An earlyish post as I’m off to London tomorrow morning to have a look about the camera shops then go to a Halloween party. Woop. This week was pretty informative, we played about with the digital backs and Hasselblads on Monday, was pretty fun. The quality is silly. Anyway, on Wednesday we did group presentations. The subject we were given to talk about was “Is the subject of the photograph more important than the way it looks?” My interpretation of this was can form or content dictate what is seen as a good photograph.

I chose to compare ‘Omaha Beach, 1944′ by Robert Capa, and ‘Afghan Girl’ by Steve McCurry, probably two of the most famous photographs around. My discussion was that I found Capas image more subject based, with the form being a by-product to how it was shot, and McCurrys image being more form based, although the photo was set up to emphasise the subject. Personally I prefer Capas shot, but I am still transfixed by those eyes in ‘Afghan GirI’ (I’m a sucker for green eyes though) I found it a really interesting subject, and taking it further and opening the opinion based can of worms thats “what makes a good photograph?”

So, what does make a good photograph? From our lectures and my research I think it comes down to two things, the person viewing the photograph and the context that the photograph is shown. For example, when I was working at Boots on the photographic counter, I was often quite surprised just how technically poor some of the photos people chose to print off their cameras were, and just how bad some photographs were that people accepted. The photo copy machine that people scanned in their old photos to make new prints was where most of these examples happened. The scanning of a locket sized image from 1905 to a 9×6 usually is asking for trouble, but people were genuinely pleased with a large very fuzzy photo of their great Gran.  And thats the main point. I had no feeling or any resonance with the subject in the photos, to the person printing them out, they were reminding them of their family, friends, and all the good times.  Once you know that photos will mean more to some people than others, then its easy to know what makes up a good photograph. Want to take a photo that lots of people will like? then just make it appeal to a wide range of people. That is why animal photos get so many hits/comments/responses on Flickr, even though they are often just snapshots of someones cat or dog. (Ditto for sunsets, although I will never understand why the worst abomination of a shot thats made even worse by HDR and tone mapping, gets so much praise…)

I also had a flash of inspiration last night (at 3.35am) as to the image for my ‘Incongruous’ project. So much so I had to get up out of bed and write it all down. Should be good If I can pull it off, if not it will just be a big photographic mess. But more research is needed and some test shots done to make sure I can actually pull it off. I can always simplify it if not. Got a few test shots done this afternoon, its much eaisier working when you know roughly what the final outcome will/may look like.

I amaze myself sometimes :-)

Back to Cats and heres one of mine from a few years ago that people on Flickr loved…

D50, flash low cam right.

OK, at college this week, we started another unit that has a very long name that is basically business skills covering invoicing, copyright, releases, professional practice, and all the other business stuff. Also part of it is to write a weekly diary that could be in the form of a blog. I thought about starting a separate one, but doing it on this means that the blog will be updated at the least once a week with general musings and notes. Hopefully some things are useful.

Fun things this week included location scouting for our projects. I had a walk about town and ended up in Boarders reading the photography journals that cost too much for me to buy looking for inspiration. Safe bet is the beach, closely followed by the park. I have a few ideas running around my head for using that as a location, need to find some nice derelict building or a loading dock. Yea, is a little cliched, but I don’t care. As long as it looks good then it doesn’t matter where it is.

Friday saw us hit the studios to start on our other project that includes shooting a still life or portrait. We chose to do still life, with the resulting image having to be shot on 5×4″ large format transparency. Yummy. For those who don’t know, a 5×4″ camera is basically a lens coupled by some bellows to a nice ground glass screen that is moved out the way to take a film holder with 2 sheets of film that produces a neg/tranny thats 5″ by 4″. Almost as simple as they come, except with the complication of being able to shift and tilt the lens and film plane to alter the DoF and perspective. Coupled with the little calculation for the loss of light through the bellows, and the fact that fine focusing needs to be done with a loupe means that it took a good couple of hours to set up and then take 3 test Polaroids to nail the lighting. We chose to photograph a spikey shell with a pretty simple setup; snooted main light camera right, then opposite a softbox to fill the shadows camera left, about a stop lower to keep the nice shadows being cast. The time it takes to do the whole process, plus the fact that you only get two attempts per film holder means that there is time to think about every last little detail, which (in theory) should lead to a better photograph.

A photo thats only just relavent as its the beach taken a fortnight ago when it was still beach weather…

D200, Fiddymil, Haze

Went up to London with uni for a lecture on the photos of Adam Broomburg and Oliver Chanarin by Ollie himself. Was actually pretty interesting and good to hear about the work of an actual photographer(s) form their editorial beginnings to major exhibitions and works. I liked some of their photo projects that were done for ‘Colours’ magazine that they used to edit and photograph for, although I found that a lot of the photos needed some background information on them. ‘Chicago’ is an artificial Arab town used by the Israelis for combat practice, and the photos of this seemingly deserted Arab town, are shot in a very perfect and presice way  thats almost architectural with clean lines and form. Without knowing the background behind the images, I doubt that I would have figured out that the images were of a combat training area. I am a simple soul…

In their latest work, ‘The Day Nobody Died’ they explored a new technique of image making. I’m not sure they are ‘photos’, in the traditional sense that everyone knows, although they are produced using the basic photographic process. The whole concept was to travel to Afghanistan with the British Army for a week with a big roll of sheet film, get the army to carry is about from base to base then every day unroll a set amount of it, exposing it to the sun for 20 seconds. This produced an image that has no picture as conventional photography goes, but then had a meaning attached to it from what happened that day. One work is called “The Day Nobody Died”, which was the fith day they were there, another “The Fixers Execution”, was in response to a BBC fixer that was pulled from his car and shot. Personally as ‘Pictures to hang on walls’ I think they are quite nice, but as photos, especially war photography, which essentially what they are, then I can’t quite see them hanging along side Robert Capa, James Nachtway or W. Eugine Smith and the like. But then Ollie did explain that they were trying to get away from the normally way of documenting war photography and how we see war photography, because in this age of 24hr News and Hollywood epics, we are ‘nulled’ to war culture and horror, so ‘normal’ war photography almost has not meaning. So the way they are recording war puts more emphasis on the people affected by war, which in turn makes people think more. Anyway, I’m still not 100% sure on them just yet… The art and sculpture in the next room was good though.

www.choppedliver.info – The Website of Adam Broomburg and Oliver Chanarin.

Got a few ok photos wandering about the big smoke, nothing outstadnig though…

D200 & 85mm f/1.8, iso 400&800 respectively

This is Joe, He rides bikes alot. He’s off to live in the Swiss alps and be a design engineer for Scott Bikes.

Over the last 10 or so years hes also had to put up with me taking photos of him riding. This time no different as I used him to experiment with flash gels and colour temperatures….

Another pic in the local rag for Yellow Brick Road, this time in the Fashion and Beauty supplement. I’m not going to repeat myself, so read the rant from last time. Title is pretty simmilar too. (-;

Again, nothing outstanding, not even the best photo we sent in, but there we go. Shame the colours aint too good in print (even worse after the scan) so heres the original to proove eveyone really isn’t green…