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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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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Of all the photographic magazines out there today, there are very few that I still buy. Yes, they are very formulaic, you can compare this years editions with last years, and lo and behold similar articles and techniques are trotted out. However, one magazine I have stuck with over the years is Black and White photography magazine, although that may be changing, read on….

One thing I always liked about B&W Photography magazine was it’s enjoyment in “the process” and specifically, they had a “printer’s art” section, where a negative of a reader would be printed by a professional printer/photographer. To be honest, despite not having been in a darkroom in a long time, this was one of my favourite parts of the magazine. Why was it so? Well for a start you could see a thought process. The printer would draw over the image, showing how they would dodge/burn or vary the print (and paper) to get the image they were wanting from the neg. You saw a progression, but more importantly you saw what they were thinking…

Over the past year or two the magazine has changed, especially with a staunchly anti-digital editor leaving and it has changed for the worse. Why? Well  it is always interesting to listen to the views of someone who opposes your methodolgy.  The printer’s art now has a digital worker going through the process, sometimes in isolation, but mostly against someone in a darkroom. You know what? The digital version leaves me cold. This is not from some romantic yearning for the days of old, for a darkened room full of chemicals, mostly because I used to be a poor darkroom worker. I like to see what I am working on. Why does it leave me cold? Well that’s easy; it is a lack of thought and process.

Whilst it should be easier to document what you do in a digital workflow… (remember that Print Screen button)… what you often get is a series of settings and numbers, an easy to follow formula rather than a considered approach to the image in front of you.

A wet printer, on the other hand, has to go out of their way to show you what they did, so they create a visual history of their thought process. They will scrawl on a print showing areas that need work to bring out what they want. On an image there is notation of +2 here -3 here with a drawn outline of the area, illustrating how they were seeing an image and notes such as pre-flashed the paper on print 3. This to me is key. With digital, it has become far too easy to show “what we did” and the process of creating an image. In B&W Photography they just show the settings of the adjustment, rather than highlighting which bits need work on, a big mistake. It has been reduced from an art and a thought process into a series of variables that if you know them will lead you into the photographic Nirvana. Two examples of this are Andrzej Dragan, and Dave Hill. Both had a very distinct style and there were many threads across the photographic world (on the Internet) trying to discover their secret… “What settings should I use?” etc etc… As if finding this would unlock a secret. People were looking for that “quick fix” rather than a considered thought out approach. Instead of looking at the process as a whole, with digital there is a fixation on looking for the “right settings” what curves should I apply? Should I use layer blending? What sharpening?

In this printer’s art for the digital version, showing a curves/layers adjustment in PS makes people think, “this is what I should do” and “that’s the formula”. The person working on the image does not show how they “see” the image, we do not get an idea of how they interpret it, and that is a shame, as that is the interesting bit! People look at this as it is easier to quantify than looking at a rough print and going… “Hmmm I could bring out that area a bit”. This is what is missing in the whole process…thought.

We need to look at our images individually and see where they need and how they can be improved. Don’t think about a technique, a PS process, but think of a visual metaphor, look at how the image appears and how it needs to be refined. Not how to refine it. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one… one method relies on a “do it in PS approach” the other requires you to look, evaluate and adjust your shooting or overall approach and treatment of the image. Don’t use a formula either in shooting or in Post processing…look to develop a thought process and a narrative with your images.

Will I buy many more B&W Photography magazines? I don’t think I will, it will be the odd one from now on, ones that still contain articles about the love of photography, and they are getting fewer

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If you love the text on my website sooooo very much, how about when you copy it into your own site, you at least make some tiny attempt to change the words about some, so that it’s not so flinkin’ obvious?

Seriously… The only reason that it’s taken me so long to find, is because it’s for an old domain that pretty much looks after itself. The reason that it looks after itself, is because the copy text is well-written, specifically with a view to making it easy to find from a search engine. I suppose you at least had the good grace to just steal my text, as opposed to lifting my actual photographs too, but it’s nothing more than laziness and theft.

You’re supposed to be a photographer… Maybe you should take some time to learn about intellectual property rights? Failing that, you’d be well advised to investigate the Copyscape search engine and realise how simple it is to find people who do this. I have better things to do with my time than starting to organise more take-down notices with webhosts.

