…coming to an end ( I hope)

As things stand, and assuming I pass this particular course, this is going to be the last post on this blog. If anyone is interested in my continuing studies they can find my future musings over on my Landscape blog.

All my assignments, and the working associated with them, can be found via the links on the right. The assessors have received my documents on CD, but for anyone else who is interested the links to the final assignment submission documents are here:

• Assignment 1
• Assignment 2
• Assignment 3
• Assignment 4
• Assignment 5

This is going to be quite a long post, but I want to cover three main areas: My thoughts on the course itself, my personal assessment of my achievements against the learning objectives, and the impact of the course on my personal photography. So first up – the course – and I’ll stick with the same general headings I used at the end of DPP.

What did I want/expect from the course?

Having completed DPP I had a much clearer idea of what to expect from the course material so what I wanted was a course that would effectively force me into my ‘discomfort’ zone – people photography. I think that I was a little worried that it would immediately force me into social commentary – but was prepared to give that a go if it was what was needed. Beyond that there’s not much to say under this heading.

Did it deliver?

Unequivocally yes! The early stages of ‘people aware’ allowed me the escape route of self-portraiture – although that has it’s own set of issues to resolve – but the ‘people unaware’ stage pushed me well and truly into photographic places I’d not tried before. I also found the approach to place quite challenging – it’s easy to snap a place, rather more difficult to photograph it. I think it’s at this point that it finally dawned on me that I was doing a degree course, and that my previous certainties and overconfidence wouldn’t cut the mustard.

I struggled with some of the middle phases – not because of the course material, but because it was so unfamiliar to me as an idea. I also think that my perception (right or wrong) of the UK as a very hostile environment for street photography caused me some problems, because I found the same thing considerably easier in Switzerland during my holiday. In some sense this holiday came at a fortunate time, because I was becoming bogged down on the people exercises and it restored some momentum for me

For reasons explained elsewhere in this blog, Assignment 3 was a bit of a wake-up call. I found the somewhat open nature of the final two assignments quite tricky as well – photograph more or less what you please, but be prepared to explain why you did it and how the photos support that. The first part is easy – that’s what us amateurs do – the second part was new territory for me. It’s a measure of the course’s success however that by this stage I had the nerve to wander the streets of the local town in the dark with a camera – even if I wasn’t quite ready for walking up to people to photograph them in that circumstance.

I think another part of the courses success for me was the way it has developed my understanding of the ability of a photo or series of photos to tell a story or convey an idea or feeling, again the last two assignments feel like good examples of that.

I still found the reading requirements a little vague. I revisited some of the photo theory texts I read during DPP, and this convinced me that I needed a better understanding of the artistic context in which photography has developed, so I’ve tried to work on that as well. Alongside this I’ve tried to look at more photography. The nearest decent gallery is nearly 2 hours away so I’ve tended to rely on the web, and on books, but hopefully these efforts are reflected in the reading list I’ve developed and various posts in my blog over the duration.

How do I think I fared against the learning objectives?

• Use technical and interpersonal skills effectively to capture images which reflect your ideas – I feel that my last 3 assignments in particular show that I have the technical skills. On the interpersonal skills side, I still have some way to go before I could take a close portrait of a complete stranger uninvited, but otherwise I think I have demonstrated that I can take photos of people with a reasonable degree of success, and use people in shots to emphasise the points I am making, or to add emphasis or interest to a shot.
• Demonstrate the importance of note-taking, research, ideas and concepts to the process of developing a story – this was a big step forward for me on this course, perhaps most effectively demonstrated by the difference in my approaches to Assignment 2, which was quite spur-of-the-moment, and Assignment 5, which was planned as thoroughly as I could make it.
• Demonstrate a good level of ability in the effective selection and editing of images to achieve objectives – difficult to make a neutral comment on this, as I would not willingly submit a set of images which I thought did not achieve the objective I had in mind.
• Show that you can reflect perceptively on your learning experience – again difficult to give a neutral answer, but I believe my response to tutor feedback on Assignment 3 demonstrates that I can react positively to feedback, and take on board lessons learned along the way. I think this is most effectively demonstrated by the way some of my personal projects are developing.

Which leads very neatly to:

What impact has the course had on my photography?

