The seaside stereotype and other things

Once more I wonder why I bother putting my thoughts on to this blog, but it's a way to put them in order and get things off my chest I suppose. First of all a photo of mine from today to kick the post off. The sandplant keeps on throwing things up for me, I guess because it is constantly changing with the junk being moved around and more junk turning up, which is why I keep getting drawn back there even though I try not to.

Although I had set out armed to take some more photographs for my Autoflora project the wind was just a bit too strong, so it was into the sandplant with the 50mm lens attached. As I spend most of my time these days with a 28mm (or equivalent), or wide zoom that covers that angle of view, the 50mm felt like a telephoto again! It took a while to get used to standing a bit further back from subjects. I liked the way this sheet of clear plastic reminded me of the way ice covers things in puddles, the lines of the rushes, the scratches on the plastic and the way the splash of yellow rubbish sparks against the more earthy hues.

The sandplant is beside the seaside, which brings me to my recurrent moan about how British seaside resorts are portrayed. This has been dragged up again by a forthcoming book (which I might add to my collection for the hell of it). Stag and hen parties in Blackpool seem to be too easy a target for mocking mirth. Blackpool's tackiness has been done to death over the years, and drunken Brits have been done much better in Cardiff After Dark if the photos I've seen are anything to go by. Maciej Dakowicz's pictures seem, to me, to be far less judgemental than those of Dougie Wallace.

As an aside, there is a way to approach the documenting of the British without sneering or resorting to the stereotypes of drunken louts and eccentrics. That's to show ordinary people doing ordinary things in an ordinary way using straightforward, solid, photography. A fine example of this is Ken Grant's recent publication, Flock. It's a down to earth record of the last years of Hereford's city centre livestock market. There's no irony that I can see, just people doing what they do and things as they are without obvious artistry or photographic tricks but still done intelligently,

Getting back to this 'new wave' of street-documentary photography (if that's a genre!) I get the impression that a lot of it is being made in the same way that internet-street photography is being done. With no reference to anything other than the superficial look of what has gone directly before.

Look at the black and white of Parr as seen in The Non-Conformists and you will find the influence of Cartier-Bresson. Look at Parr's earlier colour work and there's more than a hint of Tony Ray-Jones - whose work shows the influence of Winogrand as well as HCB. These influences can be found in Maciej Dakowicz too, I feel. There's an underlying understanding of picture construction, rather than composition by numbers in an imitative fashion, or in the case of internet-street a poorly done superficial pastiche of a look.

It's all too easy to ape the look pf pictures without getting to grips with what lies beneath. Too few photographers seem to be interested in finding out why their 'heroes' make the pictures they make. Their thought processes are far more important than their techniques, or their superficial style. When you engage on internet forums it soon becomes clear that many hobbyist photographers have scant knowledge of what photography has gone before them. They know only the work of photographers who get published in the current populist photography press, and increasingly only those who have websites, blogs and Youtube channels! Some even profess to have no interest in any photography done in the past. And so they simply repeat the 'tricks' they see used by their favourite photographers. It's as dull as using the 'rule of thirds' all the time.

The aping of style also came to mind when I was looking at some more Vivian Maier pictures the other day, and again when I read (via The Online Photographer) a piece about posthumous use of photographs the photographer had never printed which contained the following:

 "Because she photographed in so many styles, her sensibility is indistinct and a signature viewpoint is absent. Depending on which picture you are looking at, she could be Weegee, Helen Levitt, Saul Leiter, Bruce Davidson, Andre Kertesz — even Garry Winogrand." 

That was just what I'd been thinking as I browsed a gallery after reading a bit more about her history. The way Ms Maier has been marketed is as a naive genius. The truth, it seems increasingly likely, is that she was far from that. If she was a genuinely uninfluenced photographer then she would have had a signature style.

Everyone is always influenced by everything they look at, and more so by stuff they like and look at again and again. I know I am. The easy part is recognising that. The hard part is finding a way through it! The best way I know is to try hard to make 'straight' pictures, and let your influences, your own personality and viewpoint seep in by osmosis.

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The unconcerned photographer

I've just skim-read a post on the Open eye blog about environmental photography which goes on about how photography can be of use in countering the harm humankind is doing to the planet. In some small ways at local levels, maybe. But the relentless march of progress can't be stopped. Trying to turn back the clock by taking photographs seems futile to me. Perhaps an odd stance to adopt for someone who is interested in the way artificial and natural environments interact. The difference being that I'm not an ecological evangelist. To be honest conservationists get my back up. I like the way plants beat tarmac every time in the way paper always wraps stone. Instead of photographing the damage people do to nature I look at the way nature damages human handiwork. Show a seed a crack and it will germinate in it.

