Tag Archives: experience

My own little adventures (ahem!)

1 Reply

Duncan Fawkes has written a blog posting that I wish I had written! So this title is shamelessly plagiarised from him.

Something like this posting has been forming in my mind after my summer holidays in the north of Scotland and the Isle of Lewis. However, Duncan has written what I wanted to write so eloquently, I think it’s better just to send you to his blog! You may realise this is rather unusual for me - I wouldn’t normally just not write something, but on this occasion I think: why should I repeat what Duncan has said when his posting pretty much says what I want to say? I even commented on his blog posting before realising I wanted to share his thoughts more widely. Go have a read…

And whilst you’re on his site, have a look at his galleries - some lovely images there.

About these ads

Why workshop?

6 Replies

A while ago I mentioned on Twitter that I had booked myself a place on a photography workshop. Someone commented on this in what felt like a throw-away remark, saying they had never seen the point of going on workshops. So I - in 140 characters! - sought to explain why this was important to me. Now that I’m just back from the workshop I booked on at the time, I thought I’d try and say more about it, and include some images from the time away (these are just the digital ones - I have yet to take the film rolls to be developed).

Achnahaird Bay

Achnahaird Bay

Firstly, it’s worth noting that I have no formal artistic training (unlike my correspondent, who has, I think, a degree in art/photography), and so for me, I hope that a workshop can serve partly to teach me something. Secondly, having a pretty intense full-time job means that if I get the time to go and photograph for a few days and do nothing but think about photography, that is really fantastic! The week was a proper holiday, and I didn’t read a single academic text whilst away (even though I did have a book with me… I rarely travel without one!).

Thirdly, and most importantly for me, engaging with a photographer leading a workshop is about having someone critique what I do and help me move forward in my thinking and my photography.

Loch Bad a' Ghaill

Loch Bad a' Ghaill

My week away was with Bruce Percy, who has been running workshops for several years now. Exactly two years before going on this Assynt workshop, I went (with my neighbour, Mabel Forsyth) to Torridon on one of his weekend workshops. That was a great experience, as I wrote about here at the time. So I was confident the week in Assynt would be a good week.

There are some people who seem to be workshop-regulars, going from one to the next all the time. I am not like that: I have attended a couple of other day-workshops in recent years, but have not been on residential workshops other than the one in Torridon and this one in Assynt. So if you’re wanting me to offer comparisons, I can’t do so (though I have now heard quite a few horror stories of other workshops, some by really famous photographers… and no, I won’t say more on this). My main purpose in going to Assynt with Bruce was that I wanted to rediscover something about my own reasoning and motivation for making photographs - especially landscapes - that I had found increasingly difficult to identify in recent times. I felt I knew enough theory in terms of operating my cameras (though of course, Bruce was able to help me improve in certain areas, such as my exposures and hyperfocal focusing). But I felt I needed input on more important things, especially aspects of composition and how and why I frame the way I do or give more attention to certain things in a scene, and what all that says about my own ‘visioning process’ (sorry, I think that is a rather horrible phrase, but I can’t think of a more suitable one; pre-visualisation covers some of it, but is not the same thing).

Glencanisp Lodge, with view to Suilven

Glencanisp Lodge, with view to Suilven

Of course, this is not something that I discussed in any detail with Bruce before or during the workshop, because I knew from previous experience that this might come anyway - and it did. One of the two key things for me in thinking about a workshop is that I have to like the photographs that the workshop leader makes, and I really love Bruce’s work - it offers depth and challenge, simplicity and elegance, in both his landscapes and portraits. Of course, I have no desire to create images that are like Bruce’s, even if I could do so, since they represent his vision and not mine; however, I feel I can relate to his vision. I have come to realise that the other key thing for me is that I have to feel I can connect to the leader, and that he or she can connect to me. Of course, I’m privileged in that I was able to go on the Torridon workshop with Bruce and I therefore knew him a little already; and we’ve also become friends over the last couple of years - that is not something that is necessarily open to people who don’t live in the next neighbourhood to a workshop leader! But it is possible to at least gain some impression of the person from their images and their writings (such as their blog) and this offers good clues. And, of course, you can trust my recommendation that Bruce is a great workshop leader!