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So, I promptly went over and had about 10 minutes having a go with it and listening to the spiel. The external viewfinder was nice enough, just like a classic viewfinder on rangefinders, so a dumb viewfinder, not displaying any settings or info, that’s ok i wasn’t really expecting it would. Right, I thought,  lets look at Manual Focus, it’s a compact sized camera with (finally!) a decent MF ring on the lens, cool, no focus markings on it which is a shame, ok…so lets look at the rear screen to see if i can see a gauge of where it is focusing and work from there? No.

That’s right, no. As a camera it has a very natural way to manual focus, a focus ring on the lens barrel, yet cripples you from actually doing so by making it automatically jump into a zoomed in “liveview” of the middle of the scene when you touch the focus ring. Therefore you only see the central point, and not the whole scene.  What the hell? This is forcing you to always focus recompose (not so good if you are shooting wide open) or fiddle with the controls to move your zoomed in view around the scene…making for a not very quick method of working. Plus in my mind it’s the wrong way round, you should compose then focus as you are doing that, not sort of compose, then manual focus then have to recompose unless, of course,  you want everything placed centrally all the time… what the hell were they thinking?

To add even more insult to injury, you can’t turn this feature off, it will always zoom in when you try and manual focus, always. There is also no visual readout on the rear screen (such as there is on several compacts) of where you are focusing, so you can not set your hyperfocal distance and shoot away using the viewfinder. Which, incidentally, effectively renders the viewfinder totally superfluous, as if you use it you are leaving all the focusing up to the camera and forcing yourself to chimp all the time after the moment has passed to see if you got it. Hello Olympus! Can you say decisive moment!?  If you do try to use the viewfinder and set up your focal point manually, using an object at a known distance, and know that a/any given f-stop you’ll have a certain amount of DOF, that’s all well and good until you accidentally knock the MF ring. As there are no external references on the lens barrel to tell you where it is focused,  you’ll not know it has moved. So unless you keep checking regularly your focus could be way off.

To his credit the Olympus rep looked a bit sheepish when i queried the MF usage and how it is insanely limiting, so thank you Olympus you have spared me from buying into the Micro 4/3s system, which was something i had thought would have been inevitable when this olympus was first rumoured, on paper it had so much going for it: compact, larger than normal sensor, interchangeable lenses and fast (ish) primes. Once again it would seem that camera manufacturers don’t love photography.

Hmmm maybe it will be that leica M8 after all…Damn, better get saving.

Oh, and for all those saying “use the screen” don’t get me started on that…

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The weekend speaks for itself; it’s THE WEEKEND! It’s where the fun is at, no work all play (if you have to work at weekends, then it’s your own fault, we have no sympathy, unless you work in a pub which makes you a saint). Monday and Tuesday you can still remember the fun of the weekend although they are a bit mundane being back to the day job. Then you have Wednesday, which is the middle of the working week, half way there, it’s a milestone day, the light at the end of the tunnel can be seen midday on Wednesday. I don’t really need to explain Friday, it’s the gateway to the weekend where all the fun will be.

This only leaves Thursday, what does it do? It’s just makes the week longer, a nothing day, can’t even have pizza on a Thursday (everyone knows that it’s always pizza on a Friday) because the laws of Pizza Friday, having pizza on Thursday would create a failing of law, order and the universe as we know it! I mean Thursday, it’s no fun, it’s just the packing in any parcel, it’s just bulk, I think Thursday should be dropped from the week purely because it does nothing.

So as a day, Thursday has kind of failed at everything. Would we really miss it anyway?

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I’m a serial sufferer of the age old problem of Procrastination, a scourge of many if not most people. Don’t get me wrong it’s not that I’m lazy or have nothing to do, believe me as I’m in the process of going self-employed, I have a mountain of tasks, work, errands and jobs to get done. It’s just that it’s easy to find distraction… (drifts off gazing out the window at the clouds…) See, just done it again, I’m writing an article for the blog, and Wham! several minutes have passed by doing, well, nothing really.

