Zoned

At last I've had some time away from work forced on me and managed to make use of it with the camera. Friday saw me having to go into the market town of Ormskirk for an unspecified period while Vauxhall attended to my car on its second recall. The first recall saw me wandering around the place all day, so I didn't know what to expect. Thankfully it was all over before lunchtime. The place grows more like a ghost town each time I visit it.

That means there's not much to photograph, especially on a non-market day when the streets are all but deserted. Without the market there are few places to buy anything that isn't a coffee or junk from a charity shop. Shops which have been there years, as far back as I can remember when I was on work experience in the town, are closing down. The record shop where I bought Never Mind the Bollocks went long ago, but the greengrocer's which I photographed back in 2013 with it's wares displayed on the pavement as ever, is also appeared to be no more. Maybe it was shut for the day, but it didn't look like it. Photograph things when you have the chance because they might be gone before you realise it.

Whether it would be worth recording the closed down shops, the charity shops and coffee houses, I'm not sure. It feels a bit obvious, the sort of thing you expect someone is already doing. But is it being done?

I was in half a mind to go an have a more serious look around today but I let things slide and had some shopping I wanted to do. That meant a trip to the seaside. With the shopping a failure I headed to teh park and ride for some cheap, time unlimited, parking. The bloody council had put the charge up by 50p, so I parked in a two hour free parking zone and used the park and ride toilets anyway. Tight? Me?

I left the car in bright sunshine, and almost immediately began to see pictures to add to Sandgrounding. But barely had I got to the sea front than a heavy mist rolled in.

I've written about mist and fog before. They are transformative and simplify what can be seen. Not one does background clutter get hidden, but colours become softened and can almost disappear completely. Fog is a sort of monochromatic filter. I don't know what it is about the go-kart track that attracts me, but it has done ever since I picked up a camera and walked past it.

Add a wintry sun to fog and it becomes easy to see pictures. It's hard to stop snapping away.

Every now and then the sun would strengthen and add light to a subject.

Then it would fade and a little help might be required to add some 'spot colour'. To heighten it I used the photography enthusiast's hated tool - the pop-up flash of my camera. I actually like the effect the pop-up flash gives. The drawback is that when I'm wearing a cap the peak gets in the way and half closes the flash which then refuses to fire.

Soon the fog was really closing in. All I could do was get increasingly minimal.

Maybe it was the fog, maybe it was having a break away from any serious photographing. In just under an hour I'd rattled off a load of frames and come away with some I like and some that have got me thinking. Why it is that some days you get in the zone is a mystery. One thing I do know is that being there doesn't last long. As in anything, when you are in the zone your brain is working overtime. It can't last before the intuitive thinking starts to get sluggish and you slip back into trying to make things work. Which they rarely do when you desperately want them to. far better to stop. Chill. Start again and hope you can get back in the same frame of mind.

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Market day people

More thoughts on small cameras and making pictures with them. First up, I prefer to start out with 3:2 aspect ratio and only to crop from that if required (usually for portrait orientation), rather than start with 4:3 and crop. This probably goes back to the dawn of time when I started making pictures on 35mm film. I suspect it's also associated with looking at more pictures made in that format than any other over the years.

Although I don't hold to the mantra that big cameras put people off, but that it's the way you point them at people that does that, a small camera makes me less self conscious about pointing it at people.

Of course when you know someone it's easy to point a camera at them. And they come to expect it!

Small cameras are light enough to carry around in your hand for long periods - which is good. Using the screen on the back makes for a different framing strategy, I find. For the two shots above I used the viewfinder and they are quite formally arranged. The rear screen makes my pictures looser.

Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. It is good for me in that I have always been uptight about framing shots. The fluid way of shooting at arm's length does me good even if the pictures don't always come off.

One point of note is that sunny days make the market tricky to photograph with the stalls being shaded and the street brightly lit. Another reason for me preferring rainy days for shooting around towns!

A really useful outcome of my trip to market town was finding one way to make pictures about parking that I like. Which means I might get to make some more and the 'project' might get off the ground. I just need to stay loose.

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That felt weird

As I mentioned last time the auto focus of my 50mm lens has been playing up. I guess the time I dropped it might have something to do with that... It's still sharp and all that when I focus it manually or it drops lucky automatically, it just doesn't always nail focus on its own. So I bit the bullet and bought a replacement - funded by selling the last of my micro four thirds gear. Naturally enough I wanted to get to know it, which meant  a trip to the market town on a sunny morning, after a trip to the tackle shop.

