Tag Archives: Stephanie Tait

Musings on my muse

Posted on 04/03/2012 | 5 Comments

This title was just asking to be used…!

What is a muse? What is a muse for me? I have regularly referred to my good friend Stephanie Tait as my muse, and as I am presently hoping she’ll be visiting the UK again later this year (she now lives in Los Angeles), I wanted to reflect on what it is about her that makes me regard her as my muse, and what that means for me.

Stephanie

Stephanie

I have thought about this at various times over the last few years, and, unusually, I have not spent any time researching the topic by reading about it. What I mean by this is that I have not followed my usual academic-inspired route of studying the question of muses and how they have been seen and understood in the past by artists. This has been very deliberate: although I do, of course, have a general sense of the idea of muses and have regularly come across artists who have seen particular individuals as muses (for example, Harry Callahan photographed his wife Eleanor Callahan extensively: Suzanne Shaheen’s obituary in The New Yorker on 2.3.12 described her as ‘[o]ne of the greatest muses in photo history…’).  I have also engaged with artistic representations of the question of muses (narratives such as Jacques Rivette’s La belle noiseuse comes to mind, for example).  However, whilst noting en passant that these are mostly gendered relationships – as is mine! – which almost automatically makes them an interesting object of study, I have not sought to actively research muses in a scholarly way.  Exercising such deliberate restraint is not that easy for me to do, but I have wanted to write this blog posting for some time, and I very consciously wanted to try and write it in such a way that it would be a reflection of and on my own emotional experiences, rather than a treatise on the place of artistic muses in history.  Doing the latter would be easy for me, whilst I knew that doing the former would be more difficult.  However, I was also clear that engaging my own emotional experience would be much more interesting – at least for me, perhaps for Stephanie, and possibly for others.

The idea of muses in western contexts comes, of course, from Greek myth: the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne who are the goddesses of the arts are the original muses, though I would not have been able to name them all without a reference work (see, the academic in me breaks out after all…!): Calliope of epic poems; Clio of history; Erato of love poems; Euterpe of music and lyric poems; Melpomene of tragedy; Polyhymnia of sacred lyrics; Terpsichore of dancing; Thalia of comedy; Urania of astronomy. There is clearly an inspirational connection here, but until fairly recently it has not been very clear to me how this might relate to my own thinking about muses. To understand this requires a wider understanding of some personal history… indulge me…

My most beautiful model

My most beautiful model

Although happily married to the person I want to be married to, long before and throughout our marriage I have held – and articulated – the belief that one other person can never be a complete counterpart for anyone, at least, not in the sense of being someone who can reflect all their interests, needs and desires: maintaining otherwise is to create an idol of the other, leading to (self-)deception and unrealisable expectations.  All long-term relationships are unique creations built on certain mutually agreed foundations between individuals, whether spoken or unspoken, and in this case, this understanding about idolatry of the other is one that both of us in this marriage have always understood in broadly the same way, with a similar sense for the boundaries and parameters (of course, my wife might articulate these things slightly differently, but that doesn’t detract from the fundamental mutuality).  This understanding manifests itself in different ways, not least in the form of friends: we have mutual friends with whom we share a great deal, and equally, we both have friends to whom the other has less of a connection or affinity.  Exploring varying aspects of our personalities through relationships to other people is completely normal.

So how does all this connect to Stephanie? Without wanting to elaborate on the details, a few years ago, during a particularly stressful and difficult period, Stephanie became someone I found I could rely on and relate to as a good friend: the kind of person who really was there when needed, if that’s not too much of a cliché.  That this happened is all the more remarkable in that she is (and, I hasten to add, was already at that time) a former student of mine – it cannot be taken for granted that a connection initially based on a structured power relationship (such as lecturer-student) can be transformed into one that is more about people relating to one another as equal human beings.  She knows that she has my immense gratitude for her kindness to me in this period.

Stephanie

Stephanie

As I have described here, it was Stephanie who first suggested I might work on portraits, and she has been a source of inspiration to me ever since (it’s interesting to me that this was a hurdle to her too, but she didn’t give that away at the time – I think she knows that would have intimidated me even more!).  Given that Stephanie is a script-writer, film-maker, and film-scholar, it is perhaps appropriate that she reminds me of Radha Mitchell’s Syd in one of my favourite films, Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art.  For sure, it is rather presumptuous to compare myself to Ally Sheedy’s Lucy, the photographer in the film, but my comparison rests loosely on the inspirational role that Syd plays in relation to Lucy.  Long dormant, Lucy rediscovers her desire to pursue her photographic life through her encounter with Syd, although this has tragic consequences for the main protagonists of the film, especially Lucy and her partner, Patricia Clarkson’s Greta (I’ll say no more, but I do highly recommend the film!). I don’t think I had realised how much I wanted to photograph people until Stephanie more or less made me photograph her.

Now, I’m aware that this perhaps sounds a bit like a teenager’s first proper kiss, with Stephanie taking the role of my first true love!  That is not what I’m seeking to suggest here.  Of course, at the risk of veering into psychobabble, all relationships also involve some form of physical connection, and it would be completely naïve to pretend that didn’t exist: yes, I see Stephanie as a beautiful woman, and in other circumstances I may well have been very attracted to her – but that is not really the issue here.  I encounter a great many people that I think of as beautiful in one way or another, both male and female, but I don’t want to pursue physical relations with all of them.  In that sense, I tend to take a broadly conservative attitude to my marriage! :)

Stephanie

Stephanie

Furthermore, I have photographed many other people, and I have enjoyed the engagement with both friends and professional models who have been tremendously forthcoming in their openness to my photographic ideas.  I very much want to continue to do this.  But… but… photographing Stephanie is somehow qualitatively different to all of this.