This attitude was also brought home to me when I saw the work of Mandy Barker who collects flotsam and jetsam to photograph to highlight the plight of the world's oceans. She also posts a ball a day on a blog. I also photograph balls, but only because I'm interested in the way they turn up in all sorts of places. Maybe there's some unconscious motivation behind it, but to me they're just pictures of lost balls. They're a device to practice picture making on. And making pictures is what photography's all about. Photographs aren't real or honest. They're artificial - from the most truthful Cartier-Bresson to the most manipulated Gursky they hide as much as they reveal. But they're all nothing more than pictures.

At the moment I'm trying to make pictures of my village, and beginning to make some progress I think. Well, I've made one which I like for it's simple formal construction, and because it hides the thing which defines the place (to those who know it). This idea of having the main subject concealed has become a regular feature of my photographs recently. No doubt a psychologist could make something of that, and an art theoretician even more... As far as I'm concerned it's a picture of a red bin, some green grass, and a sort of  'X' composition with a church spire in the background. I suppose you could dream up a metaphor fro the bridge linking the traditional rituals of the church with the modern ritual of dog walking and disposal of dog shit in bins. If your mind worked that way.

You could also make some deep and meaningful interpretation of a woman with a white pony. I just liked the way the rope and bridal matched the sandals...

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Working the subject

An unexpected break in the weather, and an afternoon to kill, saw me grab a camera, long lens and tripod to try to add to my collection of photos of fallen trees in the local wood. I chucked a short lens in the bag for good measure.

I thought the dead-fall pictures were working quite well with the light coming through the canopy shifting as the wind blew. Once again the camera's screen lied and a number were actually out of focus in critical areas. The ones which were sharp were rubbish. I ended up with one that's sort of okay (which means it isn't really) before the sun clouded over.

After waiting a few minutes for the clouds to blow over I realised they weren't going to. I set off back through the wood not defeated. Not half way to the exit I spotted a dead wood pigeon wedged in the fork of a tree. How it came to be there or what caused its demise I'll never know. It was something to photography though.

My first impulse was to make a picture that showed the environment and the corpse - which reminded me of still life paintings of hanging game birds. I set up the tripod, framed a composition and played around with the aperture to provide separation from teh cluttered background.

I made a few frames from a few angles before trying for the inevitable portrait orientation, moving in close for a different view.

Although this showed the bird's foot for an added touch of complimentary colour it also 'lost' the bird against the tree trunk. A closer still view might be interesting to show more detail and make the flies more obvious. Flies being flies they wouldn't land where I wanted them. Not only that the wind was causing motion blur. I upped the ISO so the shutter speed could be increased too.

The curve of the ivy stem seemed crucial to whatever picture I was to end up with. An even tighter zoom lost that. There was still the niggle of the slightly out of focus ivy leaf obscuring part of the pigeon's head.

These pictures are not the only ones I made. In total there were thirty frames shot over an eighteen minute period. It didn't seem like that long, but that's what the info from the files tells me! You have to love digital for giving everyone the chance to work over a subject for free, and to review stuff in real time. Even if the blasted screen can't tell you for sure if their in focus...

Not sure if I'd got what I wanted I decided to move on. There was one last thing I had to do though. All the while the camera had been on the tripod shooting from a distance there was a voice in my head telling me to put on the 35mm and get in closer. There was nothing to lose so After folding up the tripod I swapped lenses. Leaned in, framed and tripped the shutter. I liked what I saw but I hadn't altered the settings and the shutter speed was too low. A quick fiddle with the settings and I made two more frames. The first one pretty much got it.

Everything is there: the curving ivy to the left (the lower leaves nicely filling the space of the path behind); the gnarled ivy stems climbing the tree; the whole of the bird's head visible; a sense of depth from the receding trees and aerial perspective. I think the subdued light works to the picture's advantage too. All it lacks is a strategically placed bluebottle.

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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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Great minds

One of my recent book acquisitions is Approaching Photography by Paul Hill. Essentially it's an illustrated essay about various aspects of photographic practice (as opposed to technique). It is written in plain English rather than abstruse academic language, making it easy to comprehend. For anyone new to the theory behind photography and photography it is a good starting place. Although not to in-depth I'll be going back to it again.