Although this focal length is thought of as 'standard' for giving a 'normal' field of view all the months of using a 28mm for almost everything makes 50mm feel like a telephoto. Very odd! More than once I was tempted to swap to get back into my new found comfort zone, but I resisted. Markets, like country shows, are a staple of camera club character portraits. trying to find a different way in to making photographs there is problematic. I guess hanging around all day might help. Unsurprisingly I didn't make any fantastic pictures in the short time I had available before getting back to work. I've no idea what made me photograph the cuddly tigers!

I did have a reason for taking a picture of the stamp design bed linen. I liked the way the shutters imposed a grid over the colourful grid of stamp images. Maybe a bit too simple. It was also a good test for the lens's autofocusing ability. It passed.

I also made a couple of pictures which are vague homages to Walker Evans and Martin Parr. Every time I make a picture which has a buildings in it and telephone wires or lamp posts I think of Walker Evans's American Photographs. I liked the way the shadow blocked the foot of the frame and the picture isn't a traditional view of the church with a tower and a steeple. I should, perhaps, have taken a few more steps back though.

The link to Martin Parr is more tenuous. Just a door, a step ladder, and a man. Except the man in my picture isn't doing anything to add that surreal element in Parr's.

One positive to come from my walk around the town centre was the first photo taken deliberately for a new project/series about parking. As usual this doesn't have a clear direction just yet and may well fizzle out. It's another thing to keep a look out for when I'm wandering aimlessly around places though! Anyway, the lens focuses just fine, is sharp and contrasty enough and I like the colours. It'll do the job. One thing is for sure I prefer using fixed focal length lenses to zooms. They make you think a bit more about where to stand, and sometimes they force a composition on you that you might not have made with a zoom. One thing I have noticed that I do frequently is to move around lining things up before putting the camera to my eye. Many times I don't get that far if things won't align to my satisfaction. then there are other times when I literally make a snapshot that seems to work. It's a funny old game, photography.

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Digital sketchbook

I've been neglecting my little camera of late so I thought I'd give it some love by taking it round town when I went to buy the latest copy of the BJP. It had been performing rather better for me of late, and an A3 print from one of its files had demonstrated how capable it is. So long as you acknowledge its weaknesses.

The colours where what drew my eye to make the picture on the right. Alas it's not as sharp as it could be. Fine at this size but there's definite motion blur that detracts at a larger size. It's the difficulty of checking settings quickly that flummoxes me. In shutter priority the aperture disappears from the screen, and vice versa. You only get to see both settings when the shutter release is half pressed. And if using the viewfinder there's no information at all. So I either use programme mode or set the widest aperture and cross my fingers the shutter will be fast enough. More oftren than not it all goes Pete Tong for quickly grabbed shots.

The second shot is sharper. I was struck by the animal prints and the way they are looking through a grille. Maybe a little obvious play on the caged animal theme. The square crop is to get rid of unwanted clutter.

I actually got sidetracked in town and forgot to buy the magazine I'd gone for... So after lunch I headed for the market town, it having cheaper parking and a bit more to photograph, to make sure I got a copy. Again I blew it with the shots I thought had most potential, while the so-so shots were technically better. I'm still not sure if that pair of boots has feet and legs in them in the first shot!

 This next one is okay as a picture of a handbag stall, but there's nothing much else to it.

It was the absurdity of a hidden display of wares that appealed to me when I framed the picture on the left. That and the way it reminded me of the wrapped bodies often shown in documentary pictures from scenes of conflict. It's just a slightly absurd image.

My friend had his stall up this week, so I handed him a print of the photograph I took last time, and made some more. One of Matt serving a customer was sort of all right but the one I was trying to make of him serving with a young woman stood talking on a mobile in a pub doorway behind the stall simply wouldn't fall into place. Win some (few) lose some (many).

By chance I spotted a book in a charity shop window that looked interesting. 'Memories of Britain Past' is an illustrated look at life in Britain in the 20th century. I've yet to read or look at it all yet, but there is al ot of nostalgia as well as photographs by John Bulmer and an uncredited Tony Ray-Jones. Not all the pictures are of that standard, many were probably stock images at the time by the look of them. However it should give an insight into how Britain has been pictured over the years. Which interest me greatly.

With book and magazine purchased (the book for less than the magazine!) I headed for a little river I'm thinking of making some photographs of. My intention was to use the X10 to take some quick snaps as sketches of potential pictures. It was raining and I turned back after a few hundred yards after making a few snaps. I say they were snaps simply because I didn't bother checking any of the settings, so focus was likely to be awry. It was purely an investigatory visit. I came away with enough to give me some ideas. Waders might be required for one thing! The biggest problem will be that access is along the north bank only, meaning the sun (at this time of year) is going to be in my face in a lot of places, although the river does twist and turn a great deal. If the rain holds off tomorrow I might take another trip there.