Initially, I can identify two significant elements that make photographing her such a different kind of experience for me.  Firstly, I have an intimate relationship to Stephanie based on our profound empathetic encounter from a time of adversity that fosters and encourages an almost totally free exchange of thoughts and ideas (insofar as such freedom is possible; even if it is, some ideas are never meant for sharing, even with the most intimate of confidantes).  Secondly, her role as my muse is an active one: she is herself an incredibly creative person who brings her tremendous energies to bear in all areas of her life.  Photographing her becomes an active process of cooperation in transforming ideas into photographs.

These two elements – her profoundly sensitive nature and her own rampant creativity – mean that when I’ve described ideas to her, or developed ideas that she has brought, they suddenly seem totally natural, no matter how crazy they may have seemed at first: I feel as if she intuitively and intimately understands where I am coming from and what I am trying to do, often without too many words needing to be spoken.  Injecting her own personality into the process, she is, for me, an inspirational woman who engages in intimacy with me on a level that makes the attempts to create something just work. The end-result may not always quite reflect the extent of the initial vision, but that is probably down to my technical failings rather than her lack of engagement or understanding.  So Stephanie is not only one of my best friends.  Stephanie is also, for me, an inspirational goddess, a muse: the one model above all others who makes these things imaginable in the first place.

Stephanie

Stephanie

There is, however, a third element beyond the intimate empathy and creativity Stephanie embodies: when I say she is “the one model above all others who makes these things imaginable in the first place”, I find I want to ask both how this manifests itself, and why it might be the case.  When I seek answers to these questions, I find that they are, unsurprisingly, dialectically related to one another.  For a long time, I wasn’t completely clear about this.  However, what has recently helped me understand this is a very simple realisation: whenever I have an idea about something I want to do that involves a model, it is always Stephanie who first comes to mind.  As I seek to try and envision an image, she is the one I imagine posing, she is the one I imagine wearing whatever garment I am thinking of, she is the one who is asking the questions about how and why something should be done one way and not another…  I suppose I am conducting long conversations with her about my images, even when she isn’t there.  She may not be the person who appears in the final image – and given the distance between us that is increasingly unlikely! – but she is always the one I am thinking of initially, to the point where my sketchbook of ideas is, in fact, largely a collection of sketches of her.  In so many ways, she is not only a model for me, she is my model model, as in: my model for other models, irrespective of gender or appearance.

This can sometimes have interesting and slightly strange repercussions: I have a small series of images in mind that picks up on something important that has happened to me, but I very much want to ask Stephanie to be the first model in that series.  I haven’t spoken to her about this yet so she doesn’t know what I’m thinking of – that’s something I’ll describe to her when I see her – but I have already partially created the second and third set of images.  What is rather strange about this is that I feel I can’t show these other images until I have created the first one, ideally with my muse, my inspirational goddess, addressing issues of pain and beauty that are very personal for me.

Incidentally, I have long been enticed by her online name: in various places, such as her blog and her Twitter account (do read and follow!), she uses “Queendom of Mab” to identify herself. From Shakespeare’s description of a fairie who comes to lovers in Romeo and Juliet, to some of the stranger usages by other authors, there is something about the inspirational, unexpected, and supernatural in her usage of this moniker that really appeals to me – but perhaps that’s just my own view, coloured by the emotional attachment I have to my friend.

I would like to think that this muse-relationship will continue: that when we’re both old and rickety, even though we will perhaps still live on different continents, I might see Stephanie every once in a while and want to photograph her – and she might continue to be happy to be photographed. We’d spend time discussing and gently exploring our way forwards in the mutual transformation of a particular vision into a photographic reality – and we’d enjoy doing it.  After all, the inspirational goddesses don’t stop inspiring just because time progresses…

Stephanie

Stephanie

Before concluding, I think it is important to note that muses can take many different forms.  For some, it is a person, for others it can be a place: I don’t know if he would use the term ‘muse’, but a landscape photographer I know has spoken of a particular hill that he has photographed in numerous different ways almost as if it were a person.  When I look at his photographs, which are connected to poems, I feel as if I am eavesdropping on an intimate conversation he is having with the landscape.  It seems to me that ‘his hill’ is a place that he ascribes with conceptions of intimate refuge, occasional struggle, and substantial creative energies – perhaps it is a kind of muse to him?  There are undoubtedly many different forms that such inspiration can take.

Stephanie, muse

Stephanie, muse

I’m interested in other people’s understanding of their muses…

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Posted in model, muse, portrait, Stephanie Tait

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Photographic narration – narrating photographs

Posted on 15/04/2011 | 2 Comments
Stephanie, icon of the silver screen

Stephanie, icon of the silver screen

I have begun to rework some of my image galleries, which I thought were becoming somewhat stale and not very helpfully organised.  In addition, I began to feel that just ‘dumping’ a series of images in a gallery was no longer what I wanted to do.  Photographs should both tell a story, but there is also a story behind most photographs.  So my galleries are now organised by type: land (land- and cityscapes), models, events.  Within these broad categories the galleries will hopefully offer more of a sense of the story behind the photographs, as well as – in part – perhaps suggesting ways in which the photographs might be interpreted.  Of course, this latter approach is broadly about how I understand my own work, and that isn’t necessarily how others see it! :)

In the first instance, I’ve done some work on the models galleries.  There are several reasons for this:

  1. there are a limited number of galleries making this a task that was more easily manageable!
  2. for a while now I have felt I wanted to pay homage to Stephanie, who has been a profound influence on my portraiture.  In the introductory narrative to the models section, I describe her role to me as a photographic muse (and I’m already thinking of the beginning of a new series of photographs that I’d like to start with her when she is next in Scotland, whenever that’s going to be).  I have therefore written what are almost little photographic essays about our first two portrait sessions that might be of interest (do start with the Edinburgh narrative and then move on to the London collection!).
  3. although I was very aware that I would have to put a lot of work into these particular narratives, I don’t expect many of the other galleries to involve quite so much work.  This means I am better able to gauge the task, but also see how a detailed textual accompaniment would work.