One thing that struck a particular chord with me, being in one of my periods of doubt about what I'm up to, was the comment that just because everything seems to have been done already it hasn't been done by you.

This was a timely and encouraging reminder. For some reason I had searched Google images for Lewis Baltz. I'd done this before and been discouraged by finding pictures of walls and piles of debris that, despite being in black and white, reminded me of some of my photographs. Despite having started photographing these subjects before seeing the Baltz pictures I had become dispirited when I first stumbled on them. However I had forgotten about them until the other day, having put them out of my mind. The best plan is undoubtedly to do what you want to do even if someone else has already done it. Even if your photos don't make the grade they can lead you somewhere new.

I had been planning on writing something here about perspective a couple of days ago. This morning I opened up Eric Weight's latest journal entry today to see he had mentioned one aspect of it. The way mist can gradually soften the appearance of things as they recede into the distance.

My intention had been to compare the ways the two pictures below suggest space within the picture frame.

Both of these pictures were made with the blocks of complimentary colours in mind. Maybe subconsciously I had also seen that the warmer blocks were closer to the lens than the cooler ones. The left hand picture uses aerial perspective to suggest space (distant objects are hazier than closer ones) while the right hand picture uses linear perspective (objects that are the same size in reality appearing smaller as they recede). That one has a shallow depth of field and one is in greater focus enhances each picture's reliance on it's means of describing space.

With thoughts of imitation and coincidence in my mind walked to the Post Office this morning, camera round my neck set to shoot in black and white. Quite what I was going to shoot I had no clue but I wanted to work in monochrome. It had rained overnight and I saw a dry patch where a car had stood on the drive of a house I passed. I took a couple of shots thinking it had something about it. Then I realised that I had seen more of these dry patches and that they had a melancholy feel to them. At the risk of becoming pretentious they seemed somehow melancholy. On my way home I photographed each dry patch I saw.

Ordinarily I impatiently upload pictures as soon as I get in, but today I was a good little boy and did some paying work first. Only when that was out of the way in the late afternoon did I see what I had got. Loaded into Lightroom, and edited down (some I shot in landscape and portrait format) I found I had precisely 20 shots which worked as a coherent series. There were some which stood as single images, but the whole was much greater than the sum of its parts. I processed the files then made a simple Blurb book which I uploaded and ordered. The physical collection, and time, will tell if my initial judgement is to be trusted. Right now it feels like this spur of the moment project has succeeded.

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Too many choices

While digital photography is great in being able to take lots of photographs for little out lay and no waiting for processing to see the pictures there is an attendant problem created of having to choose between more images. Then there's the option to turn a colour photograph into black and white, or vice versa as I have been doing lately.

The picture below was one of just three I took of the scene. Easy enough to select one that had nothing chopped off and was in focus where it needed to be from just three. On the odd occasions I make many more exposures it becomes more difficult. I do try to get it as right as I can first time, just as when shooting film. What the instant review of digital does is tempt you to take a peek at what you've got and try to improve it. With film you are stuck with what you've got. I do wonder if the 'not quite perfect' film images have a little more of an 'edge' to them because of that slight lack of perfection?

With using the X10's viewfinder more of late I also came to wonder if, in the days of film cameras with less than accurate viewfinders the imprecise framing mattered less because by the time you developed the film you had forgotten exactly how you had framed the shot - so the slight misalignment was overlooked. I might find out soon if the slide film I used up last week after some six or more years in a compact camera of mine processes okay. I also have a black and white film to pick up this week (all being well). There will be surprises on that as I can't remember what I shot on it.

Back to deciding between colour or black and white. I like both versions above, but they definitely have different moods to them, despite being from the same file. On balance the subtlety of the colour version wins for me, and it was the colours that drew me to make the exposure. The graphic nature of the monochrome version has its merits too, but I find it slightly more 'obvious'. Tomorrow I might feel differently.

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Undue influence?

There's a minor internet storm going on about a prize-winning photograph which was apparently 'inspired' by another. Same location, same aspect ratio, similar composition. To my mind that's not being inspired. Inspiration is wishing to go out and make something which has similar properties to an image that moves you. Or maybe even aping an image unconsciously. We have all seen so many photographs now that unconscious influences are inevitable.

Sometimes we see something that reminds us of a previously viewed photograph. The similarities may be subtle. Maybe we register them, maybe not. The photograph we make may be made with the remembered image in mind or it may not.