So how do you cure it, I’ve no idea. Seriously, I’m a full-time sufferer of this time-eating disorder. Anybody who can invent a cure for it then you need to copyright it immediately, and get your arse over to the Dragons Den for some investment. To try an counteract my procrastination, I’ve tried various things, such as:
-disconnecting the internet (not good when I need to research stuff or send emails)
-sitting in a darkened room (can’t see my keyboard or the page I’m writing on)
-switched off the computer (useless as most of my work is on there)
-No phones on (so how do my potential clients reach me)
So you see, there aren’t any real cures for it right now (pauses typing to go reply to a Tweet) other than trying your best to focus on the task at hand and even then it’s far too easily to become distracted and find the Procrastination monster has struck again…

Blimey, guess what… it’s just got you as well, by reading this article you’ve allowed yourself to become distracted! So be careful and be safe, because procrastination is infectious!

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HDR photography is a relatively new technique within the field of photography. It consists of multiply-processing the crap out of one image to make it incredibly horrific; or combing a number of particularly crap pictures to create an unimaginably polished turd.

HDR stands for: “Hurts & Damages Retinas“.

To create an HDR image requires special software. Most people choose to steal whatever is available from the wide variety of Bittorrent sites on the internet, but it’s possible that you can get a pikey friend of yours to do you a knock-off copy of something they’ve already nicked if you’re not too tech-savvy. Here’s how it works:

Take an image that you’ve already taken. For the purposes of HDR, it helps if the image has no redeeming qualities and is at least 2 stops underexposed. Here is our tutorial image before we’ve done anything to hurt it:

As you can see, it’s dark, blurry and generally upsetting – All things that you’d associate with the end of the world.

The next step is to drag the image into your chosen HDR software, kicking and screaming if necessary. The actual technicalities of the processing are unimportant. The only thing to remember is that you absolutely MUST drag all adjustment sliders AS FAR AS IT IS POSSIBLE TO MOVE THEM. In fact move them further if you can:

Note the sliders enclosed within the red circle…

Finally, save the image, and import it into your chosen photo editor. It’s always a good idea to increase the saturation some more, whilst subtly increasing the contrast on the sky. Before you’re ready to save the image, don’t forget to oversharpen it several times to make it look it’s absolute best.

And voila! You’re own personal view of the apocalypse. I’m sure that you’ll agree, nothing that comes after this could ever frighten you more:

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My main point about kit is that you really only should be buying what you need to get the job done. The “job” may be your hobby, your part time work photographing weddings, your full time studio work – whatever it is that you do. But you should know what you actaully “need” to get results that are suitable for your needs.

Any more than that is money down the drain, and, as Matt suggests, would be better spent in the pub or on a curry.

 The other avenue for your cash would be to spend it on learning how to use your camera, and I did this through reading books on the bus to work in 2004/5, then going out in Leeds at dinner time and trying things out. That took care of the technical side – you really do benefit from a solid knowledge of how ISO/Aperture/Shutter speed all relate, how focal lengths affect the spatial relationship of objects in the shot, and the classic “DOF”, which everyone always seems to call “fantastic”.

 DOF is actually a distance – a narrow DOF may be 1cm, a large one may be from 3 feet to infinity! What’s so fantastic about that? My cat Keith is about 17 inches long and that’s fantastic!

I digress…

So get your self a few books that discuss the techy side of things to some extent, I found that a few different authors explanations helped solidify the concepts in my mind.

If you want to fast track this, you can get on a workshop – I’ve done quite a few 1-2-1’s with people and it’s fantastic seeing the epiphany when they finally work out what that light meter really means. You can usually have them working out manual exposures in an hour, often lots quicker. Depends on their base level understanding of photography, but you’d be staggered how many can’t meter manually, or do it by “trial and error” – most just argue that “you don’t need to know that with modern cameras”. Fair enough – stay in your comfort zones then!

So ok – you’ve got a few books and maybe done a 1/2 day workshop so you’ve spent less than the price of a cheap, nasty 70-300 lens, never mind that 70-200 F2.8L that you don’t need.

Feel good?