My next task will be a little tidying up and adding to for the events section, and then I’ll begin to work on the landscapes – this looks as if it will be the most work because there are more galleries and images, but as noted above, I don’t see myself writing quite as much as I did for the two long Stephanie essays.  I’ll be splitting the land galleries up into countries or regions, and will also include some of my photographs from the Middle East.

Of course, this is a bit of an ongoing project for the moment, and so I would be very interested in any comments – good, bad, indifferent – about what I am trying to do here.  Please either use the comments sections below, or write to me directly using the contact page – thank you!

My most beautiful model - see the Galleries, Models page for more information

My most beautiful model - see the Galleries, Models page for more information

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Posted in cityscape, event photography, landscape, model, muse, portrait, Stephanie Tait

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The wonder of film

Posted on 03/11/2010 | 4 Comments

This evening I needed to be in nearby Musselburgh, where I would be waiting for half-an-hour at the harbour. Musselburgh has a lovely small harbour, and at the moment all the sailing boats are ‘parked’ in the car park round the harbour (in spaces that are marked ‘dinghy parking’!).

Stephanie, photographed on Ilford FP4 plus (ISO125)

Stephanie, photographed on Ilford FP4 plus (ISO125)

On the way out of the house, I took my camera, tripod, spirit level, filters, a 28mm and a 50mm lens – and looked forward to capturing some of these boats and the harbour scenes. I took my favourite film camera, the old Nikon FM2, with one of the last three rolls of Fuji Sensia that I have: this is a bit of a trip down memory lane for me, since I used to use Sensia a lot before switching to Fuji Velvia for colour landscapes; Fuji have recently announced they are stopping the production of Sensia so I have just bought three rolls of it to play with for the last time. It was fairly dark when I arrived in the harbour, and as I took my bag out of the car and began to set up, I realised that I had left my light meter at home – since the FM2′s slowest shutter speed before getting to the bulb setting is 1 second, the camera’s meter would be useless and I would have had to more or less guess all my exposures… so, sadly, I packed everything away again and went to buy a newspaper instead. Next week, when I expect to be there again, I’ll remember the meter!

I’ve read two nice postings on other people’s websites recently about using film. The first one was from the great Bruce Percy, who discussed how much he enjoyed using a particular kind of Kodak Portra film for a recent trip he made to Ethiopia and then, referring to Canon’s 5D digital camera, noted:

I get a lot of correspondence from people wanting to know how to get the same look with their 5D. You can’t.

If you want the look of film, then shoot film.

It doesn’t get much simpler than that! The other piece I’ve come across is more of a short essay by the wonderful Max Marinucci (though the second part describes how he develops film, so you may want to skim read that bit if you just want to pick up on his philosophy about film):

…patience and parsimony are virtues to be cultivated and nourished. When shooting film, you immediately accept the fact that it may be a little while before you see the fruits of your work and, by living with this, you will become a more disciplined shooter, which will in turn carry on to your digital side as well. It also means that shooting everything in sight without any thought into basics like light and composition is out of the question since you only have 24-36 shots in a roll of 35mm and it makes no sense in spending time/money developing simple, careless snapshots. This is a valuable exercise in restraint and it brings us to actually THINK before we shoot. Would you have taken a picture of your toes with film just because you can? I sincerely doubt it.

Although I use my Nikon D90 digital camera a lot, there is something wonderful about film that cannot be beaten by the more ‘clinical’ nature of digital… and it has to do with all these key components of photography that often go missing in the techno-madness that camera manufacturers obscure from us as they add ever more silly functions to their cameras: patience, composition, light, perspective… I’m not a dogmatic film shooter: of course digital cameras have their place (I couldn’t be involved in the same way in the African film festival if I wasn’t using digital, and I do like my D90). I think it is just a question of being reminded of that at times, of using film and digital in different circumstances as appropriate, and above all, appreciating film for all the wonder it can bring to the craft of photography.

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Posted in Bruce Percy, composition, digital, film, Fuji, Fuji Sensia, Fuji Velvia 50, Ilford, Ilford FP4 plus, light, lightmeter, Max Marinucci, Nikon, patience, perspective, process, Stephanie Tait, time

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On patience and time in processing

Posted on 27/09/2010 | 1 Comment
Stephanie: an intimate moment

Stephanie: an intimate moment

This is not going to be a long piece about patience and time (I have neither the patience nor the time for that – haha!).  Rather, it’s about taking the time in certain contexts, specifically when it comes to editing.  On looking at the tag cloud on this blog, I notice that I’ve written several times about the need to take time when seeking to capture images, but yesterday I found that after much time I had finally managed to get an image edited the way I wanted it to be – an image that I took in June 2009.  Now, 15 months later, and after several different attempts at edits, I’m finally happy with the end result (a previous version that I still like, but isn’t quite ‘right’, is here).