During my last visit to the sandplant I made a picture which I was aware reminded me of a famous, and in its own way now controversial picture.

It is by no means a replication of the Roger Fenton photograph(s). Nonetheless I was conscious of the bank to the right and the debris strewn across a rough surface when I framed the shot. Unfortunately I failed to frame things so the eye was kept from wandering out of the left hand edge of the frame.

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Trompe-l'œil

Because photographs flatten everything they allow one to play around with representation in an ambiguous way.

For example, the reading of the picture above alters when the information is provided that the sky is reflected in water.

The Lost Balls Found series continues apace. I have now clocked up 112 balls.

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Inspiration and criticism

A fairly frequent question on photography fora goes something like this: "I've got a day off tomorrow but am stuck for ideas of what to go photograph, any suggestions?" A recent one was asking what inspired people to take up photography in the first place. The second one provided a number of prosaic answers. Often the motivation was to photograph things they were interested in. Which suggest to me that making pictures isn't their motivation, but recording things they like is. I guess that's pretty much everyone's main driver behind their photography. I was inspired, if that's the right word, to make photographs by being given a camera, and later by looking at photographs - first of all in the popular photography press and then, more importantly, in books.

Getting back to the first question, the one asking others for inspiration, brings up something that is fundamental to the creative process. You can't get inspiration from others, just as you have to learn to criticise your own work you have to inspire yourself. It was something David Hockney said that prompted this ramble. He said that "Inspiration, she doesn't visit the lazy." Apparently (thanks to good ol' Google) a paraphrasing of something Tchaikovsky said.

There is much truth in the concept. You get inspired to make pictures by making pictures. It's quite simple. Even if the pictures you make are rubbish. Eventually there sill be something ion one or more that provides the spark to light the flame and away you go. Just going out and doing it is what's required. The problem that a lot of hobbyist photographers have is that they only want to make certain kinds of pictures. This is why they also keep asking about how to acquire a style of their own. Like inspiration, a personal style doesn't come through sitting on your bum or making the same photos as everyone else. You go out, make lots of pictures and the style finds you. Hobbyists in all realms think that success can be ordered up rom Amazon. Whatever you do you only get better at it by doing it.

In all areas of creativity you have to learn to be self-motivated. You also have to learn self-criticism. The other topic beloved by hobbyists is criticism. They neither seem to understand what it means. It doesn't mean posting a picture you like and asking the great unwashed what they think of it. I would never seek an opinion on a picture I thought worked in that way. Not that I would ask the internet masses for an opinion on anything. It's far better to ask people who's opinion's you respect than those who could be knowledgeable or could simply be internet parrots repeating received wisdom.

I made one attempt at offering criticsm on a photo forum and one only. The picture was getting slated because it had so many faults. Technical faults, and strayings from the rules. But it was an interesting picture and the photographer had obviously seen something. I tried to stress the positives before mentioning the flaws. The consensus was that I was an idiot. That's the problem with a democratic decision in creative media. Most people are scared to break the rules. Scared to step outside the norms. To take the risk of doing something that might not be approved of by their like minded herd. They like looking at things that remind them of things they liked looking at previously.

So, along with self motivation to drive inspiration, it's good to learn to criticise your own work. Best of all be a harsher critic of it than someone else might. In that spirit here's one I made earlier...

I was out and about, I had a camera with me and I'd seen these rolls of fleece for rolling over vegetable seedlings before. They had looked like a subject to fit in the 'farming today' theme that isn't quite a project, but could be. Photos that show how modern farming impacts on the environment. With the sun shining and the fluffy white clouds there seemed to be something going on that might work out. The clouds and the rolls shared a look of sorts. The idea was good, I think. The way the rolls 'lean' to the left is sort of mirrored by the shape of the clouds. There's something not working though, which as yet I haven't put my finger on.Thinking about it now it could be that a wider view, providing more  context, might have been more successful. Maybe there'll be another chance.

Whatever the outcome, nobody suggested going looking for rolls of fleece. The inspiration came from being out and about. Once when I first spotted the rolls, and when the conditions added something extra to what I had first seen on a dull day. The brighter light was essential to describe the texture in the fabric. This shot was also not a one off. I tried a number of compositions, waited as the light changed and tried again. It's what was called 'working through' an idea when I was a student. And that's the nub of it. You have to put in some effort - physically and/or intellectually - to  come through inspirational blocks.