Overall my photography has developed a thoughtful, or experimental, strand that was missing previously. Rather than individual photos I am beginning to think in series or groups, with an attempt at an idea behind them. Clear examples include my reflective self-portraits, my night-time shots and the series on roads that I have just started to develop. Both of the latter I hope to be able to develop further during the Landscape course.

Another major change has been my adoption of black and white photography. My first real experience with monochrome was during DPP, but I have found that it works very well with night time shooting to support the atmosphere I am trying to create, and I expect it to continue featuring in my photography going forward.

Conclusion

I found this a difficult course to engage with in the early stages, because it pushed me so far from my comfort zone, but I’m glad I persisted. Whatever the outcome of this assessment I’m sure my photography is better for it. A key challenge for the next few months is not to lose the momentum on people photography simply because I am engaged in a Landscape course. Whether I’ll be able do this by weaving people into the Landscape module, or by developing some more personal projects remains to be seen, but I’ve gained too much to drop it now.

Into the dark: A history of night photography - British Journal of Photography

Into the dark: A history of night photography - British Journal of Photography:

'via Blog this'

The May 2012 edition of BJP had the theme of night photography so - given my interest in what they humorously call the 'Dark Arts' - I was more than usually keen to get the wrapper of this particular edition. Inside however I found a bit of a mixed bag - summed up for me by the irony of running a review of two cameras which have sufficiently high ISO capabilities that you can photograph in dark situations as if it were daylight.

A significant proportion of the photos and sets seemed to be about defeating darkness, rather than using its creative potential - one set even used 'artificial' darkness - overpowering daylight by the use of flash lighting. I'm not trying to say that some of these shots did not have merit in their own rights - but I'm not sure they live up to the promise of the headline. James Nizam's Thought Forms set is a case in point - they are extremely clever, well executed and quite thought provoking, but they are more about light than they are about dark.

I was less clear about the merits of the shots which 'reveal' secret military exercises and missile launches. Quite what I'm supposed to make of the revelation that the American military practises night fighting in the dark eludes me.

On the flip side the set by Bill Henson seem to me to catch the essence of night with his dark, murky dream worlds hinting at unseen terrors  - touching on some of our primal concerns, and maybe fantasies, about darkness. Miti Ruangkritya's portfolio of flood shots in Bangkok were given added mystery and poignancy by the dark, and the photographs of Inuit people by Donald Weber using the characteristic light of an LCD screen was a clever take on the challenges facing a people who have moved from the stone age to the digital age in a single generation.

So overall - the usual BJP mix of stunning photos, clever ideas and stuff which I don't get (yet - if ever). Plenty of food for thought though, and it  makes me wish for the earlier night-falls again (sorry).

How much light is enough?

One thing about the photo-a-day challenge – when I’m taking it seriously – is that it forces me to think a bit differently or risk every photo being a close-up of a household object. It also means that sometimes I have to take shots in fairly challenging conditions, which can be a useful creativity driver.

The ‘Fence’ was one example of that and it got me to thinking about how little information – and by implication light – you might need to make a reasonable photo. Most weeks I spend one or two nights in Stretton, just off J11 of the M56, which is fairly limiting from a photo opportunity angle but does have a rather splendid sandstone church which is sometimes, but not often floodlit. When the lighting is off the lights from the street and the nearby hotel cast a rather eerie glow onto the tower, which struck me as rather atmospheric. It’s also a bit tricky to capture, if you don’t have a tripod handy – which I didn’t. Usually I can find a wall to prop the camera up on, but without losing the composition that wasn’t possible – not least because I needed a portrait format to catch the tower.This forced me to ISO 3200 and f/2.8 which gave me a 1/4 second exposure (about 2/3 stop underexposed), which was just within the limits of handholding with a bit of wall support and IS. Even then I was exposed well over to the left – contrary to normal advice – don’t think there was a pixel above half-way on the histogram.

Lets not even talk about the chroma noise in the file.

But conversion to B&W and judicious use of the orange/red sliders, exposure clarity and noise reduction gives this rather atmospheric end result:

I know it’s soft, and grainy, and looks like it was taken a hundred years ago – but that’s exactly as I saw it turning out. It has that sense of mystery which churchyards have at night, there’s just enough detail to keep me looking and the small white dot (Venus) adds a slightly disconcerting note. In short – I think it has a real sense of place. Interestingly I think the chroma noise is a factor in the slightly other-worldly glow from the tower - tweaking the noise settings certainly had a marked impact. There’s an experiment for another time.