Sometimes, I just need to leave an image alone for a while, sometimes different edits need to be tried out, sometimes it will take a long, long, long time to get it right.  I can remember taking this image ‘in-between’ shots – Stephanie wasn’t really posing as such, but this seemed to me to be a gentle moment of some intimacy, and I wanted that to be reflected in the processing… and to my mind, that is reflected in this final (for now…) edit.

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Posted in frustration, permission, process, self, Stephanie Tait, time

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Stephanie in the sea

Posted on 22/08/2010 | 3 Comments
Stephanie, relaxed

Stephanie, relaxed

At 5:30 this morning, I collected Stephanie and we went to Gullane Bents, a lovely unspoilt beach east of Edinburgh, in order to take portraits in the soft light that comes at sunrise.  When I first discussed this with her she almost immediately said ‘yes’, despite my warning of the cold temperatures. She now lives in Los Angeles, where the average temperatures lie considerably above those in Scotland.  Theoretically she knows this, having lived here for several years…

The plan had initially been to create a narrative sequence, but the water was much colder than Stephanie had anticipated, despite my warnings, and we couldn’t complete the sequence – which would have entailed her being immersed in deeper water!

But it doesn’t matter, because some beautiful images were created, and Stephanie, despite the cold, managed to concentrate and pose, even, I think, looking positively sensual in between the temperature-induced screaming from being almost naked in the cold sea!!

Afterwards, much warm water was poured over her, much hot tea drunk, and many layers of clothing added.  I understand that in the meantime she has regained sensation in her limbs and has remembered that she does still have feet attached to the bottom of her legs…  I appreciate her tolerance, patience and courage in the face of the climactic conditions and thank her for posing this morning.

(More images can be seen here, and one or two are for sale on RedBubble.)

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Posted in Gullane, model, portrait, Stephanie Tait, sunrise

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Some reflections on representation

Posted on 21/04/2010 | 1 Comment

In my day job I have rather reluctantly found myself teaching on a course entitled ‘Global Cinema and Visual Culture – Looking and Subjectivity’ – not my specialist field at all, though I find some of the issues extremely interesting.

The first session I took was based on an essay by Homi Bhabha, which appeared at first to be saying interesting things about stereotypes and imagery, but on more thorough reading, was mostly vacuous waffle (an extremely generous statement!  I have found certain older texts by Bhabha interesting and useful, but this essay is certainly not in that category).

Thankfully, the second and third sessions are proving to be much more stimulating, and involve more substantive theoretical texts.  The themes are broadly centred on gender, sexuality and race, and are welcome new approaches to this subject material for me (Jackie Stacey and Jane Gaines being the main authors involved).  In this context, I’m also ‘teaching’ three films: All About Eve, Desperately Seeking Susan and Mahogany (a first for me, since I’ve never taught film, and actually agree entirely with Stephanie, my 2009 muse (see below!) and brilliant film-scholar friend who derides many academics’ desire to ‘teach’ film just because they enjoy watching films – my excuse is that I had no choice in the matter!).

What this long-winded introduction is leading to is a comment about how interesting I have found it to compare and think about issues relating to films/movies and the way in which these are represented, and the connection to photography and the way in which it is represented – it reminds me of a recent discussion I have been part of.  I sell my art through RedBubble, which is also an artistic ‘community’ – artists can comment on each other’s work, and there are diverse interest groups.  I recently joined a new group, called ‘Religious Architecture’.  A common pattern for many groups is to have little symbols (called avatars on RB) to mark when an image has been ‘featured’ each week.  This new group created a challenge to decide on a new avatar for this purpose.  Now I am no good at creating this kind of icon/avatar, and know it. But all of the entries in the competition bar one were of Christian churches – at the time I wasn’t sure what this last image was.  So I raised this as a concern, and questions of representation and interpretation ensued in a way I had not expected.  You can read the full forum discussion here.

What amazed me was the unreflective nature of so many of the comments.  Understandings that for me are part of the norm – that everything is political, that all images have an ideological context etc. – and that are with me almost every time I squeeze a shutter, appeared to be completely absent for most of the other correspondents, as exemplified in comments such as:

  • ‘This is a simple group of artists.’
  • ‘I am here to show my art, not to get into a religious argument because I might offend someone because I am a white protestant.’ and later: ‘You should realise that Redbubble is an ART site, and not a platform for dismissing other peoples cultures, religions, and beliefs.’ (not, of course, that I was doing the latter – quite the contrary!  It is worth looking at some of the symbolism on this person’s RedBubble home page for more clues about his attitude to such issues…)
  • ‘I don’t think most of us are thinking that deeply on the subject…’
  • and so on.

In the context of this short exchange, I was amazed that several very naive views on the place of art in society emerged: the idea that art can exist in an ahistorical and apolitical context is surely not that widespread, or am I just very out of touch with the vast majority of people?!  Even if not everyone would articulate it in this way: don’t people realise that all images are always linked to questions of gender, politics, identity, race etc., and are contingent upon historical circumstances?  For example, the image I had just submitted to this group was of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and there are clear political and religious elements to such a photograph, not least since the mosque itself and the vantage point I used to photograph it are in illegally occupied Palestinian territories held by Israel since 1967 in contravention of international law; Israel restricts Muslim access to worship, and forbids many Palestinian Muslims from exercising their right to pray there.  How can my image be properly appreciated for what it is without reflecting on the political and religious circumstances that surround it?

