I thought putting together a new website would be tricky, getting the wording right, putting together packages for things like portraits, weddings and commercial photography, but little did I realise how hard selecting the photos was going to be.

I’ve decided to aim for the Wedding, Portrait, Autombile and Architecture markets as a starter for 10 – a the former are probably where the money’s at, the latter being things I actually enjoy doing. So you look back through 4 years of work and suddenly realise how much you’ve shot in that time. I got the 5D on the 27th feb 2006 and have probably shot on average 100 shots a day since! So the sheer bulk of what you need to look over is quite outfacing.

Then you realise that your photography has changed over time – both in style, subject and processing. In 2006/2007 I had the saturation slider to the max, lots of landscapes and a few weddings to fish shots from. So do you use shots from the past which you are pretty happy with, but know you’d not shoot any more? It’s tough one to answer, so I’ve copied shots to a new folder ready to get critical on!

I think the next big problem is that the site I’m building is hopefully going to get people to buy stuff off me or hire my services… so you really have to take a step back and look at it objectively, which is something I’ve not really done before. When you’re taking shots as a hobby, even as a semi-pro, I don’t think what you put on your website is that critical as your mortgage doesn’t depend on it – on my current website, I’ve got stacks of shots of people getting drunk, and to my mates that’s the best part of the site! So now it’s case of whittling down to a few shots of each genre that portray where I’m going… so do I just pluck from the last year or last 6 months even? Tricky.

The other thing I’ve noticed, as I’m looking at the older photos as “normal” people see them – moments in time, nostalgia, seeing people I’ve not seen for ages, and it’s quite refreshing as I usually look at shots as a photographer would and am more concerned about the composition and lighting! I remember taking them, it was a period when I was out most nights learning new things every day, trying anything and everything just to see what works. A lot of duffs of course, but I kinda miss that childlike wonderment you get when you’re new to something.

Ah well, the nostalgia must continue I guess – 2007, here I come!

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Well are you? As I sat here on a cold winter’s day, watching the snow fall outside, I got to thinking, always a dangerous thing to do. I was thinking about technical aspirations and what we are sometimes missing.  All too often the drive for technique and mastering a set of skills can have a negative effect on your photographs. How so? Well, obsessing about technique and the perfect f-stop to use for a given lens can start to limit us into a formula, one that gets applied rigorously to all our shots. Whilst they might have technical perfection, and beauty, they become a monotony of the same shots. We stop thinking about what’s in front of us and more about technique, and so  the connection with the subject (and so in turn with the viewer) wilts and fades into the background. This is aptly demonstrated on the photo forums that populate the internet. A concentration on technique, rather than narrative and content, dominates. Even those that you would think would know better fail to appreciate content and narrative (or see its importance), instead they seem to think in terms of technique only.

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 say that I have a very strong dislike of using a camera with a screen instead of a viewfinder would be an understatement! I find them an obstacle to getting an image.  I’ve always said that the job of a camera is to not get in the way of taking a photo. Some technical limitations, handling/size issues make using certain kit hard or near impossible for certain tasks, and for me using a screen instead of a viewfinder almost always will do that.

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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Have you ever felt that your photographic mojo has been lost? I know I have, yes I can still go out and take pictures, but that spark just isn’t there… And you don’t know how to get it back.

I’ve been in that situation a few times, the images are technically good, but I just feel they are empty and lacking any passion. One of the things that I’ve discussed with the Real Mark Scholey several times is ways to rediscover that passion and drive; and our conversations always come back to shooting a project. Sounds easy doesn’t it, that’s what I thought.

Setting out with the idea of a project, you can’t just think of a subject and shoot it. It actually takes quite a bit of planning, especially if your goal is to produce a body of work at the end of it for a book or a small gallery exhibition. It takes time, and lots of thinking, planning, re-planning, adapting the project as you progress it. But one thing it does for me, is hand me the passion for creating art again.

And project planning is just what I’m starting now after a period of feeling a little flat and jaded with my own photography. The results of which shall be shared on these very pages!