The following night I tried a slightly different approach – this time a portrait of a statue on the path behind the church. There was enough light from the street lamp to make hand-holding just feasible – although I’d have preferred a tripod so that I could get some extra depth of field as f/2.8 is a bit limiting at 2 feet or so. I could have pushed the ISO a bit further (to 3200 perhaps)but for this shot I didn’t want to risk softening the boundary between light and dark too much. Again most of the pixels were well to the left of the half-way mark on the histogram, which with a bit of tweaking of the red/orange/black point sliders produced this end result.

Not quite true actually – I had to put quite a bit of effort into developing a decent range of tones in the lit areas while retaining the very sharp shadow edges. Again I’m quite pleased with the outcome. Given that it’s a statue it feels quite characterful – the moon behind adds some helpful atmosphere and at the risk of sounding pretentious the black shadow feels like a metaphor for time eating away at history.

I’m beginning to wonder if I have the basis for Assignment 5 here – if only I could think of a legitimate commercial brief.

I digress. It seems to me that it is possible to get interesting shots with very little light indeed, provided that you understand what can be done with that light. In some senses I think digital photography makes this easier because a quick peek at the preview shows whether there is anything useable recorded or not and you don’t have to worry about reciprocity failure. On the other hand, noise rears it’s ugly head and can have some interesting impacts on the B&W conversions. But this is both fun and rewarding and I’m beginning to hope that the evenings don’t draw out too quickly.

A topic for Assignment 4

Have been reflecting for a while on what to do about Assignment 4 since concluding that covering the whole of the Solway Firth was too big an ask for a single project.  As I mentioned in a comment to a previous post I think a single village is the way to go, so I’m going to make the nearby seaside village of Allonby my target. It’s worth recording here that this reflection has been going on for rather longer than the time suggested by these blog posts – I find there is some real challenge in keeping these notes consistent with my thought processes.

Allonby has an interesting mix of historic buildings, narrow cobbled streets, a wonderful location on the coast some small caravan parks and a number of small shops and cafes. In reasonable (and sometimes not so reasonable) weather, it is a bit of a honey-pot for local people walking their dogs or out for a stroll with their families, and attracts kite surfers, sailboarders and a range of other tourists. Taken together I feel their should be plenty of material to produce the required number of shots.

Lots of information on the village can be found on the Visit Cumbria and Solway Plains websites, although neither capture my perception of the village. I know the assignment instructions say I should write up how I see the essential character after I have done the photography, but for the record, and as a guide (not a strait-jacket) it seems helpful to think through what I hope to achieve first.

The village always seems a little ‘hunkered down’ against the westerlies that blow along the coast, and much of its charm is quite intimate and well hidden from the casual passer-by because the main road was diverted out of the narrow, and cobbled, village main street many years ago. There are a couple of key locations that need to be captured in one way or another to capture the essence of the village – these include Jack’s Surf Bar, Twentyman’s General Store (famous across the north of Cumbria for its ice cream) and perhaps The Codfather (chip shop),The Ship Hotel and the Bath House. There is also the contrast between the wide open grassy banks and the narrow lanes, and if the opportunity presents the windsurfers and their colourful sails as mentioned above.

This one’s not an assignment shot, but is included here for good measure.

Assignment 3 Feedback: if at first you don't succeed...

…dust yourself down and try again. Or to quote Thomas Edison:

"I have not failed 700 times (to make a light bulb). I have not failed once. I have
succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have
eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will
work."
In broad terms my tutor’s feedback on Assignment 3 is that I got too carried away with the invisible person motif and forgot to do the assignment(my paraphrase). Am I disappointed? A little. Am I surprised? Maybe not. I can’t help the feeling that perhaps I tried too hard to shoehorn a series of shots for which I had an emotional response into a brief which they didn’t really fit. I can now see very clearly on re-reading the instructions that I have missed the point of the assignment on a number of counts:

• didn’t provide adequate (any in some cases) evidence of research or prior understanding of the buildings purpose and how well it succeeded;
• didn’t describe how I set about showing the important features, nor what I learned photographically during the assignment;
• in the shots at home I didn’t really reflect the relationship between the space and its use;
• ditto the B&Q shot;
• the hotel and home shots don’t really provide any context.