Stephanie in the garden

Stephanie in the garden

Or take this image of Stephanie from last summer, on which I have recently been carrying out some post-production work.  This photograph is undoubtedly about voyeurism, the male gaze and even quite overtly, sex… Stephanie’s closed eyes, her pursed lips, her naked shoulders, the tight necklace (actually a bracelet!), the playing with her hair, and her stretching are all elements in an explicitly sexualised pose, emphasised in various ways by the way in which the photograph has been taken and then processed.  These elements reflect a certain dynamic between the model and the photographer: there is undoubtedly a sexual tension here, and although this was obviously ‘just’ a photograph, there is an awareness of all the complications that result from such an approach.  You, the viewer, act as voyeur with me, her photographer, as Stephanie exposes more of herself than she might normally do – questions of responsibility, ownership, permission etc. arise (see also this posting).  I have been hesitant about making this image public for precisely these reasons, and have only done so after showing it to her.  Yes, she likes it, and yes, she is happy for it to be made public, but it is still a revealing image, one that communicates gender and sexual identity issues in a very overt way, as well as telling us something about the trust and openness in the relationship between photographer and model.  Awareness of and reflection upon such issues is something I take for granted, but clearly, if the sample of photographers commenting on this RedBubble page is anything to go by, I am in a minority.

And yet, the place of conscious reflection on imagery, whether in a film such as All About Eve or in still photographs such as the two I have mentioned here, is so vital to appreciating and comprehending what we think we see.  There is much that can be read into and derived from an understanding of the signifiers in an image, and to ignore this is not only to perpetuate ignorance, but also to deprive oneself of the further delights that an image is offering the viewer.  Sometimes this will jump out at you (as with the image of Stephanie – partial nudity, sex!), and sometimes it will require context and interpretation (as with the Mosque – occupied beauty).  Not only is such an understanding conducive to assisting in the appreciation of the image and the values it represents in the first place, but it also gives us insights into the photographer, her or his subject, the approach, the relationship between photographer and model, and so on.  And this, in turn, is about being aware of our own place in the world as conscious human beings.

I find it sad – and even rather frightening – that awareness of such issues does not seem to be important to some who engage with photography and artistic creation in a serious way.

 

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Posted in art, naked, ownership, permission, politics, RedBubble, responsibility, sex, sexuality, Stephanie Tait, theory

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Supporting independent artists: ‘Love in IV Acts’

Posted on 11/03/2010 | 1 Comment
Stephanie - model, academic, film-maker

Stephanie - model, academic, film-maker

Not directly related to photographic processes, but certainly connected: the beautiful woman who perhaps comes closest to having been my photographic muse in 2009 as well as being a very good friend, Stephanie Tait, has written and is co-directing a film (this is one of a number of skills she has; she’s also just completing a PhD).  She is currently trying to raise money for it.  Filming started recently, but lack of funds means they’ve had to cancel two planned filming sessions so far.  If you are able to support her project in any way, even with a small donation, I know it would be much appreciated.  You can donate on the website of Love in IV Acts, and depending on how much you donate, you could even appear in the film (though you’ll have to get yourself to her part of the USA to do that!).  You’ll be supporting an independent film-maker producing a film that promises to be rather good…

(And yes, the promo photo of her on this website, identified as Queenmab, is one of mine… and no, I have no idea why she doesn’t appear to use her proper name on the site!)

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Posted in money, Stephanie Tait

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Saying goodbye, hello, and goodbye again

Posted on 10/03/2010 | Leave a comment

Sometimes I’m amazed at how attached I become to cameras.  I’ve written about my lovely Nikon FM2, and also a little about my new D90.  But I haven’t written about my most faithful workhorse, my Nikon D40, that I have been wanting (rather half-heartedly, if truth be told) to sell.  The reason for selling is very simple: the D90 is not cheap, and my bank balance will benefit from having funds restored to it having after buying the D90.  I’m very glad to have found a buyer, and in particular a very special buyer (more on that in a moment), but I’m still sad to be seeing it go.  I bought the D90 for a few specific features that the D40 didn’t have, but I haven’t yet formed quite the intimate bond with it that I feel I have with the D40, even 3,500 shots on the D90 later.

The D40 was my first digital SLR, and in fact, my first digital camera at all.  I had always used film until then; now I use both.  It was bought reluctantly in the summer of 2008, when the shutter on my film camera jammed just before a holiday and I needed a camera.  To my surprise (naive, I know!), it was only possible to buy an F6 from Nikon – whilst I’d love an F6, it’s a bit outwith my price range!  So after a bit of research, I went for the D40 – the cheapest digital SLR in Nikon’s range, and despite my initial wariness, I now really love it.

Why? Because it allowed me to explore the art of photography in a way I hadn’t done quite so systematically before then, and allowed me to take some of my favourite pictures ever.  This post is a brief review of my D40 photographic life…

Hotel, Bergen

Hotel, Bergen

Very early on, I took this image from a hotel window in Bergen, Norway, where I was for an academic conference. The 18-55mm kit lens, despite weighing next to nothing, is great, and served me well on my travels. Although I did later bought the much heavier 18-200mm, the smaller lens is not only considerably lighter, it doesn’t have the barrel distortion of the larger one (that sometimes, if not used carefully, results in horizons sagging in the middle, for example).

With the D40, I usually felt I was being relatively unobtrusive – not quite like a rangefinder (which doesn’t have the clunking mirror noise that an SLR has), but it is a small SLR and therefore not as ‘in your face’ as my old film SLR was, which had a large battery grip as well as fairly big fat old lenses; this made the D40 great for social occasions (the D90 is again a bigger camera…).

