Gavin Hoey may be a photographer by trade, but he’s a prolific teacher of photography and post-processing who has been openly sharing his knowledge and talent for more than a decade.
Hoey uploaded his first photo-focused instructional YouTube in 2008, and quickly his content found an audience of eager amateurs driven by the growing popularity of photo sharing sites like Flickr. And it wouldn’t be too much longer after that, that Instagram arrived, igniting anew the public’s desire to learn and practice photography skills.
In 2010, Hoey won Adobe’s “Next Photoshop Evangelist” competition and began traveling outside his home studio to host demonstrations of Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and Elements across the UK, Europe, and the United States. Hoey further expanded his teaching and influence in 2016 by becoming a UK ambassador for Olympus Cameras.
While it’s Hoey’s first appearance on Top Photographer, he’s an AdoramaTV veteran. Since 2012, his “Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey” series has been going strong, logging more than 170 episodes on topics as wide-ranging as capturing freeze action water movement and making portraits in a single, small beam of light.
We caught up with Hoey to discuss everything from post-processing naysayers to the challenge of near-constant video tutorial production.
Adorama: Was there a moment you remember first falling in love with photography? Describe it.
Gavin Hoey: I can’t recall a single moment, but I can recall the thrill of the unstoppable tidal wave that washed away my years of darkroom photography and replaced it with Photoshop and, ultimately, digital cameras. It seems unthinkable now, but 20 years ago digital photography was seen as cheating and often discredited. While it’s true that early digital was responsible for some terrible editing, it was also incredibly exciting.
Adorama: What was your first camera, and what is your current go-to gear?
Hoey: My first SLR was a Praktica MTL5B which was a birthday present from my parents. Once I left school and got a full time job I spent my first wage packet on a Minolta Dynax 7000i. Once digital arrived I switched to Fuji, then to Canon, and now shoot with Olympus. A few years back I was lucky enough to be invited to join their visionary/ambassador program, and currently I use an Olympus OMD E-M1 Mark II as my go-to camera.
Adorama: How has the development of your AdoramaTV series, “Take and Make Great Photography with Gavin Hoey,” challenged you? What episode has been the most challenging for you, and why?
Hoey: Making a new AdoramaTV video every other week for the past seven years has been an amazing experience and one I hope continues for a lot longer. I keep thinking that I’ll run out of ideas, but photography is such an amazing thing; there’s always something new to learn. The day I stop learning is the day I should probably stop making educational videos.
The most challenging videos (other then the blind “Portrait Challenge” shoots) are those that are in my studio. The same four walls can look very uninspiring some days.
Useless fact: “Take and make great photography” was never meant to be the title of my videos, it was the name of a camera club talk I was doing at the time and, for reasons long since lost in the mists of time, it became attached to my videos.
Adorama: You often photograph individuals engaged in alternative culture, such as steampunk, circus, cosplay, folkloric, and others. What interests you about capturing portraits of fringe subculture?
Hoey: I do enjoy shooting portraits that have a more theatrical feel, but if you’re looking for some sort of deeper meaning of recording subculture or alternative lifestyles, you’re looking far too deep. I just enjoy the process of transforming my small home studio into somewhere else, dressing scenes and working with models who will go along with my random ideas without thinking I’m completely crazy.
Adorama: You’re very strong on the benefits of post-processing, but what would you say to photographers who eschew Photoshop/Lightroom/etc with the belief that it impacts the authenticity of an image?
Hoey: The “straight out of camera” photographers have a valid point. If I can avoid re-touching an image by tweaking something in camera, I generally will. That said, EVERY photo I shoot will have some post processing even if it’s a bit of noise reduction and white balance tweaking on the RAW files. Where the “never retouch” mantra falls down is: all photos are processed to a certain degree by the camera profiles. Colour, contrast, shadow and highlight detail are processed effects that happen when you press the shutter. Just because you choose not to adjust them doesn’t mean they don’t happen.
Adorama: What’s the most unusual prop you’ve made use of for a portrait, and is there anything you’d love to shoot with, but it just wouldn’t or hasn’t worked out?
Hoey: Sam, my wife, is the mastermind behind most of the ideas and props you’ll see in my AdoramaTV videos or at my workshops. I tend to do the bigger items. I turned some Ikea shelving into a knife-throwing board for a circus workshop, made a hexagonal box large enough for a model to pose in, and recently made a frame for a large make-up mirror, complete with 10 bulbs around the outside.
One thing that I brought, but never used, on AdoramaTV, is a massive blue parachute. We did try it out and found it had two major issues. First, it needed a constant, but light breeze to inflate and, second, when it did inflate, a light breeze would most likely pull a model off their feet and a strong gust could see them disappearing off into the distance.
Adorama: Where has teaching photography and editing techniques taken you in your career so far? Where haven’t you gone yet but desperately want to, and is there anywhere you wouldn’t go?
Hoey: I teach photography all over the UK, where I live. As part of the Olympus UK ambassador team, I’ve run workshops in some amazing locations, such as a decommissioned prison, vintage circus, lido swimming pool, and an amazing neon sign museum in London, to name just a few. I’ve also been lucky enough to visit the Adorama store in NYC a few times and speak at events in New York, such as the PhotoPlus expo and Adorama Inspire events. A few years back I oh-so-nearly got to speak at WPPI in Las Vegas but, for various reasons, I couldn’t get there. Having never been to Vegas, it’s somewhere I’d love to experience.
Adorama: If you could photograph one person from history, who would it be and why them?
Hoey: If time travel was a thing, I’d be totally selfish and go back and visit my granddad during his tour of duty, flying Lancasters in 1943. I love photographing aircraft and often volunteer my photography services for the local aviation museum, so to be able to go back and photograph the real deal would be amazing. Plus, he survived his tour of duty, so I guess me and my camera would have a fair chance of making it back intact!
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