The first two of these could have been avoided by reading the instructions properly, which is probably what annoys me most – I only have myself to blame. So what can I salvage?

• The Piz Gloria shots worked OK but I need the supporting text;
• The railway station worked OK, but on reflection the invisible person motif interferes. I could resubmit without the invisibility treatment – but in truth without the invisibility the shots are a bit dull;
• I am emotionally attached to the hotel room shots, so I can probably re-use a couple if I provide a bit more context (plus the written work)
• Some pride – I have demonstrated that I have some decent Photoshop skills, and that I can express a feeling through photography.

This just leaves “What next?” which is, sadly, a fairly long list.

• Dig out the tourist material that made me choose Piz Gloria as a possible shoot location, write up the rationale and what I learned;
• Explain why I chose the hotel room, select/shoot some context material (it’s a regular shooting haunt) and do the write-ups;
• Reshoot the railway station images and do the write up;
• Choose and research two new locations, shoot and write-up.
• Think about what to do with the invisible people – it feels to good a motif to abandon, even if this course is not the best place for them.

Conclusions

I think the primary conclusion is READ THE INSTRUCTIONS before you start, keep re-reading them as you work and check before you submit the assignment that it actually does what is requested.

It’s also worth remembering that being creative is not an excuse to ignore the brief.

Finally I’d like to thank Norman, my tutor, for his support over the last 48 hours and for writing the feedback in such a way that I could take the bad news positively. As a result I feel like getting stuck in rather than giving up.

Forum Contributions

Bearing in mind that I submit this blog for assessment at the end of the course I thought I should gather together some of the debates I’ve contributed to over at ‘We Are OCA’ in the last year or so. Most of these are from earlier in 2011 as I’ve been busy both at work and at home this year and I just haven’t had the emotional energy to get involved recently.
Beginning to feel that I’ve got my ‘mojo’ back in recent weeks – guess we all get dry spells, but they do make it hard to stay engaged on a remote learning course where you aren’t surrounded by people doing similar things on a daily basis. Think the visit to the Baltic for the Turner prize exhibition was a bit of a corner turner for me on this issue.
What is Documentary Photography
Facebook Friendly squares
Shelly Holland – Blog of the Week
The Ethics of Death
Ready to be immersed
Cindy Sherman: Master of Disguise

Non-architectural photography of buildings/man-made spaces

The course notes observe that this “is not considered a genre in most photographic writing” and suggests that I will need to search in areas away from traditional architecture outlets to find examples. So I thought I’d give it a try, and to my surprise found that photos that reasonably fall into this category are in fairly short supply.

A flick through a couple of recent back issues of the BJP turned up nothing of note – ditto the Family of Man catalogue that I’ve recently acquired.

No problem I thought – I’ll try the Wanderlust Travel Photo of the Year Vol.4 – the cover photo of a Sikh meditating before the golden temple was promising, but in truth that was very nearly it. Very few other photos fitted with the idea of people interacting with space, a notable exception being: Coffee shop, Madurai, India | Wanderlust Photo of the Year 2007 - People section | Wanderlust which admirably caught the hustle and bustle of an Indian coffee bar.

Travel Photographer of the year – Journey Three offered a few more examples: shots by Karoki Lewis and Larry Louie being notable examples. Cat Vinton’s award winning series of a family dismantling and packing away a yurt is also worth seeing.

In truth however ‘interaction with place’ was in relatively short supply in books which I’d expected to feature it quite strongly. Perhaps travel photography is conventionally about ‘People’ or ‘Place’ rather than ‘People and Place’, but that does feel rather at odds with my perception of its aim.

Given the observation above about this kind of photography not being regarded as a genre the next place I went was a couple of ‘instruction’ books in my collection – Tom Ang’s Digital Photographers Handbook and Advanced Photography by John Hedgecoe. Both contain lots of pictures of ‘place’ and lots of pictures of ‘people’, but in the latter case they tend to be interacting with each other or an object – rather than there being any sense of interaction with their surroundings.

Oddly, Ang has sections on buildings and urban views and only one of the pictures features a person – surely the essence of urbanness is the population density. The documentary section has a rather nice shot of a charcoal maker (I assume) but the rest are shots of people looking at the camera (is this really documentary?). There are also one or two other examples dotted through the book, but given that it has 400 pages this book reflects the notion that people and place is not a recognised genre.