So, is it possible to sum up what it was that I gained from Bruce’s input? There are a number of things that come to mind, but the main one for me can be outlined in the following terms. At the beginning of the week, he noted that he sometimes found it difficult to understand exactly what I was seeing and why I had gone for a certain composition (I did say this was perhaps because the images were no good, but Bruce disagreed!). A day or two later he began to suggest that my visualising of scenes was perhaps too selective - I tended to visualise one or two really significant elements in a potential image, but I did not always frame these in a way that meant they were as apparent as I wanted them to be, whether this be unusual shapes, repeated lines, patterns on hills, the interplay between different elements in a scene, and so on. This is not simply about excluding extraneous elements - even if I intended to crop the image from whatever I saw in the viewfinder - although this is also a factor (see the tree image I discussed here recently and the grass in the bottom right of the image: 1, 2). Rather, for me, it is about expanding the view of the scene as a whole, about being able to encompass the elements that form the shapes, colours and tones in a way that enables a more holistic image to emerge. That is what I want to achieve, and I know that I do that, but not always as consistently as I would like.

At Achnahaird Bay, looking south

At Achnahaird Bay, looking south

Of course, this is just me. Other participants will hopefully have found something in Bruce’s critiques (there were 2-3 hours of image critiques on every day but one; other participants also commented on images) that helped them with whatever they thought they needed - or perhaps that they didn’t know they needed.

A month or two ago I removed all the landscape galleries from this site. There really was a lot of rubbish there, in amidst some images that I liked. Before going to Assynt I had begun the process of recreating the galleries and they are gradually going to reappear, but this time with far fewer, more carefully selected images. In general, I make photographs for myself and not for others: being clearer about what I’m doing is therefore essential, and I feel the week away with Bruce has enabled me to see much more clearly exactly what kind of images I want to create, and given me more tools to enable me to go about doing that. Those are the images I want to show here.

In essence, I feel I am approaching my photography with new confidence, a clearer sense of why I’m doing it, and how to go about achieving what I want. So in answer to my correspondent: that’s why I wanted to go on this workshop!

Models wanted!

1 Reply

A modern-day Mary Poppins?!

I’ve just added a new page to this site asking for people interested in modelling for me to get in touch - no previous experience required, and all kinds of ‘looks’ and ages welcome!

I’m keen to build up experience in this area, and would be very grateful for any contacts. So please help me and spread the word - thank you!

Marc Silber interviews Bob Holmes

1 Reply

I love the Marc Silber interviews, which last about 10 minutes and pick up on famous photographers working in a variety of areas.

Today I was watching him interview Bob Holmes, who said the most important thing in photography is seeing (“most people look and don’t see”). Like so many other good photographers, he can’t be doing with people who focus just on camera equipment: he says people should be looking at other photographers’ work in order to be inspired by them. And how to improve? “Keep shooting. Shoot as much as you can. Photography is deceptively simple: you can’t expect to pick up a violin and play it within a week, but people expect to pick up a camera and take great photographs within a week - and it just doesn’t happen… practice, practice, practice.”

Read the manual! And…

1 Reply

After much deliberation and a recommendation from Bruce Percy, I recently bought a Sekonic L-758D lightmeter. It is fiendishly complicated to try and understand all the features, but I do now understand the basics, and it is a fantastic device (and I will probably never need to use all the features anyway). I’ve read the manual through, and remembered thinking how cleverly designed everything about it was. Even the pouch it came in had a little pocket for a spare battery. The manual encouraged carrying a spare, just in case the battery in the meter ran out - and explicitly said the battery that was supplied may have been in the device for a while and that a spare should be bought promptly. Very clever.

I find the meter most useful in determining the differences in dynamic range, and then using graduated filters to reduce the range, thereby creating a usable image. This evening, I was wanting to capture a lovely ruin in the evening light, and just knew the shadows would be too dark or the highlights blown out without use of a grad filter. So I dug the light meter out of my bag, turned it on - and the battery was flat.

Of course, I had thought when reading the manual that the idea of buying a spare battery was very sensible, but I hadn’t acted on it.

Kaiserswerth 1

Kaiserswerth - with dark shadows

So I thought I’d try the shot anyway. It was rubbish, as you can see here - the shadows are almost completely black, and whilst the sky and bricks are fairly rich in tone, the overall image is lousy. So I tried using the camera’s spot meter and working out the difference between the shadow area and the lighter wall. Rather improbably, my mental arithmetic from thinking through the variant shutter speeds at my chosen aperture came up with 8 stops - quite high, I thought. But I went with my calculations, and used a 9-stop grad. And this second image is the result - flat and boring.