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Dangerous stuff

That's right, I've been thinking again!The other day someone on TalkPhotography posted a link to "100 things about photography". Kinda interesting in a way. I was wandering round with a couple of cameras today and started making up a list of my own. For my way of working it proved to be a short list of things I need to make photographs:

1. A camera.
2. A good pair of walking boots.
3. An inquisitive eye.

That's about it. As I got some successful photos with both cameras I reckon the order of the list could be reversed, apart from the fact that without some sort of camera you're limited to making imaginary photographs. David Bailey said somewhere that he was seeing photographs before he had a camera - or something to that effect. I think most visually creative people do. Or if they don't mentally frame the pictures they see things which they find visually intriguing and remember them.

I continue to be interested in flatness, the arrangement of blocks of colour and texture within a rectangle and negative space.

The second picture shares some compositional elements with the first - colours, shapes - but it plays with the picture plane as the fence divides it and provides one of the visual clues which indicate depth and space. Which are both illusory in photographs as photographs are two dimensional.

Both those pictures were made with a DSLR and a 50mm lens. The more I use that combination the more I think I could manage quite well if that was all I had at my disposal.

The other camera I had with me was the X10. The secret to using any camera is to work with its strengths. For me the strengths of the small camera are two fold. It's close up capability and it's great depth of field. When the two strengths are used in tandem it becomes easy to make pictures of small things and place them in the context of their surroundings. These plants pushing through the tarmac of a disused car park behind the dunes is an example of this at work. It's also an example of nature recolonising areas that man has forsaken. The X10 might prove useful for exploring that theme further.

The depth of field that this camera provides is also a boon for making landscapes pictures. This is not one of my strong picture making points, but the dunes provide some elevation, and visual variation in comparison to the beach and the inland landscape round here which makes seeing pictures a little easier. Flat lighting doesn't help pick out the shape of the dunes, but the marram against the sand makes for patterns and visual depth clues.

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Ambiguity and accident

This photograph is nothing more than a snapshot in many ways. What I like about it is the way the windows offer both reflections and clear views to confuse the space. I find my eye continually refocusing as I try to work out what is where as objects merge in to each other. I'm also surprised by the unconscious composition which has placed diagonals cutting the top right and bottom left corners to not only keep the eye in the frame but provide a rhythmical element.

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Nature in monochrome

Why these three shots seem to work better in monochrome is probably down to them being about fine texture.  Consequently they all work better as prints, where the detail is revealed,  rather than the slightly over-sharpened screen images.

The two swan pictures use the detail in the background of reeds to contrast with the soft form of the bird, while the feather relies on the detail of it's delicate structure contrasting with the coarser out of focus background.

The compositions are a little conventional, leaning towards the dreaded 'rule of third' for the placing of the main point of interest. However the reliance on fine detail, and being viewed large (I'm sure they'd work better at A3 than A4) makes me wonder if the increasing viewing of images on screens, with their poor resolution and generally small size, is dumbing down photograph making. If pictures are only to be viewed small then there is no need to look for detail. Bold, simplistic, compositions will work better.

Looking again at the large prints in the Richard Mosse exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery last week also made me think about this aspect of photography. Large format cameras and mural sized prints need detail in a way that large paintings don't. I found myself viewing the prints from as far back as I could to get the overall effect, then walking closer to see what the details were. The devil is in the detail, and some of the small elements were only revealed by close inspection.

This second viewing also made me rethink the use of infra red film. I had thought it an affectation, but it brought a different kind of contrast to some of the pictures. A contrast that aided the compositions which wouldn't have been apparent if rendered conventionally. It didn't seem to apply to every picture. In some it did seem like a gimmick. But where it was successful it certainly made for a different way of looking.

As an aside, all three of today's pictures were taken using a macro lens. Just because a lens can focus close doesn't mean it can't focus far!

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Creativity, obsession and perfection

I've had time to surf the web lately and found a link to this video of a lecture given by John Cleese about creativity. It seems to take a long time to say something that I thought was self evident - that creativity (making art) is a form of play. I guess he had to make his lecture look like value for money to those paying him and spin it out with a few jokes and academic quotes to back him up. The only thing I learned from that is that I don't 'do' the 'closed mode'! I enjoy the play part, the finding new ways of seeing things, but the part that involves tying the results up into a finished article bores me rigid. Quite the opposite of those Cleese is talking to. It's why my revisitations will almost certainly come to nought. The idea is interesting, taking the pictures is interesting, but doing something with them is a job I'd rather leave to a trained monkey so I can go do something new.