Stephanie Tait

Stephanie

Speaking of people, it was with the D40 that I took some of my first systematic portraits.  One of my very early blog posts was about directing portraits and it was with the D40 that I took several hundred photographs of Stephanie.  She allowed herself to be photographed – wanted it even – in itself a new experience for me, and this enabled me to discover a whole new aspect to my photographic interest: aside from landscapes and family photography, I loved being able to photograph someone who was willing to do what I asked them to do, even if I wasn’t very good at doing it!

Stephanie Tait

Stephanie

However, I did go on a very helpful one-day introductory course to portrait photography at Stills, and began to find it easier to think about these things.  A later photoshoot with Stephanie resulted in what I felt were better portraits.  And of course, the D40 was part of all of this.

Over the summer of 2009 I spent 3 weeks on Mull, and was up about half the mornings to take dawn photographs – a wonderful experience.  I used both film and digital for these sessions.  Some of the D40 photographs formed the basis of a 2010 calendar I created.

Torridon

Torridon

And when I went to Torridon for my first weekend course with Bruce Percy, it was the D40 that I took with me.  This was the first time I’d ever spent time thinking about how to approach landscape photography under the guidance of a really great photographer, and the D40 was a great camera to have with me for that (I wrote about that in a series of blog entries: 1, 2, 3, 4).  It coped with some very soggy weather (plastic bags were on hand to wrap it in whilst taking photographs!), and I came home with a collection of images that I really love.

So the D40 has been through a lot with me.  It feels a bit like a ‘first ever’ camera, because we’ve done so much together.  I’m reminded of all this because my D90 has been in for repair (a minor warranty issue), and so I’ve reverted to using the D40.  It feels so nice and snug in my hands, and I’ve really enjoyed taking it with me for walks and events in the last couple of weeks.  As it happens, a day or two after the D90 went in for repair, a friend got in touch to say she wanted to buy the D40.  So in a funny kind of way, these last two weeks have felt a bit like a swansong, just before it moves on to a new owner; 15,000 exposures later, and it works as it did on the day I bought it.  There is no doubt in my mind that this is a really fantastic camera – if you’re looking for a digital SLR, this is a great one to consider (though now going up in price drastically!  I’m not asking for anything like the amounts noted here for mine…).

What I am really pleased about, however, in the sadness at having to sell it at all, is that the D40 is going to a very good new home.  My friend Carrie is buying it, and will, I am sure, put it to very good use in her art and more generally.  She is a fantastically creative individual, and very reflective of her own place and identity in relation to her art, and I’m sure she will find that a good camera will help her.  I realise I’m writing about a device made of metal, glass and plastic as if it were a beloved pet cat that I need to give away when moving to another country, but it almost feels like that.  For me, the idea of the camera not ‘getting in the way’ of the photograph is perfectly realised in a camera like the D40, and this fusion is exactly what Dorothea Lange was speaking about.  I hope Carrie finds the D40 as useful as I did, and before long finds herself ‘fused’ to it in the way that I did.

Today I collected the repaired D90, so now it really is farewell, faithful friend.

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Posted in camera equipment, digital, Dorothea Lange, film, landscape, model, Nikon, portrait, Stephanie Tait

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Ownership and responsibility

Posted on 09/09/2009 | 4 Comments

Susan Sontag, in her famous book ‘On Photography’, describes three forms of acquisition of a photograph, of which I want to discuss two here (the third perhaps another time):

…a photograph is not only like its subject, a homage to the subject.  It is a part of, an extension of that subject; and a potent means of acquiring it, of gaining control over it.

Photography is acquisition in several forms.  In its simplest form, we have in a photograph surrogate possession of a cherished person or thing, a possession which gives photographs some of the character of unique objects.  Through photographs we also have a consumer’s relation to events, both to events which are part of our experience and to those which are not – a distinction between types of experience that such habit-forming consumership blurs. (Penguin edition, 1971, 1974, 1977, pp155-6)

This makes for quite some responsibility.  Of course, the idea that by taking a photograph of someone a little something of them is taken is one that many people are familiar with (Sontag discusses this on p158ff).  Indeed, my understanding is that in (parts of?) medieval Europe, the eyes were thought to function almost as projectors – they sent out an image for the other person to see.  So by looking, you were literally taking something of the person or object you were looking at.

Stephanie looking a little coy

Stephanie looking a little coy

Sontag points to this in a different way.  Of course, a photograph can communicate emotion.  These two images of Stephanie clearly communicate something about her – and however one evaluates the technical aspects of the photographs themselves, it is clear that she is communicating different emotions in each of these images.  We have here two different elements of the same model, or in Sontag’s terms: two different ‘surrogate possession[s] of a cherished person or thing, … possession[s] which … [give] photographs some of the character of unique objects’.  In looking at her, we take something unique and intimate of or from Stephanie, something that she has willingly shared with me, her photographer.

An intimate portrait of Stephanie

An intimate portrait of Stephanie

Her willingness to share that element of herself obviously demands respect and responsibility from me, but also from you, the viewer – whether you like the images or not, your viewing of them involves you partaking of Stephanie’s willingness to (metaphorically) ‘undress’ herself to some extent, to open part of herself up to be viewed (or consumed, as Sontag might say).  And so your ‘surrogate possession of … [this] cherished person’ demands responsible viewing.  Sometimes we say that someone – even if they are wearing clothes – becomes ‘naked’ for the camera, and being offered nakedness is something to be honoured; we might reflect on this most dramatically in contemplating sex, but of course it applies in other contexts too, ones that don’t necessarily involve the removal of clothing but the dismantling of barriers to a person’s inner life.  Perhaps the best example of this is Richard Avedon’s famous portrait of Marilyn Monroe: she is more vulnerable, more undressed – and more beautiful! – in this photograph than in any nude centrefold she ever did (it goes – almost – without saying that nudity doesn’t necessarily represent vulnerability: earlier this summer Avedon’s ‘Nastassia Kinski and the Serpent’ sold at auction – I think Kinski communicates phenomenal serenity, control, and even power in this photograph, despite being completely naked… of course, placing a serpent on a naked woman is far from unproblematic – but I’ll not go into that now!).

