Little things and daft ideas

I suppose the difference between a snapshot and a photograph is the amount of care taken over the framing, which can be subtle and sometimes done almost unconsciously. Even without chimping I knew the first shot here wasn't right so got just a little lower and made another frame. It was only on the computer that I realised what the differences were. I had consciously ensured that the top of the central barrier didn't cut through the tree line. Unconsciously I had raised the kerb in the frame which gives a better balance to the overall image.

Why I go to those lengths for what isn't much of a picture, and which didn't change the information in any way, I don't know. I just can't help myself, and it probably explains why I get niggled by small things in some of my pictures.

A combination of test match cricket and hot weather has restricted my camera outings of late, and once more I have been frustrated by making the same kind of pictures I always do. It seems like I just can't get away from making images which could have verticals and horizontals drawn over them as if Mondrian was guiding me. It's as if I see grid patterns all over the place and have to record them. What some might welcome as a style I find to be a major frustration.

 Even pictures which aren't made up of hard-edged shapes I manage to make fit a grid-like pattern.

For some time I've been taking deliberately boring pictures around the village I live in without having an aim in mind. In one of my periods of boredom I started playing around in Lightroom and gave one a faux-vintage appearance.

This had an unexpected consequence in that for some reason it made me look at the picture in a different way to the full colour, detailed original. As if it added a layer of distance between the picture and the subject.

Then I started to get 'art studenty' and thought about the ironic possibilities of making a series of such pictures, containing obviously modern artefacts, as a pastiche on the display of old photographs in homes as nostalgic decoration. not to mention having a bit of a dig at 'art photographers' who choose to use archaic photographic processes such as tintype to make pictures of contemporary subjects because (even if they deny it) the difficult to use medium, and hard to learn craft skills required, add extra 'value' to their pictures - as if a crap tintype is somehow better than a crap digital photo of exactly the same subject.

With all that in mind I conceived of making a set of ten faux vintage prints to be framed in faux vintage frames. There are plenty of suitable subjects around the village. Signifiers of 21st century life are not hard to find - LED street lights, wheelie bins, motor cars.  began making pictures especially for what could be a nice little project.

Then the embarrassment factor kicked in. I can just imagine the kind of pretentious drivel a student would write to accompany (justify) a project like this. I've already written some of it above... Project abandoned!

The strange thing is, however, that the pictures do work better in faded monochrome than they do in colour. Maybe that's because I've conceived them to be displayed that way and composed them accordingly on a tonal basis. But look at the shot above and even that one, with a fairly strong diagonal, is composed around a series of vertical lines and a couple running horizontally. I just can't get away from grids.

Although one project has been ditched I have decided to make a more concerted effort at photographing the village, in colour. I need to find a 'way in' though. An approach such as you might find in the Lancashire Life magazine holds no intellectual appeal for me. I don't want to make pretty pictures.

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