I'll admit that it is Jem Southam's 'The River Winter' which made me think of visiting the Yarrow. Not that I have the book, although I have seen some of the pictures in it. It'll be interesting to see what I make of this new project. If that's what it turns out to be. It could be worth pursuing it as spring turns to summer if it does start to bear fruit. I have it in mind that a series of pictures working downstream as the seasons change might be one way to approach things. Maybe that's a little pretentiously conceptual!

While the files from the X10 are capable of rendering detail, the colours on dull days always seem to be lacking something which I can't pinpoint. They are prone to a magenta/purple cast, but I have learned to remove that. They still not right though. What I have come to realise, after a few people on the Talk Photography forum mentioned it, is that the jpegs are better to work with than the RAW files. They are more malleable than those from my other cameras. They also seem to require less processing than the RAW files. A tweak of the tone curve, a nudge of vibrancy and clarity and that's pretty much it unless some highlights need reducing or the exposure is slightly out. Very counter-intuitive given how RAW is usually best.

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Snapshooting

I got involved in a discussion on the Talk Photography forum about the merits of the photographs of Martin Parr this week. There was a faction dismissing them as snapshots in the usual way anything modern is dismissed, that their granny/child/cat could have done as well. The photographs I placed a link to were criticised for mostly technical 'faults'. Bad use of flash, intrusive objects in the frame, and so forth. And for being no more than snaps.

This brought home to me something I've picked up on from a couple of intelligent websites/blogs I visit to read about gear. There is a considerable cadre of photographers for whom technical perfection is an over arching must.

I'm not a gear head, but I like to know what's going on. For example Nikon are about to introduce a replacement for one of my most used lenses (which I recently read has appalling distortion - that I hadn't noticed...). It's a cheap, variable aperture zoom  that I have already seen described as 'pointless'. It adds a feature I like in a lens - a focus ring which doesn't rotate when the lens is autofocusing and which can be used to over-ride the autofocus motor. Sometime I like to focus manually, and that feature means I don't have to flick a switch. That doesn't make the lens pointless for me. But for someone who has to have technical perfection in their images I guess it's not up to snuff. It's also smaller and lighter than the equivalent 'good' lens. Another bonus for someone like me who would rather stick a spare lens in a jacket pocket than trudge round with a camera bag over one shoulder.

What interests me about gear is how it handles. I want my gear to let me work fluidly in the way that suits me. That's why I do the opposite of what all the forum experts tell you to do. I use cheap lenses on expensive bodies a lot of the time. Cheap bodies mean lots of menu diving to change functions. Expensive bodies have the buttons and switches on the outside. And when looking at my photos (even pixel peeping) I often surprise myself when I check the lens info. I can't tell the good lenses from the bad a lot of the time!

Which brings me round to this afternoon's jaunt. Midweek the forecast was for sunshine today. But that gradually changed and drizzle arrived. I did some work in the morning and by lunch time I was bored. I checked the website of the gallery in the local market town and it looked like there might be something to look at. The market would be on and the rain would mean umbrellas would be up. They can make for interesting shapes and I find an urban environment more suitable for shooting on overcast days than the flatlands.

As it turned out the exhibition wasn't too bad. The artist statements were cringeworthy, but some of the pictures were okay. There were even some photographs which didn't make me angry!

The drizzle was quite heavy at first which meant keeping the camera under my jacket. This looks a bit furtive, although it's only done to keep the rain of the lens. However, after a visit to the bookshop the drizzle eased up. Unfortunately it was getting on and the streets were rather empty and the market stalls starting to wind down. I took a few shots of goods on various stalls. I don't know where this fad for fake-fur animal headgear has come from but it makes for colourful pictures. The one at the top of this post I like for the complimentary colours and the lines. Is it a snapshot? It's a single frame that was taken quickly, although carefully. Where's the line drawn?

The shots below were, obviously, taken more slowly. The pictorial device being used is to split the frame in two with the main subject on one side and some contextual content on the other. The first frame could have worked if the woman closest to the camera had been wearing a darker jacket - a row of three dummy heads with areal one tagged on at the end. As it is the light jacket sort of gets lost in the background. The second frame works a little better because the distant couple add depth, and the polythene covered trestle adds some context. One thing's for sure, pictures with people in them are far more engaging, even if they are out of focus in the background.

It's a funny old world. As I was walking along one row of stalls I heard someone call my name. Turned out it was a chap I know through fishing who has taken up market trading. I stopped for a chat and a few 'snaps'.

I ran off an A4 of the above picture which I'll give to Matt when I see him again. I can just about read the small print on the Twinkie box if I get the magnifying glass out. Not bad for a lens that's small and light but isn't supposed to be up to much towards the corners...

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