Kaiserswerth 2

Kaiserswerth - flat and boring

Yes, I could have tried a 6- or a 3-stop grad (I later worked out it was a 4 or 5 stop difference), but I was so put off and annoyed by the whole experience that I just didn’t bother. I walked back to the town centre to an electrical store to buy the special battery needed (it takes a CR123A, not just a normal AA battery!), and then went back to the ruin. Of course the light was gone. Pah.

Lesson for today: Read the manual. And when the clever people who designed such a clever device make a recommendation in their manual, I should act on it. I’ll try and do so from now on, promise.

PS I did only buy one battery, in case you’re wondering. I’d recommend that when buying one as a spare, especially of a more exotic kind, you buy it from another shop so you are more likely to not end up with two batteries that go flat at the same time. So tomorrow or the next day I’m going to find another battery retailer…

PPS I’m aware I could have tried to create an HDR image - but 99% of the time, the resultant images repulse me, so I wasn’t going to start going down that route. I’d rather learn the lesson and lose the image than end up spending a lot of time on an image I’d hate in the end anyway, given that I’ve never tried my hand at HDR manipulation…

There’s always another day, another photograph…

What makes a good photographer?

Leave a reply

Matthew Jordan Smith has some simple advice for becoming a better photographer:

To become a better photographer first you’ve got to be secure in who you are, you’ve got to know who you are, and be secure in putting that out there, ’cause the secret of being a great photographer is being you, putting your stamp on all your images, and that takes a little soul-searching.

The interview this quote is taken from is on the Silber Show - a really interesting resource, with lots of short interviews with great photographers.

Technology and art

Leave a reply

Nikon introduced the first zoom lens before I was born, which was a 43-86mm lens - by all accounts an absolutely horrific piece of equipment. It was so unbelievably bad that it gave zoom lenses a bad name: I, for one, grew up with the idea that all zoom lenses were terrible, which they are not. Even by the time I was aware of zoom lenses (mid-late 1970s), things had actually moved on substantially, and there were many great zoom lenses available.

Ever since I began to take my photography more seriously, I have used zoom lenses, and I have mostly enjoyed using them. One of the latest ones, that I really like, is the 18-200mm, which is fantastic as an all-round lens, even though it produces slightly ‘saggy’ horizons when used wide. It is great for portraits as well as a good travel lens. But… but…

I also bought a prime last year, the gorgeous little 35mm, and it is so light and produces such beautiful images that it is a joy to have on my camera (it’s about equivalent to a 50mm on a full 35mm frame; the same as I have on my FM2). I find I use it more and more frequently. The aperture goes down to f1.8 to produce lovely blur in out-of-focus areas. I’ve also now invested in a 50mm f1.4, which for my D90 is about 75mm. This I expect to be great for portraits, especially with the wide aperture; on the basis of a few sample shots, I can already tell that it produces really creamy blur with naked skin. But I can also see that it will also be useful for certain kinds of landscapes.

There is something about the simplicity of using prime lenses that I find really attractive. Zoom lenses make me lazier, but with a prime, if I want to frame something in a particular way, I need to make myself get up and move to another location, to walk closer or further away, to think differently about how I approach a subject. It makes for a more interactive engagement with the environment I’m in and that - for me - is a very appealing aspect to photography. I tend to think that it’s not really about taking a photograph, but about making an image, and making requires much more personal engagement than taking!

At some point, you can therefore expect to read about the purchase of a wide prime too… (but unless I win the lottery that I don’t play, I expect this to be in the very distant future, given the high prices of these lenses!).

New images - not quite online

1 Reply

I came back from Jerusalem a few days ago, having been working there for three weeks.

Returning to Jerusalem was a great experience, but it was also an incredibly busy time. So although I have a longer posting in mind about my own mental processes regarding photography/art in situations of conflict, I have not had time to craft anything properly. I haven’t even managed to post many images online.

Some new photographs are on my website - at the moment just one gallery documenting one demonstration - though I plan to add more soon, when I have time. There are a couple of images on RedBubble, however.