Fishing crates, Isle of Mull

Fishing crates, Isle of Mull

Whilst the idea of taking ownership is not necessarily widely acknowledged, I think some sense of responsibility towards photographic subjects often is.  But Sontag picks up on more than this: ‘Through photographs we also have a consumer’s relation to events, both to events which are part of our experience and to those which are not – a distinction between types of experience that such habit-forming consumership blurs.’  Interestingly, I think this applies as much to the making of photographs as to the photographs themselves.  After all, every photographer is also a viewer – a consumer – of other people’s photographs.  I read today that in western societies urban dwellers see approximately 3,000 (yes, three thousand) brand images or advertisements each day – we cannot but be influenced by other photographs!  I took this particular photograph on Mull, on a jetty.  Seeing these crates piled high on the jetty reminded me of other photographs (and even Rothko paintings!) I have seen that play with lines and colours – and that is how I ‘saw’ this image before photographing it.  Essentially, my visualisation of the photograph I was going to take was in part my own experience of being at that spot at that time – but it was also connected to events that were part of others’ experience and which I had consumed.  As Sontag says, there was a link to consumership: the experience of things I had not experienced, if you like.

So if ‘acquisition’ is an integral part of the photographic process, we need to deal with this responsibly.  It seems fairly obvious how to do that with photographs of people, as discussed above.  But what about the second aspect Sontag mentions?  Perhaps I, or even photographers in general, need to be clearer about our debts to the creators of other images.  Yes, our photographs are communicating something unique and different in a person or a landscape – after all, this particular moment in time has never been captured on film before and can never be captured again – but our photographs often also acknowledge the consumerist element of our membership of wider society.  In taking a photograph, therefore, we are also dealing (usually subconsciously) with the thousands of images we see every day and that lend themselves to being re-imag(in)ed in a new setting – as happened with my crates at Fionnphort.  That is also part of the artistic process.

PS On a more frivolous note, I can’t resist sharing this Lego version of the Nastassia Kinski image… quite brilliant!

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Posted in consumer, experience, Marilyn Monroe, model, naked, Nastassia Kinski, ownership, portrait, responsibility, Richard Avedon, sex, Stephanie Tait, Susan Sontag

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Taking the time…

Posted on 04/09/2009 | 4 Comments

This can be read as a parallel reflection on the text I wrote about portraits a few days ago.  It might be terribly tedious because it might be very obvious to you – but it’s about my own exploration of a key issue in my landscape photography.

I have taken thousands of landscape photographs on and off for about 20 years.  When I bought my first SLR – I think it was a Pentax P30n with a 28-70 or so lens, a graduation present; later augmented by a Sigma telephoto zoom (ca. 80-200mm) – I was living on the island of Iona, working for the Iona Community.  Most of my days off were spent wandering about this small island in all seasons and weathers, taking photographs.  I bought the cheapest print film I could, and had to post it to a camera shop in Oban on the mainland for D&P – it took about a 10-14 days to get it back.  When I took my photos I didn’t always think to write anything down such as exposure or speed settings, and so in part just learnt incidentally from mistakes I could identify, and from other people (thanks, David, for advising me to underexpose a little to get richer colours – that was my first lesson!).  I had virtually no money (salaries were very low, and I needed to buy other essentials, like whisky!) so I could barely afford to buy sufficient film.  But in slightly less than 2 years I took hundreds and hundreds of photos, and developed my technique considerably.  One of my all-time favourite photographs of Iona Abbey comes from this period – one day I’ll get around to finding it, scanning it in and putting it on my website.

I moved from a remote Scottish island to Jerusalem and worked there for almost a year.  I used mostly black and white and some colour print film.  Some of it I developed (with help) in a lab in a local Palestinian newspaper, which used one or two of my images – this was street photography, more than anything else, often with a lot of energy behind it.  It was a fantastically creative time, and because I spent quite a lot of my time travelling in the illegally occupied territories, my photographs tended to be about Israeli abuse of Palestinians and the like; journalistic-style imagery.

On my return to Scotland, my life changed dramatically – I ‘got together’ with my wife!  Wonderful person she may be, but she doesn’t always appreciate the nuance of waiting for a photograph.  Now, in retrospect, I notice that this is when my photography began to change considerably.  When out walking, for example, I would still take my camera, but often felt myself to be under time pressure, even if it was more imaginary than real: I find it’s hard to walk backwards and forwards, take a few steps to one side or the other, stoop down, climb onto a bench – whatever! – in order to compose an image when I know someone else is standing there waiting for me to start walking on again.  Mark Twain famously once said that golf is a good walk spoilt – I’m sure there are many photographers’ partners who think of a camera in much the same way as Twain thought of golf clubs!

I found that I was often quite dissatisfied with my photographs, and felt I was ‘getting’ fewer good images than in those early days on Iona and in Jerusalem.  And, being a bit slow on the uptake, I’ve only recently realised why this is!  Interestingly, it connects directly with my first modelling session with Stephanie.  Afterwards, I wrote her a letter and thanked her for modelling for me.  In this letter I wrote about the experience of being able to (however tentatively!) tell her, my subject, what to do, and said that I was more used to the ‘impermeability of a landscape or cityscape, which only gives me meaning if I can take the time to wrestle and struggle with it.’