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All too often we look at the photography that we produce in the small term. The single photograph, the small portrait sitting, a day out shooting or a full wedding shoot. Even working at a project, it often has defined parameters and an end point, it’s not often we consider the full output of our productivity and what people will look back on it and think.

© Vivian Maier, Courtesy of John Maloof

Those of us that cover weddings or family events will usually know that their work is appreciated during the subjects lifetime. What happens to it afterwards? Will it become part of the family photo history, brought on on rare occasions as people are rifling through a drawer, looking for a specific photo or document?

All photographs, and genres of photography have a different values and to a certain extent a “lifespan”. Indeed, many photographs will have their value fluctuate as time passes. Take for example, wedding photographs. These will be immediately valuable to the couple and their immediate family, but once they have passed on the value will drop, apart from maybe one or two of the photos held dear by their children. Once we have passed that generation their value will more be of a record of the “times” in which the photo was taken, the styles of dress, fashion and rituals of the time. This is not to make light of wedding photography in any way (I have and do cover those events), but merely an observation and musings on the lifespan of  photographs.

What brought me to this? Well I recently stumbled upon the works of Vivian Maier. The blog of her work is run by John Maloof who acquired her work in an auction, some 30-40,000 negatives,  many of them undeveloped. He’s had a great and inspirational experience looking through, and developing the films in the collection.

To see such a large body of work, devoid of a commercial angle or bent is interesting. You are seeing through the photographer’s eye without the wishes of the client having any impact. This appeals to me, mainly as I have had several discussion with family and friends over the years, about what I’m “Going to do with my photography”. With a lot of it centering around people not understanding my reluctance to make money from what I do. It’s not from a lack of aptitude, or from a lack of confidence, but from what I want to cover/show and how I feel, mainly that the work I want to cover  is not something that’s going to be commercially viable, and a commercial aspect could get in the way of the meaning behind those photographs.

© Vivian Maier, Courtesy of John Maloof

I’m interested in the non-commercial aspect of photography, the documentary and telling of a story unfettered by commercial concerns.  This comes back to looking at the parameters to your work. There is the real danger that without any parameters or goals a life’s work can become formless and hard to manage. 40,000 negs is a lot of images to catalogue, edit and narrow down! Imagine how bad it can be these days with the numbers of digital images that we take! Vivian Maier’s work appears to have avoided this, she has a strong vision and central theme, one that is communicated excellently through her archive. Her work centers around the streets of Chicago and New York, and the people that inhabit them.  It is a good example to look at as inspiration for work driven by a vision and goal.

Looking back at the shots you have taken, will you be happy with your “life’s work”? Are you happy with what you have shot to date? I feel I’m on the right tracks, in a few cases I’m shooting what I want to shoot and, where possible, working to doing more of that. Do I want fame and money? Surprisingly, no.

Ok, an exhibition in a major gallery would be nice, it’s always nice to have your ego boosted like that, but it’s not why I do what I do. I enjoy the act of photography, and I like the idea of a comprehensive and impressive body of work* that’s driven by what I want to cover.That is what I’m aiming for, with a few side goals where individual projects are concerned of course.!

*it still needs some work admittedly

If you have yet to browse Vivian’s work then do so, there’s a lot of inspiration to be had there.

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The Press Photographer’s Year (PPY) is a competition open to all press photographer’s working in the UK (or outside the UK for UK-based publications) and showcases some of the very best editorial photography around. The 2009 award-winning entries have recently been chosen and you can now view them all on the PPY’s website.

There are some incredibly inspiring shots on there, not to mention winners from previous years to browse through if you have the time.

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Always on the lookout for inspiration, Mark has recently perfected a new lens, whilst not on holiday in Cornwall:

Tilt-Shift Lens from James Burns on Vimeo.

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A friend sent me this video:

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

When I was in Utah  I saw a  night sky like I never had before… and I so wish I had done something similar to this, next time! Night photography is something that has always interested me. I must get out and do some more.  It is worth checking out the HD version on Vimeo.

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