Maybe not as we do like toys…

 But what happens now is that you will have the technical knowledge behind exposure and all that stuff – but still take pretty average shots, albeit ones that are now sharp and exposed well. No point in knowing how to expose manually if you’re clueless on composition and how to capture a shot. You now need to translate that technical know-how into your “art”, for want of a better word.

 ”So do we buy a 17-40 F4 L for £500, that’s bound to make us compose better – it takes fantastic shots!!! Just look in magazines at all those shots of Lindesfarne….. just off to the loo for a few minutes – ooh err misses…..”

Well that’s obviously bollocks – what you need to do is try stuff, experiment, get a curious mind, always think in terms of “what if”, never be put off by bad conditions, rather just change what you’re doing and try something more suited to the conditions. It’s all about taking the blinkers off and being receptive to the situation you’re in, not pissing and moaning about poor light or being uninspired.

It’s like marathon training, but quite good fun rather than months of running torture. The more you try, the more you learn, the more situations you have handled, the better prepared you are for the day when you get those fantastic conditions or stunning girl wanting her portrait doing.

Rather than standing there pondering the lens to use, focal length, filters, ISO, shutter speed, ideal DOF…. etc. etc. you’ll have instinctively set the shot up and bagged it, whilst others are still unzipping their bags.

It’s up to you though – you can blow £5000 on a body you don’t need and get £1000 lenses you can’t justify and still take poor shots, or you can get a beaten old 20D for £200, a couple of cheap lenses and 4 or 5 good books, then get out there as often as possible trying all sorts of subjects – i.e give it your best shot to learn how to take photos. Then you can start upgrading as your needs change over time.

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Now don’t get me wrong, I love technology, gadgets, gizmos and anything that’s a little bit trick. What I’m talking about is the incessant need to upgrade constantly to the latest piece of equipment. Seriously, will the newest camera improve your captured images? No it won’t on its own. What it may do is improve the quality of *output, the actual clarity, sharpness, or contrast; this is assuming that you own decent quality lenses. But overall the image content is the same as before, exactly the same as the person behind the camera, the mind or eye, saw and captured before. The amount of times I’ve heard, been asked, or been told that the newest camera body by X manufacturer is the best way to improve, is quite surprising. It’s spouted not just by new SLR owners, but quite often by people who should have a better understanding. How can a static piece of kit, which takes all input/control from you improve your own images? Personally I use a Canon 5D, a now discontinued camera. Ok it’s full frame, has a good reputation for handling lower light levels, but there is better out there now the 5D MkII, 1D series, even a selection of Nikons… Even so, I’m not interested in upgrading.

If I had the money and wanted to upgrade, I’d look at my lenses first. Quality of glass is more important and will last longer than the latest camera body, just don’t forgot though: Lens envy is ugly! Moving along, your lens of choice may be important in the image making (see the blog about portraits), but it’s still not what’s really important. You can have all the latest equipment, camera body, best lenses, top of the range lighting equipment, and still take shit, boring and lifeless images.

What really makes a difference is you, your mind, your inspiration, drive to improve, create something better, something different… Engage your mind and challenge yourself, choose a subject to push your own boundaries. So forget what camera you use, how many mega-pixies it has, just be creative and look outside your comfort zone. Think for once! David Bailey recently said in an interview “There’s not much skill involved in photography anyway. I could teach you to be a photographer in three months, I could teach you how to drive in three months, it doesn’t mean you’ll be any good. There’s no technical thing, I’ve no technical… Look at poor old Lichfield, he’s gone now but he was technically great, couldn’t take a picture to save his life.” So you can be taught to use a camera, but not to take a picture, this is where you come in, you are the creative. Think about your image, what you are creating. David expands in the interview to support this point by saying “You look at those photographic magazines and they’ve hundreds of fantastic, boring landscapes all the same. They do up the colour and it’s a picture of another tree. How many trees can there be that haven’t been photographed?” People have been taught to take that picture, but not to actually think about what or why they are taking it.

Save your money, spend it on beer, your other half or just waste it on nothing… but please get creative! Once you challenge your boundaries, you will find yourself on a journey; a journey that will take you and your images on a tour of improvement.

Go, be free with your new found creative self… just don’t get too pretentious about it!

*dependant on camera & settings.

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