Another video I found is an interview with Martin Parr. He has a point about needing to be obsessed, but it's not the whole story. if one is too obsessed then it becomes a form of tunnel vision. That is not a good thing if you are trying to be creative. There need to be influences from outside the obsession to provoke new ways of thinking and seeing. That's what the play aspect is all about. The inspiration doesn't need to come from the focus of your attention.

I suspect that an obsessive like Parr finds the 'closed mode' of collating his obsessively taken photographs just as thrilling as taking the photographs in the first place.  Speaking as someone who has always considered laziness to be a virtue I found his inference that laziness is a bad thing deeply offensive!

While an obsession with the process and the subject can be a good thing, obsession with achieving perfection is certain to lead to blind alleys. Yet for many amateur, and some not so amateur, photographers obsession with perfection seems to be their sole aim. This can manifest itself in making technically perfect exposures, using the sharpest lenses and sensors (or film) that can resolve the finest detail. It could be the making of the perfect print, exposed to a T and with a subtle tonal range and bags of intricate detail. It could even be the perfect composition, with not one element out of place.

This can all too easily lead to perfectly dull pictures.

Photography has always had an element of chance in its nature. Outside of the studio there will always be something which is out of the control of the photographer. Rather than try to deny this it should be embraced. When something unexpected happens it can 'spoil' a picture, but it can sometimes 'make' it. The line between the two outcomes is a fine and difficult to define one.

The picture above follows a well trod path as far as composition goes. When I first looked at it on the computer I was miffed by the chopped off foot disappearing behind the cash sign. Later I came to see this 'fault' as a strength. It adds a small touch of tension, a niggle, that brings a little life to the picture. Possibly not the best example, but a recent one.

There are some cultures that believe only God can make something perfect, and so deliberately incorporate flaws into their art and design. A fine example to follow for someone too lazy to strive for perfection like me!

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Then and now

This morning I took my two albums of prints from my old negatives out to try and find the locations and rephotograph them. An early start meant that there weren't many people about, just like in the old photographs. As luck would have it the sky was overcast too. But that soon turned to rain, which cleared to bright sun.

Some places were easy to find, despite changes, others weren't. What was difficult was getting in just the right place. Something I wasn't too fussed about doing as I have no intention of being able to merge the old and new pictures, but I wanted to get close.

Life would have been a lot easier with an assistant to hold the album I was working from. I just about coped though.

I've now managed to make some composites. It's a tedious process. Tedious processes are not up my street. There's every chance I'll get bored pretty soon and give up...

Needless to say I got sidetracked while hunting out the places to rephotograph. As an exercise the recreation 'project' is interesting, although more interesting to other people I think. It's not much about making pictures, although it is about the nature of photography as documentary and historical record.

This is what I have been thinking about quite a bit of late. Partly from scanning the old negatives, partly from reading. It's made me question whether it's enough to make pictures that exist as individual images, or whether one ought to be making images that stand as a collection. I suppose the ideal is for photographs to be both - images in their autonomous right, and part of a larger body that tells a larger story. Assuming that photographs can tell a story whichever way they are presented.

I read recently that there are three subjects for photographs: people, places and things. It seems to me that this is largely correct. It also makes sense to me that the better, more engaging, photographs combine at least two of these elements. I find portraits more compelling when they place the person in some sort of context. A head-shot relies on the viewer's prejudices too much to provide interpretation. 'Environmental' portraits at least provide clues to a person's identity or character.

Places photographed without people can infer mood, but figures give it scale and some sort of context. Things can exist alone, but they rarely do. Then again abstracting a thing from it's place makes for a new way of looking at it. The whole thing is a tangle of interconnected possibilities!

Probably best to follow your instincts and hope for the best...

The place is a beach, the thing is a pier, there are people - and dogs. It almost works, except the people are an amorphous blob rather than individuals. The picture is about space and balance and colour,  and  dogs. Is that enough? It certainly doesn't quite work for me. Why, I'm not too sure.

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Things you don't realise

Something that is often seen as a positive element in a photograph is a visual echo. I was reading an essay on Walker Evans last night and it mentioned a visual echo which I hadn't noticed before. When I was showing some of my old photos to someone last week they picked up on an echo I hadn't noticed at the time, nor in the intervening years since I took the shot. It makes me wonder if it had been subconsciously seen.