Al-Aqsa Mosque, Israeli-Occupied East Jerusalem

The next few weeks will be very busy for me at work, but I’ll return to this rather neglected blog sometime soon…

‘Postcards’ and the aspiration to create beautiful images

Leave a reply

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is the aspiration that people have to make beautiful images, coupled with a complete lack of realism about how to go about doing that, or more specifically, when to go about doing that.

There is absolutely no need to have a really expensive camera to be able to make spectacular images. This photograph of Stirling train station was taken using a cheap 4 (or 5?) year-old 4.1 megapixel point-and-shoot no-brand digital camera with dodgy red-rendition.

Stirling train station

I love it. It’s not the greatest image ever, but for me it communicates a city’s winter evening: magical skies over a new and interesting piece of architecture (the bridge, although lit up, was not yet open). I was in the right place at the right time, and just happened to have a camera to hand (actually, that’s meant to be funny: I rarely even go to the supermarket without a camera of some kind in my pocket/bag, even if it’s a Fuji single-use camera!).

Wherever we go, whether to a secluded spot or to a warehouse store, there are interesting things to photograph. But the time of day is crucial. Here is an image from my recent trip to the Lake of Menteith, where I went with my colleague Antonio to photograph the dawn:

Lake of Menteith

And here is pretty much the same scene an hour later:

Lake of Menteith

Although the framing is different, the dramatic changes in light and colour are all nature’s doing - I have done almost nothing to these images in Photoshop. If I had tried to make such dramatic changes on the computer, the resulting images would undoubtedly look AWFUL (incidentally, both of these images are also available to buy as prints on my RedBubble page; it’s also interesting to see which of these two generates more comments from the RB community!).

After making these images, I went to the Lake of Menteith hotel (just to the left of the church) for a departmental staff awayday. Colleagues were amazed at the photographs Antonio and I showed them, even on the rubbish little screens on our cameras, and several people said things like ‘those photos look like postcards! My pictures never turn out like that!’ The main reason for that, of course, is that most people don’t get up at a sensible time in order to see this light in the first place! Joe Cornish, Bruce Percy, Martin Guppy and all the other greats don’t stay in bed until 8:30, stagger down to their hotel breakfast at 9:30, look blearily out of the window and finally get themselves out the door at 11h to wander round to the jetty for 11:30… and then see bland, washed-out midday skies. They do exactly what Antonio and I did: get up at 5:15, arrive on location at 7:15 (almost half-an-hour before dawn, and in fact a bit later than I would have liked), capture the rising sun and the magical light - and then go to the hotel for breakfast and lots of hot coffee to warm up just after 9h!

All that a bigger/better camera does is help to ease the process of making photographs, but even using a cheap digital point-and-shoot would allow some amazing images to be made… if you can be bothered to get out of bed in time to see the fantastic morning light!

Coping with the rain

1 Reply

(Stefanie, this one’s for you!)

It rained a lot over the weekend in Torridon. A LOT. Even by damp Scottish standards, there was an excessive amount of rain, and rain in Scotland, as I suggested in my second post about the weekend, has magical properties. Waterproof raincoats are sometimes tested to their limits in Scotland (perhaps it ought to be a legal requirement that all jackets sold as ‘waterproof’ need to have spent at least a couple of days in a proper Scottish downpour before they’re allowed to be described as ‘waterproof jackets’!). But even if you have a jacket that is waterproof, eventually, water still manages to get everywhere - if it’s not rain, it’s rain and sweat! This summer I walked up Ben More on Mull, and it rained almost continuously all the way up and all the way down - about 5 or 6 really miserable hours. I was quite literally soaked through to the skin, to the extent that after I drove back to the house, the car seat ended up being rather damp (but most importantly, both my cameras were safe… I had them wrapped in plastic bags!). Whenever I felt the downpour ease off a bit, I opened my jacket to take a camera out and catch a photo (none of which were any good!). This naturally let in rain, and combined with sweat, the waterproof jacket really couldn’t help me. In Torridon at the end of October, I found that my jacket was ok, but water ran up my sleeves every time I reached out to adjust camera settings - despite the jacket’s elasticated lining on the wrists. And water came in through the pocket area of my waterproof trousers (ha! damp-proof trousers would be a more accurate description!), and and and… like I said, magical properties!

