Enjoy!

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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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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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So on my way back from giving a talk on HDR at the Welshot academy night in Chester, we stopped at Castlefield and had a drive around to get some shots.

With all the strobist stuff I’ve been doing I did think about clever lighting, but really, I’d need to practice lighting cars with speedlites before trying it on a proper car, so I relied on old faithful - HDR.

I keep HDR simple these days – use Av mode for exposure, meter with Matrix mode, use AEB to get my 3 shots (each 2 stops apart) and rapid fire mode to get the 3 shots out as fast as I can. On a bright day, it takes no longer than single shot.

So that’s what these shots are – simple HDR, a mix of Tone Compression and Details Enhancer tone mapping and a lot of dicking around in Photoshop.

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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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