It must be lockdown boredom that drove me to spend money on yet more flash equipment. It was either that or another guitar, but the axe I fancied was out of stock. Hopefully it'll be available when we can go to real world shops and I can trade a couple of unloved guitars for it. In the meantime it's playtime with lighting.
Without going into the details I got myself some new flash triggers. The ones I bought last time I was going to be the next Rankin never worked consistently for me. These new ones do.My wafer thin justification for the purchases was to use them for taking product shots for my business. Obviously that meant my first try out would be to photograph the frogs in my pond...
I'd taken a few shouts using the pop-up flash on my compact and thought I'd try to get a bit tricksy with more versatile gear. One trick was turning day into night by messing with the ambient exposure and zooming the flash to highlight a frog. It looks artificial, but that was the point.
Using the flash gadgets got me thinking that there are some aspects of photography that attract people who like fiddling with gear. There is a large subset who use artificial light almost exclusively. As well as the gear fiddling side of things I think they also like being in control. While I'm as attracted to gear as the next man (I think this is predominantly a male thing) it's only up to a point.
When it comes to using flash I've been reading and watching stuff on-line for years now and the theory still makes no bloody sense to me! I understand the concept of the ambient and artificial light being dealt with by two exposures, but the way it's always put forward to get the results you want is to set everything manually. This is where I come unstuck. The experts all say it's dead simple. But there are all these numbers to deal with. Although I did maths and physics A levels I'm still baffled. I've found my own workrounds. They'll do for me.
Thinking about the different types of photographer there are also got me pondering what attracts people to photography. I initially picked up a guitar because I liked the idea of being a guitar hero. Not because I had a burning desire to write music. Is this the same for some in photography? Do they secretly want to live the imagined rock'n'roll lifestyle of a David Bailey or a Rankin? Or maybe travel to exotic places photographing dramatic landscapes? Some, I am sure, just like playing with cameras, filters, lights and so on. None of that appealed to me. I started taking photographs because I wanted to make pictures.
There's been more opportunity for doing that this week than of late. Not that there's been much to look at on my mossland walks. A drive out to the shops saw me stop on a sunny day and grab some shots of a field being prepared for planting and fleece covering. The light on the plastic sacks and wet tyre tracks made this picture.
After that it was back to playing with the flash again. This time indoors doing what I supposedly bought it all for. Photographing 'things'. Not having any products I needed photographs of I dug out some cameras I've inherited and used them as my models. I even set my tripod up and locked the camera down on that. Once I stopped even trying to think about the numbers and did it 'my way' I was soon getting results I liked. They might not be what the experts like, but when I've looked at their pictures I don't like them. The aim of using artificial light all too often seems to be to make the light the subject. All dramatic chiaroscuro and (what they tell you) modelling to show texture and make things look better than they are. The advertising/commercial approach to photography. Selling an idealised dream to folk. Just as I prefer overcast days for taking landscape photographs I prefer my 'objects' to be more flatly lit. Some shadow is required to suggest form, but drama can get lost for me.
This line of thinking prompted me to consider the photographic portraits I prefer. Oddly two photographers who sprang to mind were Martin Parr and Rineke Dijkstra. neither uses the kind of lighting the on-line mavens promote. Parr uses on-camera flash with a dome diffuser, and from what I have gleaned Dijkstra uses a single strobe and umbrella positioned almost straight on - at least for here well known beach portraits. In both cases what appeals to me about their photographs is the subjects - their look, expressions and gestures. Which rather suggest to me that those are the things which matter most in a photographic portrait.
Think of the famous Karsch portrait of Churchill and it's not the lighting that makes it memorable, it's Churchill's expression and pose - famously created by Karsch removing Churchill's cigar from his hand. Subject trumps light every time. Or at least most of the time unless light is the subject.
As I delve into this flash lark my aim is to find a way to use it to eliminate shadows more than to create them. The opposite of what the experts keep telling me to do! But as someone once said, I'm not a normal photographer. Normal photographers don't see sticks in fields as a subject for a project!
This is another photograph which tells a story to those in the know. The stick is a marker, and look closely to see small red and white dots on the earth. Two types of fertiliser. Another picture which may benefit from the addition of words. It certainly wouldn't benefit from the addition of flash!
The zine swap deadline draws near. I think I have mine finalised. More a case of abandonment than completion. I'll get a back-up printed of something else too. Just so the other swappers won't feel like they've been cheated or I am taking the piss...
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