But one of the things that the weekend confirmed for me about cameras in the rain is that rain really shouldn’t be something to stop you creating photographs: although there are special waterproof camera housings that allow easy access to the camera controls whilst allowing the lens free access to the open air, I have found over the years that for most circumstances, a completely clear plastic bag and some strong elastic bands also works: put the camera inside the bag, put the elastic bands round the front of the lens just behind any filters that you’re using, if necessary tear a small hole in the bag to allow the tripod mount to be used (I can just jam my tripod head into the camera holder without doing that - it tears the bag by itself), and you’re done! If you are using a zoom lens, make sure it can move forwards far enough, and you can then take your photographs (if your lens doesn’t have internal focusing, the front of the lens will probably turn when you focus - make sure your elastic bands don’t prevent this, especially if you’re relying on the delicate autofocus motors). The viewfinder will be blurred by the bag, but you’re mostly using it for rough composition in such circumstances: precise cropping can be done later. Take care when removing the bag after the rain - you don’t want to spill water from it onto the camera, defeating the object of protecting the camera in the first place!

The other thing you will need is very absorbent soft tissue for wiping down filters/lenses. Using very soft paper towels from a hotel bathroom works well, or try very soft kitchen roll (the key thing is that you need to avoid using anything that might scratch the delicate glass). I find that if the rain is heavy, I wipe down the filter and - using my remote control - immediately take the photograph. If you haven’t got a remote control, get one - my Nikon one was about £10 and it is invaluable; I’m sure Canon offers something similar.

Why bother with all this? Very simple: when it’s raining the light is often really soft and gentle, with lots of gradual changes in tone and colouration. I think it is such a shame to miss it that for a long time now I have always had a clear plastic bag and elastic bands with me in my camera bag. Especially useful in Scotland…

Torridon - the art of adventure photography part 4

2 Replies

After my previous posts about the Torridon workshop, I wanted to leave a little bit of mental distance and reflect on the weekend. I’m actually finding this quite difficult! It’s a week later, and Torridon seems like a very long time ago at the moment. In an email exchange with Bruce today, I noted this, and he responded by saying:

Like you - I was thinking today that the Torridon trip felt like it was a lifetime ago.
I think that’s the sign of a trip that has affected you or changed you in some way, or perhaps just had some kind of impact on you.
I often feel like that after a good workshop, and more so when I return home from a really life changing photographic trip!

Too right, Bruce! But I’ve been very busy with work this week and have had very little time to get out and take any photographs. However, at the beginning of the week, I did stop on the way to work and sought to capture an impression of Stirling Castle from Bridge of Allan that I consciously felt to be quite different to previous images. I was using my Nikon FM2 with Velvia slide film, so I don’t yet know whether the image will work, but even just the process of thinking about the framing and composition felt different… more… considered, if you like. One of Bruce’s lines is that ‘to explore the world through photography, is to explore oneself’. That is something I’ve felt more acutely than ever before as a result of this weekend: in relation to one of the critique sessions, I said I found the need to open myself to relative strangers quite difficult, though it is good, very good to do so… I’m not sure I can say much more than this at the moment, but perhaps the fact that I’ve been reviewing old images for possible inclusion in a sales gallery is also indicative of an effect from the weekend - I feel much more able to be constructively self-critical of my own work, which is also a process of self-exploration. Of course, as an academic, I do this all the time with my writing, and although I can discern similar processes in my assessment of photographs, the criteria and methodology of assessment and critical appreciation are somewhat different.

Bruce Percy

Bruce Percy

I want to mention the mysterious brown A4 envelope Bruce gave each of us as we were leaving (see my third post). This is amazing: it contains a series of printed guides written by Bruce, as well as a CD with these tutorials on it AND a sample image from Bruce’s own work, showing pre- and post-processing. Not only are these beautifully and clearly laid out, but they are also incredibly informative, with precise details and helpful guides and tips. Not having known about these guides, I went and made notes on some of what Bruce showed us during the critical review sessions - but everything I noted down is contained here, and much more coherently written! I’m sure Bruce could sell printed versions of these guides and people would love them. Perhaps, one day, we can look forward to a book of Bruce’s images, along with inlays such as these (I love photo books and feel I learn a lot from studying other images, but would also like to see hints of some of the processes involved). To give an impression of what is covered, here is a list of the contents (note that in complying with Bruce’s request not to distribute these documents, the image here is just a low-resolution screen capture of one of the covers of Bruce’s documents; clicking it takes you to Bruce’s site, not the document):

  • a document entitled ‘Bruce’s Approach’ (‘My aim is to try to realise the full potential of a location in such a short space of time’ - I couldn’t sum it up any better!)
  • an explanation of how to use Adobe Camera Raw etc. in the ‘Raw Conversion Process’
  • ‘Digital Darkroom Printing Techniques’ (for Adobe’s Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Elements)
  • and 3 documents on understanding bit depth, exposure and monitor calibration.

