Enjoy!

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FWAPhoto is  a photo a day project with a difference, it is not one submitter but many, and so has a constant rich vein of photographic talent to draw from. You can even submit your own work to the project. It’s definitely  a site worth browsing with a fresh hot cup of Java and some time to kill.

Not quite a 365, but  a few of us set up a 31 day photo challenge that we’ve talked about before. It’s coming to a close soon and has been fun to participate in and see what everyone has produced. Seeing how a group event differs from the very personal 365 exploration has been interesting and informatinve.  I know a few, including Matt, are hoping to make it a 365 experience.. let’s hope they can. For me, I’m thinking about it again.. maybe this time I will finish the task.

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I really like this video: Today

It has a nice warm feel, and the transitions of facial expression makes you think and is also capabable of giving you a dose of the warm and fuzzies, if you let it. I think it is the transition of emotions and the question of “what made them smile?” that really helps you connect with this, along with the very well selected soundtrack.  Watching with and withoutaudio, shows how important the right choice of audio is for pieces like this. The new DSLR cameras with their video capability are going to open up opportunities in portraiture,  the moving portrait can be very engaging. Hmmm anyone got a 5D2 they want to loan me?

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Here are a couple of good links for you: cold snap across the globe,  from The Frame by the  Sacramento Bee and the Harbin Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, via the Big Picture at the Boston Globe, which also has this Snowy Scenes compilation.

Enjoy the white stuff.

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This is the problem I have with one of the masters of photography, Ansel Adams.  Whilst there is no doubting his expertise and technical prowess, I feel that such things actually hinder his images. In my early days of discovering photography, I held his work in high esteem; the skill was something to aspire to, however, as I learnt more my interest in his photographs waned. Why did this happen? Well, I began to see a sterility in his work, Adams’s assertion that: “We can have craft without art, but we cannot have art without craft” was a double edged sword. His rigorous application of his craft actually becomes a barrier to interacting with the photographs he produced. When viewing his images all you can hear is his voice and expression. The technique overpowers and sublimates the narrative in the image; you end up looking at the technique, not the subject. To me, this makes his work like propaganda, there is no debate/dialogue with his work, you either agree with it or you don’t. I’m not saying that something has to be flawed to have a narrative, it can help yes, but the content of the image should be the main point of focus (sorry) not the technique you use. As I’m forever telling clients at work when they are asking us to create a ‘successful website’, “Content is king”. Without it, you can have the most well designed, thought out site, but if there’s nothing there for the user to engage with, well you might as well not bother. When you can marry technique and content you get some wonderful work such as that of Jack Spencer.

This engagement with the viewer is something that TV companies have recognised, the draw that reality TV shows have. Despite the lack of polish and to some extent content, there is a narrative there that draws in the viewer, inviting the viewer to be part of the story itself.

This engagement with the viewer got me to thinking about portraits. Taking for example the Taylor-Wessing portrait prize (was Schweppes portrait prize), every year a common theme amongst the shots chosen, is bored looking teenagers staring off into the middle distance. There are rarely any genuinely happy looking portraits. Why is this? Well I think it does come down to engagement and narrative. A neutral or pained expression seems to draw in the viewer, it throws up questions and scenarios. Whereas a happy expression seems to act like a block to that, we don’t question them as much.  For some reason the darker emotions speak to us more strongly, we empathise and feel compassion for those that appear to be troubled or in extreme circumstances, yet seem to dismiss those that are happier. Lets bring back happiness into portraiture, but do it so that people engage more; it’s not easy but something that would in itself be rewarding.

Can you do that?

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To make things awkward for myself, I was shooting on film, and mostly the 45mm Tilt and Shift, so Manual Focus on a reasonably fast paced event. Had a great time and good to have a play with film again,  some Kodak Tri-X 400 and Ilford Delta 3200 (super grainy!).

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Nonja is  an orangutan at Vienna Zoo, that has been given a specially modified camera. It dispenses a raisin every time she presses the shutter and then uploads that picture automatically. Hmm I sometimes think some people need a camera that delivers an electric shock to make them think about what they’re taking and is it worth the pain? (me included sometimes).

Nonja has a Facebook page too, there’s some interesting shots there and worth a browse through, and a fair few that have a composition device that i really like namely:breaking the frame.

From PetaPixel.

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There are several issues to a screen, a refresh lag, as what you see has to be processed via the camera’s on-board processor and then displayed to you, so by the time you see something on the screen that moment has passed, making it harder to capture a specific moment. However, for me the bigger obstacle is how we interact with a screen in comparison to a viewfinder. It can be boiled down to a simple phrase: We look through a viewfinder, we look at a screen.

While using a screen it is invariably held away from the face, by about a foot (or more if you are an arm length shooter). What this means is that our attention is focused down onto the screen (we look at it) rather than the scene we are trying to photograph. The screen holds our attention in a way similar to a television, especially the bigger brighter screens they are almost worse for this than the small screens on old compacts. The proximity of the screen to our face also means that when we want to look at the subject properly we have to shift the camera and wait for our eyes to refocus, slowing things down.  The viewfinder, on the other hand, is something we look through and as such does not get in our way. We observe what is going on, without having our attention distracted by looking at a small object in our hands. The camera becomes more of an extension of ourselves, part of our vision, allowing us to focus our attention on the subject we wish to photograph rather than the physical object in our hands that has to be observed and monitored.

The use of the screen on compacts, is one thing that I find frustrating, as I search for a decent digital rangefinder equivalent, oh how I wish i had the cash for a leica M9. The new micro 4/3 compacts are very promising, especially those that have an electronic view finder as well as a screen on the back. Having had a quick play with the Panasonic GF1 and it’s viewfinder I found it ok, but not great. Like all EVFs there is still the lag on what you see, making you have to adjust your shooting style more, and it was a little small and low-res. The new EP2 is interesting with it’s EVF which i thinks is a better size and resolution. For those compacts that are aimed at a photographers market more than just a mass consumer one, I wish that the companies would introduce a decent optical viewfinder, especially on the cameras like the Ricoh GR-D, which has a fixed lens, so should be even easier!

All this said, I do have a bit of a fascination with screens also. The proliferation of camera phones, and digital compacts has created something of an obsession for me, taking pictures of other people taking pictures, but at the same time, seeing what they are looking at. When I’m out at fairs or parades I seem to have some sort of compulsion to capture these tiny views of a scene. It’s a love/hate thing.

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I found about Danfung Dennis’s Battle for Hearts and Minds documentary via the picture stories blog. A post over at DSLR shooter has a nice piece on his setup and some of the issues that he faced in the heat of Afghanistan, the lack of AF, once filming, must be a nightmare in the highly mobile and changeable situation he was in.

A trailer for the documentary is below:

An interview with Danfung Dennis, by PBS, can be seen here and more of his videos are available on Vimeo.

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