This, of course, is why I was so unhappy with my photographs.  I don’t think it’s possible to make my subject get into my frame – the whole photographic experience needs to be much more relaxed.  Even in this letter, I was making a fundamental mistake, I think.  Landscapes are rarely really impermeable, and using language like ‘wrestling and struggling’ is far too violent for what I mean.  Getting back to how I first learnt to take photographs on Iona has been key to rediscovering my landscape photography.

This is because regardless of the camera used, my photographing of landscapes needs one thing more than anything else – time.  I need to have the time to wander along a path, climb a hill, fall into a bog, sit on a beach, examine city waste-lands – and then something might catch my eye, might form a shape, a shadow, an outline I wasn’t expecting.  The ‘wrestling and struggling’ is not really about subjugation (which is what I think the letter to Stephanie implied), but about finding the photograph – looking for it, exploring angles, perspectives, vantage points and so on, until the image appears in my viewfinder as I see it in my head.  Sometimes I can’t find it, but like everything that one is searching for, it won’t be found if the time to look for it is not available.

If I’m trying to keep up with someone on a normal walk, all I will get are fleeting glimpses and snapshots – and occasionally a striking photograph.  So instead, I am now trying to differentiate between time spent with my family and time spent with my camera.  I’ll happily go with the snapshots – and then perhaps go back to the same location another time to walk more slowly and try to visualise the image I want to capture.

Holyrood Park, Edinburgh

Holyrood Park, Edinburgh

Making time to go out and spend time alone photographing is a luxury.  But it is one that has its own reward.  Even taking a couple of hours in the evening to go elsewhere in the city and photograph the evening sky can be worth it.  My wife is less intolerant of my photography than she could be (my teenage son has fewer inhibitions, and is often just downright rude!!), but since I want to spend quality time with her and focus on her, trying desperately to get images I glimpse in passing is not a good start.  And I know that she would rather I just went out for a few hours or days and took my photographs, and then was really there for her the rest of the time.

So I’m determined, having rediscovered this fairly basic point, to keep on making time – for family and photographs.

(Incidentally, the afore-mentioned Iona Community, of which I am a Member, includes accounting for use of time in its Rule, and a key element to this is maintaining a healthy balance between the different parts of one’s life.  In rediscovering this part of my photography, I’m even keeping the Rule more appropriately!)

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Posted in cityscape, Isle of Iona, Jerusalem, landscape, Stephanie Tait, time

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Directing portraits

Posted on 30/08/2009 | 4 Comments

For years, I’ve been taking photographs of landscapes, some more, some less good.  But portraits are a relatively new thing for me.

By portraits, I don’t mean family snapshots and the like, but deliberate posing, lighting and framing of an individual in order to communicate something.  My family mostly don’t want to be photographed (my teenage son recently decided he wants to charge me for photographing him!), and so being able to photograph someone who wants to be photographed is something of a revelation.

Stephanie

Stephanie

Stephanie, who features prominently on my website at the moment, is an ex-ballet dancer and was very happy to be photographed: she even offered to model for me.  I’m sure the experience of showing great vulnerability on stage to an audience plays a substantial role in this extrovert attitude.  So far, we’ve had two portrait sessions together.  In each session I had plans for how I wanted her to pose, and she also had some ideas about how she wanted to be photographed.  In our first session together, I was so taken aback that I had someone in front of the lens who wanted to be photographed, that I mostly forgot about my plans!  The second time I injected more of my own ideas into the session, but – through no fault of Stephanie’s – I found this quite hard.

What I found hard was simply being directive enough – I felt I was always being too tentative in asking her to pose in certain ways: ‘perhaps… erm… you could try maybe lifting your arm… just a little bit, please?’ – a bit of a caricature, but there is truth in it!  She told me several times, ‘just tell me what you want me to do!’

Jane

Jane

I took a number of images of another friend, Simon (these are not on my website).  He wanted a classical portrait he could use online to accompany his writings, and directing him for that purpose was relatively straightforward.  However, in some ways, photographing Jane was similar to photographing Stephanie.  Jane is an old friend I met for a meal; afterwards I asked if I could photograph her, thinking from the outset that these would end up as black and white images.  Although it was early afternoon and the light was pretty harsh, I sat her on a bench in the shade – all things considered, I think the photographs are ok.  Jane also has a dance background and was also happy to be directed, but I still found it difficult to be as directive as I perhaps could have been, and she perhaps would have been happy for me to be.

Aside from the technical and visionary skills needed for portraiture, I’m realising more and more that what I perhaps need is greater assertiveness in directing my models.  Most people who know me wouldn’t say I particularly lack assertiveness in what I say and do (that’s a gentle way of saying that I know I can be quite bossy!), and so it’s a bit of a surprise that I seem to struggle so much with it when it comes to portraits.  I can see that there’s possibly a gender issue for me here (although I think photographing Simon was more straightforward because it was very clear what we were after), but I suspect it’s more about getting used to the idea that there really are people out there who want to be photographed!

I’m soon to be photographing another woman friend, both indoors and outdoors (I hope – if the weather plays along).  I’ll report back on how I get on once that photoshoot has happened…

PS the way I photograph landscapes involves a different kind of combination of patience and assertiveness – I’ll write about that at some point soon too!

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Posted in Jane Delafons, model, portrait, Stephanie Tait

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