A fantastic gift, on top of all that Bruce gave us of himself over the course of the weekend!

Overall, if I were to be asked to say one thing about the workshop, it would be: go on one yourself! Whether you’re just starting out or have been photographing for years, whether you have a basic camera (mine is the cheapest in Nikon’s DSLR range) or a top of the range full-frame colossus/medium format camera, spending time with Bruce will almost certainly improve your images. He is a tremendously accomplished photographer, but far more importantly, he has a warmth and generosity of spirit coupled with a deep sensitivity and connection to his creative abilities - and he knows how to communicate all of this. A great pedagogue, you will quickly realise you are also in the presence of a great artist who is willing to give of himself in sharing aspects of his photographic craft with you. And that is what really makes going on one of Bruce’s workshops worthwhile… I’m going to be saving up for a week-long course at some point (I just need to persuade the family they want to do this too!).

Falling in love

5 Replies

I have fallen in love… with an old camera. Having recently been given a slightly damaged Nikon FG-20 and an f1.8 50mm lens, I looked into having the camera body repaired - necessary since I was fairly sure there were light leaks from the damaged baseplate. The cost of doing this turned out to be higher than expected, and it became more sensible to think about a new body altogether… especially when the camera repair shop happened to have another Nikon, an FM2 for sale for not that much more than the repair to the FG-20 would cost. Since I am able to resist everything except temptation (forgive me, Oscar), I am now the proud owner of an FM2! I am very conscious of the fact that on my website I say that equipment doesn’t matter (and I really do believe that to be true!), but I do want to say a little about the FM2, not so much as a camera, but more as a camera experience - it is quite different to what I have been used to for many years now.

Nikon FM2 (mine is black/silver)

Nikon FM2 (mine is black/silver)

When it was first released in the early 1980s, this appears to have been a really well-received camera, and I still find it an amazing piece of equipment. It is quite small, but with a strong metal body that could probably qualify it as a dangerous weapon. It uses tiny batteries to control the light meter (not matrix-metering - that was to come a few years later, this is the old 60/40 system, that mostly works pretty well for what I want to use it for, as far as I can tell). Apart from that, everything is completely manual. Even though I’m only onto my second roll of film so far, like the slightly smaller FG-20 that I had played with, it feels totally natural in my hands, and all the controls are just where my fingers expect them to be. This means all the essential controls can be adjusted without taking my eye from the finder (try doing that with a digital SLR!). For sure, I love my D40 too (nearly 15, 000 images and it still seems like new - there really is nothing wrong with Nikon’s quality control processes!) but the FM2 is about making photographs in a different way, without all the complicated menus that contemporary digital cameras can’t seem to do without. I can’t wait to see how the images turn out.

So I have been rediscovering the basics of a fast prime lens with a proper aperture ring (it is such a shame the cheaper new Nikon G lenses abandon that in favour of electronic menus… of course, that’s why they’re cheaper!), and manual settings for everything. Of course, for family photographs and the like this camera will be less useful than a digital camera with autofocus and so on, but I can see that the FM2 could easily be my daily camera that goes everywhere with me for landscape and street photography. The 50mm lens is crystal clear and the lens/camera combination feels great in making images. I’ll scan some of them in soon and put them online.

So forgive a post that appears at first to be largely about equipment. It’s not really that - rather, you should read this as a declaration of love! It is, of course, a romance that I hope will continue to be mutual - as I make ever more photographs, I’m hoping I’ll be rewarded with ever more beautiful images. And, of course, I can see that an 85 or 105mm lens for portraits wouldn’t go amiss, and I’ve already discussed wide-angle lenses with the retailer… you can see that this love affair is already at the considering-babies-stage - it must be serious!

P.S. In case you’re interested, I bought the FM2 from Joe at JP Cameras in Edinburgh - a treasure trove of old photographic equipment that is properly restored, tested, and reasonably priced. His camera bodies come with a 6-month warranty, lenses with a 12-month warranty.

♥

Ownership and responsibility

5 Replies

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!