The Hedgecoe book does rather better – with sections called ‘People in Context’, ‘The Photo Interview’ and even the ‘On location’ section features people interacting with place. There is a rather nice picture of sculptor Henry Moore at work in his studio as well – in a section on camera movements. So perhaps there is a hint here of a genre – but no more than that.

Finally, as a complete contrast I thought I’d try Don McCullin, and it seems to be in documentary photography that ‘People and Place ‘ comes into its own – assuming this is representative. On reflection this is perhaps obvious – while the book contains some stunning people photos, they would be considerably less effective as documentary without some context. The Homeless, 1969 and Derry, 1971 are especially good examples  I couldn’t find either online although there is a short film that catches the spirit of, and some of the shots from, The Homeless on the BBC website.

For me the stand-out image in this context is Christian Gunmen in the Foyer of the Holiday Inn, Beiruit, 1976 which seems to encapsulate the idea of people and place, but in a way which challenges our perception. We have a clear idea of place – it’s a grand hotel, but it’s a mess - then we see the masked gunmen, using the building as shelter – in a weird perversion of the original intent of the building and a final touch of madness – there is a cardboard cut-out of a hostess behind the information desk (the punctum perhaps)

Final thoughts

It’s difficult to disagree with the opening idea that there is no genre of photography (perhaps not even a sub-genre) that captures the concept of People and Place. Travel competitions – which are perhaps a representation of the photography most of us do – tends to concentrate on one or the other, On the, albeit limited, evidence I’ve seen photo instruction books and magazines tend to gloss over it in the context of some other photographic activity.

There are very few examples of photography which seems intended to explain the space – even the McCullin shots are about the humans using the space, rather than the space being used. I’m not clear why this is – perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place and location advertising is the place to look, but even here I suspect the advertisers will not want to give the impression that the place is crowded. Maybe there’s the germ of an idea for a different kind of photography book here.

Assignment 1: Feedback and reflection

A bit of a delayed response on my part but I’m pleased with the positive and constructive feedback I received for Assignment 1.

Photo 1:

Norman has suggested a slightly higher camera position, to avoid the impression of looking down into the camera, which as an issue I’d not thought of, and advised that:

For a close portrait in this format, it is a general rule to have the right corner of the eye as the midpoint in the composition. This is normally done in the cropping stage at the time of shooting or in post processing.

I’ve tried fiddling with the crop and can’t make it work on this image, so I’m thinking reshoot for this one. That would enable me to address the camera angle as well.

Photo 2

Norman agreed with my assessment that this was possibly a little flat, lighting-wise, and also picked up the strong horizontal that runs through the eyes, although he described this as ‘hyper-critical’. Overall however he appeared to like the shot.

I have received other feedback that this shot is a bit too tightly cropped – which is a comment I received on a couple of my shots in DPP1. Obviously something I need to watch out for.

Photo 3

Not much to say on this image other than to note that I have again been successful in avoiding reflections in my glasses.

Photo 4

Not unexpectedly Norman commented that normal posing for a portrait would have the subject looking into the shot. Happy to accept this advice, but in this particular instance I was trying to emulate a style that was popular in corporate photography in the not too distant past. It is still suggested as a way to ‘perk up’ portrait photography – see here (Tip 2) for example, and has been used by such luminaries as Ida Kar, albeit in a very different context.

Norman also suggested dipping the head as a way to reduce the reflection in my glasses. If I can’t pp my way out of this I’ll probably reshoot for that reason.

Shot 5

Norman did not share my concerns about the highlights in this shot , saying:

I don’t believe this could have been improved in any way.

Despite this response – which is obviously pleasing – I wonder if this will be difficult to print in a pleasing way. Perhaps a textured paper, which would also compliment the skin detail might be the answer.

Shot 6

Described as ‘imaginative and unusual’ which is good because I sometimes think I struggle to be imaginative.

Shot 7

Again the comments were positive but beyond that not much else to say. I’ve tried this technique again, with the results here.

Other material

Norman has also suggested investigating the work of Joel Grimes, Dorothea Lange and Mark Cleghorn which I’ll be doing in the near future.

