Words and pictures, pictures or words

I'm beginning to think that this blog is morphing from being a photography blog to a visual diary of my roamings around the area where I live. It's certainly reflecting my shift in interest in photography from making stand alone pictures which aspire to be what could loosely pass for art to pictures which record what things look like and what goes on.

Listening to Alec Soth's recent talks about words and pictures on Youtube I found myelf almost at the opposite end of the spectrum to his seeming desire for pictures to convey something beyond what they show wntirely without words. the concept of the photobook is losing its appeal to me. I've mentioned this before but I don't have much patience with the poetic approach to photography, even though I do make photographs and zines which could be read that way. They're too much like hard work for me to read and interpret. Then again I could just look at teh pictures and let them wash over me in the way that music does. maybe that's the better way to approach them?

I'm coming round to thinking that the way I want to sue my photographs is equally balanced with text in a documentary manner. the pictures, however, being more than illustration of what the text says and the text being more than a description of what the pictures show. Something like that!

Then I go and take a photograph like the one below. On its own it has some mystery to it and doesn't appear 'documentary'. Indeed I made it as a picture to represent what I saw in the way I saw it.

If I explain that it's a view through a hole in the door of an old church closed up during the Covid pandemic does it's meaning change?

Would it work in a set of pictures of the church and churchyard without that explanation?

This is probably far too much thinking than is good for me! So does this picture of a cultivated field scattered with potatoes need an explanatory caption?

Then there's this photograph of some apparently dumped vegetables for which I have no words. The were just there in a ditch. Why? How? Those are the questions which prompted me to make the photograph. Poetic or just plain odd? It's probably up to whoever looks at the picture to decide.

Same goes for this red tray in a hedge.

There are some pictures which are self-explanatory.

Others which are obvious, and to some extent visually interesting as formal compositions.

Is it changed when paired with another picture of a related subject?

Sometimes I'm attracted to how things look, the forms of objects, or how the light plays on a subject.

In isolation that's all the above pictures are. Exercises in picture construction. Put them together with a text about the potato industry and they become illustration that maybe provides a sense of place which text alone does not.

A simple composition of harmonious bands of colour. What's going on though? If a viewer is familiar with farming maybe the picture means something different to a committed urbanite?

 

Without words this is just an arrangement of shape and colour. The inclusion of text in a picture can alleviate the need for explanation. But not in this case.

Another visit to the old pump house saw the site drastically altered. The pictures I took were made to go along with earlier ones to illustrate the changes. Even so I attempted to give them a composition which both showed clearly what had been going on and to make a single frames which could stand alone as both pictures and story.

To me it's plain that this rusty horseshoe had been found during ditch clearing work. Whether the picture makes it obvious to anyone else I don't know.

Are pictures of tractors being followed by seagulls understood by everyone? Would a town dweller think this was ploughing instead of sowing?

My head's starting to hurt with all this thinking. The zine project I'm hoping to get finished in time for the swap is very much in the wordless category. It could be accompanied by an explanatory text, but that would defeat what I have in mind. I want it to make people think for themselves.

If I were to undertake a concerted project about sheep farming, say, then I would rather do it using texts and pictures in a longer book form than a zine. I think that would give a fuller understanding of the subject than a photobook of un-captioned pictures of sometimes obtuse meaning which is how many photobooks seem to be done these days. 

No doubt the photobook cognoscenti wouldn't think it was a photobook and would dismiss it even if the photographs were great (greater than I'm likely to manage that is).  I take heart in this from books by Fay Godwin and Daniel Meadows which have used text and photographs. They, too, might not be photobooks, but they're the kind of books I find myself returning to. The same goes for the farming books by the Forders. All three have produced books in which the pictures are more than illustrations, making the books more than the usual 'guide to' somewhere or something in which the photographs are formulaic in an editorial way.

Oh well. enough of this nonsense for now. I've been out and taken some photographs which I think will find a place in some of my project files. Mostly without pondering too much on theory and stuff. Sometimes I see something and rattle off a frame or two without thinking too much about framing too!

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Frozen out

No snow here, but it's been cold enough to freeze the ground solid which has given the farmers a chance to get machinery on the land and work under way. However a strong wind or really dull light has kept me indoors most of the time, with just a few late afternoon forays with a camera.

Even so new sights continue to appear when trudging the usual routes. They just get further apart than they used to.

