Government came in and students started losing their grants. Then all the fun – and money – went out of teaching.”

Aggie met, married and moved in with John – a company director and photography enthusiast. Six years ago they set about converting an old cowshed on his farm into a state-of-the-art photo studio.

Says Aggie: “We both got stuck in with sledgehammers and paint brushes and finished it in six months.” Aggie picked up a number of awards and her work started to feature in newspapers and magazines. “The truth is I am a people’s photographer. I shoot both in the studio and around the farm’s extensive grounds – and also on location. But the overall mission with every shoot is to make it a life experience for the client. We allocate everyone a two-hour appointment at the cowshed (It’s actually called Lancaster Studio) – and it’s all very relaxed. We are not a production line and we don’t have queues. We take time to let people prepare for the shoot – let them feed babies, change clothes, etc. If someone is late we can always fit them in. Before I can start shooting I create a rapid psychological profile of the client. I need to empathise with sitters before I can attempt to capture who they really are. It’s all about developing trust.”

Customers at Burned House Lane, Preesall pay a booking fee, which is refunded in full when they turn up. And there is no pressure to buy anything.

“The work sells itself,” says Aggie, “We don’t hard-sell. We never have to.”

The ‘cowshed’ experimented with digital in 2001and the business was fully converted two years later.

“The tipping point for us was when we realised the quality we were getting back from the labs from the medium-format Hasselblad was no better than that from the new digital SLRs.”

Aggie is a believer in ‘honest’ photography – not too much Photoshop manipulation.

“I don’t mind deleting a few crow’s feet here and there,” she admits, “but I believe it’s important to stay real. If you don’t then what you are producing isn’t photography, it’s graphic art.”

Earlier this year Aggie was approached by the Blackpool branch of the Women’s Running Network to shoot (for no fee) a 2007 calendar – ‘Women Running Bare.’

She explains: “It’s a similar idea to the now famous ‘Calendar Girls’ story…but this time it’s about women who are literally running out of clothes!” The ladies want to raise money for a cancer charity and aim to sell 10,000 calendars at £8.50 a time.

Says Aggie: “I thought we might have trouble with egos but I was wrong. None of the girls had any modelling experience – and let’s face it, it’s a very big thing to start taking your clothes off in public. But they did it. Time was critical. Many were very shy and wanted it done as fast as possible…so one of the biggest challenges was getting them to relax. It was really as much to do with people skills as it was photography.”

The brief required Aggie to illustrate the multifarious aspects of the running discipline, so she worked with the running group’s Blackpool branch organiser, Tricia Ellis, to source appropriate locations; a running track, a wooded glade, a beach, even a swimming pool (swimming helps build stomach muscles, which help develop running skills).

She says, “The women came from all walks of life; one was a civil servant, one a medical secretary, one worked at Sainsbury’s, another was a bank clerk, another, a cook.”

Aggie knew she had to make the shots work first time so she summoned all the runners to her studio for a special ‘calming session’ before the shoots started.

“I’d say this was one of the most difficult shoots I’ve ever attempted,” she confesses. “Some of the runners were literally shaking with fear and trepidation. We spent a long time talking through their angst. And it wasn’t just the challenge of calming the women down. On each of the location portraits I had to get the timing right to take advantage of available natural light. But the women did everything I asked of them. They were brilliant”.

She recalls, “The only question mark in the whole shoot was on Blackpool beach at 4 am one morning. I thought we’d have the beach to ourselves but we were ‘stalked’ by some guy in an anorak who seemed to have a very unhealthy interest in the shoot.”

Aggie’s ‘Miss October’ won a merit award in the SWPP June 2006 judging.

She says: “I was delighted to win an award for one of the calendar images. The sad fact is that so many competitions judged by men would have marginalised these women for failing to have the stereotypical bodies that male society has been conditioned to see in ‘beauty contests’ and on the pages of Vogue magazine. For me the aim of photographing these women was to show them at their best, displaying fitness, beauty and strength of character.”

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Photo Quote: The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking. - Brooks Anderson,