He also provided a link to this tutorial site:

Conclusion

Overall I’m reasonably pleased with the feedback. There is a range of useful tips, some interesting photographers to explore and plenty of food for thought.

Communication: Improving the usability of my blog

An obvious (now I’ve read it) idea suggested by one of the tutors in the OCA student site is to use categories to make it easier to keep track of postings. Not sure it would have made much difference to my DPP blog, but this one is different as so many of the exercises cannot be easily completed in a single session.
So now I have a key themes box in the side bar. I’m trying to avoid too many categories so am restricting myself to a few broad categories. Obviously there’s one for every Exercise and Assignment, then there are book and exhibition reviews and a few less obvious categories:

• analysis – for reflective or analytical posts;
• archive – posts that make major references to photos from my archive – something I do when I haven’t been able to get out shooting, or just feel like adding some more material for discussion;
• blog contribution – posts which link to my contributions elsewhere;
• events – particular events I’ve photographed – usually with some reflection tying them to what I’ve learned;
• inspiration – posts which link to sites or contain inspirational images, interesting techniques, or thought-provoking comments;
• photographers – short reviews of photographers I find interesting;
• place – posts that are about ‘place’ rather than ‘people and place’ and don’t really relate directly to an exercise;
• self-portrait – self explanatory. Still considering a portrait category – but so much of the blog to date is about portrait that it hardly seems helpful;
• street photography – for my attempts at the same. Thought I’d give it a separate category as it wont all be directly in response to the exercises;
• Support material – general info that doesn't fit with the exercises but I found useful or interesting anyhow; and,
• Technique – posts where the primary interest is largely technical.

Exercise 10: Moment and Gesture – Another look in the archive

Another dismal day scuppers my plans to go into one of the nearby tourist hotspots for a go at this exercise, so in a bid to retain some momentum I’m going to dip into my archive again.

As the notes indicate there are two ways to try to capture the ‘moment’ which could perhaps be paraphrased as ‘machine gun’ or ‘sniper’. The first involves taking several shots in quick succession – or perhaps just even a huge number of shots -and picking the best, the second involves learning to anticipate the moment and catch it with a single shot.

Machine Gun

A couple of examples – first up this selection from a horse race at Cheltenham which I took in May 2007:

These are not the greatest shots in the world – my view was obscured by the rail and this part of the course was in shade against bright sunshine in the background, but there is enough here to illustrate a couple of things.

• The camera was firing at about 2 frames a second. With a shutter speed of 1/640 it captures less than 0.2% of the action. Even at 10fps it would only capture 2%. So getting a ‘decisive moment’ is not guaranteed.
• Within the 2-2.5 secs of the sequence above there are very distinct poses, some of which are more successful than others. The first is quite static – the horses legs are more or less four-square. The second has a sense of urgency – the legs are in the classic galloping position and the rider is starting to rise from his seat. The third has the rider in a nice position, but the horse looks as if it is falling forward. In the fourth the leg position is reminiscent of old-fashioned paintings, and in the fifth it looks like the horse is trying to slide to a halt. For me the second shot is the most effective – whether it is possible with practise to anticipate this moment rather than machine gunning for it I’m not sure. I suspect it is.

In this second example I am still using the continuous shooting mode. This one differs from the last in that Ashley was modelling for me, and I had an idea of the type of shot I wanted before I started, so in some ways this also relates to Exercise 6. As with the horse above, it was difficult, at my level of skill, to anticipate the key moment so I had, to some degree, to rely on chance.

The best shot (middle of the third row) catches the event well I think. The alternative way to obtain this would have been to ask Ashley to repeat the jump several more times while I concentrated on getting a single shot at the peak of his jump. This may have worked reasonably well because there is a moment of relatively limited motion at the top of a jump. This is the kind of technique I have classified as ‘sniping’.

 

Sniper

For the next couple of shots, taken at an outdoor event in 2009, I was trying to capture expression a shot at a time, while trying to get a range of expressions.

             

The first – if I recall accurately – was rather easy because it was the finale of a particular trick and the guy in the red shirt held the pose for a couple of seconds, the second was a mix of anticipation and chance. The risk of this approach is that you only get one chance to get it right, so that the following shot has clearly missed the moment because he blinked as I pressed the shutter and the hand position is wrong. I think it likely that I would still have missed the shot with a machine-gun technique, although I shall never actually know.