The photograph is by no means in the same league as the Evans echo of oval porch feature and black eye, it's no more than a casual snap, but the checks on coat and tiles are an echo even so.

 On the subject of snaps the one below almost got something by accident. I was trying to grab a shot of the 'back in five minutes' not on the door, missing it by a  split second. The idea was self referential one of a photograph of a shop selling photographs. Yeah, I know...

What I almost got was my reflection adding sufficient contrast to the woman's face to make it clear, rather than washed out by the reflections in the glass. That would have been something to lift the picture and give it another level of interest. If I'd got the hand still on the tape rather than the door handle, and the red of the lips more prominent to echo the red of the door (an echo I think I must have spotted) then it could have been something more than it is. That's the problem with shots snapped quickly. Or in this case not quickly enough as I saw the picture but had to take half a step after realising it. By which time I had missed the moment.

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Going round in circles

It was probably looking back at the negatives that made me take a look at where I've come from digitally. It's just over two years since I bought my first DSLR and started photographing things for their own sake after using cameras solely to make illustrations for articles and slide shows about fishing. You might think that it would have taken a while to get into the swing of things and find my 'eye' again, yet the icy picture below was taken on my second outing with the camera and what many would consider a low quality lens.

I had a large, almost A3, print made from the file at the time but only recently got round to framing it and hanging it on a wall. Two years down the line I still like it and think it works. And do you know what? The print looks pretty good. Better than this JPEG here. The camera was left to its own devices to sort out the exposure. Well, pretty much.

Two years and too much money later and I'm starting to rethink things. Do I need the wide aperture lenses to do what I like doing? Given the amazing capabilities of the cameras to perform in low light I'm not so sure. I certainly don't need them to enable me to focus manually now autofocus is so reliable. Do they make nicer looking pictures? Sort of, in a hard to define way. Not that I'm obsessed about shooting wide open to get dreamy, creamy out of focus areas for the hell of it. Are they heavy, cumbersome and attention attracting? Certainly. I could carry two light zooms and maybe two fixed focal length lenses and still be carting less weight than one of the fast zooms!

I'm sure I could live with the older, slower, lenses. The results they give are good enough for me, but I'd find it difficult to forgo a full frame body. Not because the 'crop sensor' cameras don't shove out great quality files, but because it's exactly the same way of seeing as when using 35mm film. Same aspect ratio, same big viewfinder, and the lenses don't need a conversion factor to enable me to visualise what they'll do on the camera.

What I'm getting at is that I feel like I should be using the stuff that will help me make more pictures rather than stuff that will help my pictures be sharper. At normal viewing distances pretty much any half reasonable lens is going produce images that are good enough. Just as the average viewer of photographs doesn't care what camera was used, they don't inspect pictures with a high powered loupe to check for critical sharpness!

Of course, if the X10 was more user friendly in the all important (to me) framing department I could probably get away with using that on its own. I missed a shot today because I wanted a precise frame and to capture a cloud before it blew past. By the time I had got near to the right framing the cloud had gone. I could have framed wider and cropped, but even that might not have worked out. Hard to fault the output though. It handles contrast scenes very well for such a little camera. What I'm really looking for is a set up that suits my way of working a camera. I think I know what that is. Time will tell.

As well as the above, boring, picture which has plenty of indicators of perspective I used the X10 to take the photograph below. I'm not sure if the focus point, which logically should be on the word but isn't, is what makes it difficult to read, or the lighting. To my eyes the perspective is out of whack. This is a result of the lighting, the local colour of the surfaces, and the lack of any of the usual clues to a vanishing point such as those evident in the picture of the steps above. The image is not only flat but flattened (in part by the slightly telephoto lens), yet the colours and shading which are providing the only hints at recession are conflicting with what is expected. I wasn't aware of any of this when I framed the shot, but it is that framing - as much what it excludes as includes - that gives the picture its ambiguity.

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Modern times

Not only has digital photography altered the way people take photographs, process and view them but the Internet has altered the reasons why people take photographs and, in some cases, added a pressure to take more. Did people ever start '365' projects where they take one photo every day before there was a place for them to share their pictures widely? Maybe a handful of people did, but now it is widespread.

Blogs and sharing sites also add a demand that they be updated regularly. This brings a pressure to take and post photos. Some might say that this makes for more successful photography along the lines of old adage 'the more you shoot the better you get'. It can also lead to the taking and posting of any old rubbish. 'I need a photo a day, I'll take one and use that.' Doesn't matter what it's of, how little thought has gone in to it, or if the person with the camera actually wanted to take a photograph that day. It had to be done.