Summary

Machine gunning or sniping? It seems to me both have their place although for my own part I’m not totally convinced by machine gunning. For fast action sequences – particularly if they are repeated it seems likely to give a good chance of results, although depending on the activity it may be as effective to concentrate on the single shot. For more general shooting good results can easily be obtained by trying to anticipate the moment – indeed the sound of the continuous shooting mode may be unhelpful in some situations.

Communication: written and online learning logs

Have been wondering for a while if I’m doing myself a dis-service having only a Learning Blog, in part sparked by the recent videos on WeAreOCA, and in part by some reflections on what the communication part of the course is about. This blog feels just right for writing up exercises, reflecting on feedback and capturing links to interesting websites. It is just about manageable for book reviews and exhibition reviews, where there is some online material to point at, but it feels wrong for just capturing completely random thoughts, brainstormed ideas for projects, magazine articles etc.

While reading through the student-only forums I’ve also happened upon these quotes from Jose Navarro, which seems to support my concerns.

Bear in mind that even though the learning log only weighs 20% of the final mark, it is a submission requirement and needs to conform to a model which contains:

• coursework - projects and exercises
• self-reflective comments, follow up work in response to your tutor's comments
• additional learning and research materials - magazine articles, exhibition brochures, newspaper cuttings, etc...

1&2 are done in blog format, 3 as a traditional physical document folder.

and a second:

would suggest that you keep both an online blog and a physical learning log. You would then make the most of both `worlds´ and also maximise your chances to impress the assessors.

a) online blog - excellent solution for logging coursework and assignments. You can also update it easily and add personal self-reflective comments - a key component in any learning log - anytime, anywhere.

b) physical learning log - a folder with additional learning and research materials which would otherwise be tricky and time consuming to scan and incorporate in your logbook - it would be an unreasonable use of your study time as well.

So in my opinion it´s not a question of choosing between an online or a physical learning log but figuring out how to make the most of what each platform is suitable for.

So, out with that little notebook that came with the course material.

Place - Maryport

As this blog is about People and Place it suddenly occurred to me that the following is of relevance. Produced it a couple of years back as a personal reaction to Maryport. You wont find any people in it - as I observed in my previous post my photos have until recently been largely uninhabited - that's one of the reasons I took this course. Hopefully it provides a sense of place though.

Maryport: A Photographer's View Nigel Monckton by Nigel Monckton | Make Your Own Book

Thinking out loud about Cindy Sherman and the meaning of ‘portrait’

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer who is renowned for her self-portraits in styles borrowed from other genres – ‘50s American movies, centre-folds, historical portraits etc. Much of her work is considered to draw attention to the stereo typing of women.

It’s the self-portraiture that attracted me to her work, as I’ve been working on self-portraits for assignment 1. Her Wikipedia entry attributes a quote from her in the New York Times as follows:

"I feel I'm anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren't self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear."

This is an interesting statement – if a photo of her, taken by her, is not a self-portrait, then what is it? This website, which is an unofficial Sherman tribute site proposes that her photos are not portraits because they do not represent a real person, simply a type.  I can see that this suggestion has some parallels with acting. If I go to the Royal Shakespeare Company I am clearly not watch King Lear in the flesh, but equally I am not watching the actor. I am watching an actor who has had part of his personal character subsumed by the role, but at the same time he has developed Lear by adding some of his own feelings and reactions to the part.

Taking this back to the original question I’m not sure the photos are purely ‘type’. Presumably she brings part of herself to them (since she is essentially acting the type) and they impose some of themselves on to her for the duration of the photo. If we take her statement above at face value we could argue that they so successfully impose themselves on her that her personality disappears from the image. Even so I am still left to wonder why she chose those ‘types’ – her input is in the choice of type unless they were simply random selections based on available props.

Is it unreasonable to assume that the types might tell us something about her in spite of the absence of ‘her’ from those shots? Bringing this question back home, could it be that a careful selection of ‘types’ or other substitutes for my personality could produce a valid series of photos which provide an insight into the way I think and feel?

I’ve got an idea forming for a series of which involves merging my face with statues of people or objects that particularly interest me. I’ll be submitting the first with Assignment 1 in the next couple of days, but there’s a germ of an idea here that seems worth exploring further.