It's as if failure, to take any photograph let alone a half decent one, isn't an option. Yet it's the simple law of averages, which has always applied to photography, that even the best will have more failures than successes, and that the line between one and the other can be very narrow. It was, therefore both interesting, and refreshing, to see this aspect of photography covered on The Guardian website the other day. It followed on another piece about photographs that hadn't been taken . Two thought provoking pieces about 'failure'.

Something else that has crept up on me, although it has been around for some time, is the commoditisation of photography. The neat packaging of the process for profit. I can understand how people who have made their living from taking photographs and are now feeling the financial squeeze as everyone becomes a photographer and gives their pictures away for peanuts or less can turn to teaching photography. Ironically to people who have, or will, be taking the food from their mouths! Workshops and one-on-one tuition for a fee abound on the Internet and in the pages of photography magazines.

Increasingly prevalent  is the packaging of holidays (usually to exotic locations) for photo trips with a professional photographer as a 'guide'. This seems to be the way a lot of people want to pursue their hobbies today. It's another case of failure not being an acceptable option. Rather than go and find out for themselves what it is they want to photograph and where and how they want to photograph it, people see photographs they like and pay someone to help them replicate them. And all the while these paying customers probably consider themselves to be creative.

It's become a cliché that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. When it comes to creativity (from the word creation rather than the word imitate) the cliché is true. In this world of instant results on demand (or on payment) this truth seems to have been forgotten.

In the spirit of the first part of this post here's a failure, posted because a blog demands something be posted, from yesterday. A day of sunshine, and less than 1% inspiration.

There are some interesting things going on in the photograph. This is more an intellectual  photograph than a picture. There's the total lack of any water behind the sign, let alone any deep water, for one thing. It's also about the man-made and natural environments and how they encroach on each other. It's about obscurity and revelation. It's about what lies beyond the entertainments of a seaside town. And there is a formal aspect to the composition. I think my ambition has exceeded my ability, though. It's a failure. But if you don't try to push your limits and fail, you'll end up repeating what you've done before. Or perhaps I need to book myself some tuition?

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Portrait landscapes

Two similar compositions from an evening walk. To a degree the equipment used has dictated the visual outcomes, which helps emphasise the nature of the two subjects - which are actually both man made watercourses just a few dozens of yards apart. Both have been processed from RAW files, the most drastic manipulation being the addition of graduation to the skies.

The photograph on the right was shot using a telephoto zoom on a full frame DSLR which results in the shallow depth of focus giving a soft look that suits the more natural elements of the image.

The photograph on the right was taken using the X10 on a wide angle setting giving greater depth of focus laying stress on the industrial elements of the sewage works. The straight course of the ditch and the hard edge of the pipe in the foreground contrast with the delicate reed stems and the curves of the water in the left hand picture.

Individually the images work. Together they make a pair commenting on what we think of as the natural world and man's intrusion into it - while one scene looks entirely natural it has been created to appear that way, yet the other is obviously artificial and has been colonised by nature.

None of this occurred to me at the time I made the pictures!.

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Failure in the rain

For some time I've been chasing pigeons with my camera, trying to capture an image of a bird with the street in the background making a picture. It relies a lot on luck, which so far has been mostly bad. While I may not be a stickler for sharpness I've not even got close despite trying various autofocus modes and manually prefocusing. While not a street scene the shot on the right is my best effort so far.

In a fit of inspiration I tried the same tactic on dogs being walked, and the ever-unreliable screen on the camera suggested it was a better option. The big screen on the confuser told another story. Blurry dogs. They look okay at minuscule size but a print would be disappointing. The idea is good. The execution flawed.

All was not lost. Rain makes for good street photography in my experience. People are too concerned with keeping dry to worry about a nutter with a camera. They're not the best pictures in the world but they have bits working in their favour.

What I like about this first shot are the colours and the way all the faces are hidden save for that of the sleeping child - which isn't immediately obvious because it merges into the pink bag.

I don't know what I like about the second shot. Maybe the limited palette and the graphic nature of the umbrella.

The graffiti certainly lifts the third shot. A bare wall would not have been anywhere near as visually interesting, not even given my taste for acres of negative space.

The final picture comes closer to succeeding in a sort of linear composition with figures (including the dummies) spread across the frame. A far more painterly approach to creating a picture. Oh well. Lessons learned I think.

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