Photographing a family party–some reflections in the light of the course material

Was invited to my niece’s 18th birthday party last weekend, and as usual had a great time photographing the celebrations – the output is here on Facebook for anyone who’s signed up. I had hoped to get lots of material for future exercises, but it was not to be. That said, there are a few observations it’s worth recording here.
Lighting
The party was in a small club/bar so lighting was very low, making flash essential. As the place had a low ceiling I chose to bounce the flash straight up. There is a small diffuser built into the flash that pulls out and flips over the light  (it’s intended to help diffuse the light for wide angle shots). If it is not fully extended it protrudes from the top of the flash and helpfully reflects a bit of light forward. This works pretty well, but give the size of the room I was also able, in some areas, to fire the flash backwards over my head, so the subject was lit by reflection from the wall rather than the ceiling. The three different lighting effects can be seen in these photos:

In the shot above the bounced light from the ceiling has given a broad overall light, while the protruding diffuser has reflected some light forward to fill the shadows. Careful inspection of the highlights in my sister-in-laws eyes show both the pool of light on the ceiling and the highlight from the diffuser.

For reasons which elude me I didn’t use the diffuser/bounce in this shot, simply a vertical bounce from the ceiling which has resulted in deep shadows which take the edge off an otherwise pleasing shot. The following result, with flash bounced from the walls is much more pleasing, although it could perhaps be faulted for being a little flat

Eye contact
It was a party so people were expecting to be photographed – and even though most of the guests didn’t know me, it was clear that I was with the family. As a result getting eye contact with people was no problem – and given the amount going on it was also easy to get shots without. The two shots of my niece below clearly have very different feels to them, in spite of the fact that they were taken no more than a few seconds apart.

Expression and gesture
Similarly expression and hand gesture can change the meaning of a very similar overall pose in a matter of moments.
 
This pair in particular lend some weight to my growing feeling that you can tell essentially nothing about someone from a portrait beyond a rough estimate of age, health and possible social status (based on clothing and jewellery). My wife’s mood did not change significantly between these shots – albeit they were taken 15 minutes apart – and they provide no meaningful insight into her character – I just happened to luck out with the expressions. This is why I struggle with photographs such as Richard Avedon’s The Family which seem to be regarded as providing special insight into the rich and powerful. As far as I can see Avedon’s technique meant he could choose to take a photo that illustrated his particular agenda, and that any chance of objectivity is missing, so the photos probably say more about his agenda than they do the individuals.
I’ll finish on a slightly different tack with a couple of shots of one of my nephews.
  
What is happening in the first shot? At first sight it looks like kung fu – the concentrating stare, the odd arm positions, but further investigation shows the arm of the young lady he was dancing with and some loud speakers, so a dance is a more likely outcome – actually it was the Macarena. The second shot is much more intense, and this is emphasised by the way the hand frames one of the eyes. Without the context it is much more difficult to work out what is happening, and I think it is a very effective portrait despite the fact that his hand obscures much of his face.
In summary
Most of the issues raised in this first module were encountered during the evening – even the impact of focal length (I just didn’t keep the odd distortions). Even in near spontaneous photography situations it pays to keep an eye on lighting, and given the vast number of opportunities my advice would be ‘keep pressing the shutter’. Tucked away among the standard shots there will be some really good ones.

Self-Portrait

While searching for inspiration for Exercise 2 – I’m not finding this course as easy to get into as DPP1 I came across the following link: Self-Portrait as Fantasy.

While it’s not about photography it is about portraiture so it seems relevant here, and has got me thinking about using myself as a subject.

By coincidence the BJP is also carrying an item on self portraiture in photography: The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography - British Journal of Photography.

To me self-portraits seem to lead to the heart of understanding what portraiture is about – whatever that is. I can understand that a photographer provided portrait can be considered to give some insight into the subject, but any reading of that insight must surely be coloured by the personal baggage of the photographer and the viewer – not to mention the need of the photographer to make money from print and repeat orders.

A self-portrait, on the other hand is not encumbered to the same degree by financial/commercial requirements, and any baggage carried by the photographer is absolutely relevant to the subject as they are the same – there is a feedback loop reinforcing the result.

Think I’m going to come back to this thought process – although what it has to do with capturing a series of portraits in different lighting conditions as required by Exercise 2 is hard to say. In any case, I’m going to be my own subject for that exercise.