When I did happen upon some activity I was a bit late on the scene and couldn't quite get the angles I wanted. The idea below was to have backlit gulls against dark fields. In addition to poor angles when the tractor got in range for a well framed shot it was too close to me for the gulls' comfort and they wheeled of and upwards.

That evening I did manage to get the setting sunlight reflecting off one of the road signs, which is a picture I've seen but never managed to take before. Usually when the sun is at the right angle to reflect it also casts my shadow into the frame. This time for some reason only the sign was lit.

 

 

Next time out I was later still and only managed a couple of pictures. One showing recent cultivation with still frozen surface water, the other what looks like hail stones but which are actually fertiliser pellets. Not important pictures on their own, but potentially useful in a series.

Being stuck indoors induces boredom. Boredom induces web browsing. Web browsing induces impulse purchases. I'd forgotten I'd ordered Joanne Coates's zine from ADM so it was a pleasant surprise to get an email notification that it was on its way. I'd seen the work on a number of websites over the last few years and was glad to have a hard copy of some pictures from it. It really needs a bigger publication with text to do it justice though.

When Camerasnaps tweeted a video of them going through Blood Sweat and Tears I immediately searched out a copy. Great documentary photography of the miners strike of 1984 published straight after the fact. If it had been a new publication I'd have given it a miss in keeping with my attempt to restrict my photobook buying to contemporary work, 'vintage' editions and the very occasional reprint at a more affordable price than the original of the same book on the collectors' market.

Also via Twitter I discovered The Dartmoor Collective and ordered a copy of their nice little collaborative zine, A Worked Landscape. A subject right up my street. Zines for a fiver are a great idea and should be encouraged.
 

The freeze finally came to an end today but it took a while for me to get work out of the way and make the most of the last hour of sunlight. I timed it just a bit late to catch some field and ditch work going on, and had to console myself with some static subject matter. An advantage of a flat landscape is teh ability to spot things which have appeared since a previous visit from afar. A big yellow digger by one of the pumps I have photographed numerous times had to be investigated.

I tried, and failed, to make a picture including one of the irrigation outlets but framing using the flip down screen was more trouble than I could be bothered with as time was short.

Even getting a shot of the digger on its own was tricky to frame without having something cutting into the left edge.

The greenhouses I sometimes walk by usually throw up some chance of a picture. If not of or through the glass then something reflected in it. Today was no exception. The greenhouses are used for bringing on houseplants and they are now being stocked up ready for the spring season. The trays of seedlings making for a nicely repetitive pattern.

The lack of contrast in the above picture being due to the dirty glass. The same applies to the picture below, with the addition of out of focus whitewash on the inside of the glass which I deliberately used as a device to provide a visual unifier to the picture's structure.

A reflected sunset is irresistible. So I didn't resist. Quite a few frames were exposed and only two or three worked. I tried focusing on the reflection and on the glass. The pictures with the sharp reflections were the most immediately satisfying. I've kept both versions though as I might change my mind with time. That's something I often do, keep two versions in case what initially appeals about a picture loses it's attraction as time passes.

With the warmer conditions set to stay for a while I'll be trying to get out and about more often, at more productive times. That's if work allows me to.

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Problems, problems...

Buy cheap buy twice. I've never believed that always applies. On the other hand there really is no such thing as a free lunch. When I was thinking of making a website to showcase my wonderful photographs I was overjoyed to find my business site's host provided a free software install to do that which integrated with Lightroom to make uploading sequenced galleries easy. It worked just great until a week or so ago. Now when I log in to the admin page everything is black.

The host says it's not a problem with that side of things, so it was time to contact the software people. Alas their contact pages throw up a 'page not found' alert. Try Twitter. Their Twitter account has seen no activity for two years. I await, without bated breath, a reply to my direct message seeking advice. On the plus side my website is still live and functioning. I just can't update it.

This is annoying because I've made a small selection of wintry pics taken locally which work quite well together. Here are a few.

 

After the run of night-time sub zero temperatures winter has reverted to form. Heavy cloud cover, low light levels and the inevitable rain. This inspired me to have another bash at scanning my old fishing photos. A tedious task which soon lost its appeal. Then I found a photo album I'd intended to start using to put prints of pictures from a project in. That got me thinking that I really should do what I've threatened myself to do for ages - make more prints.

I dug out some paper and made a start printing them on 5z7 paper. I set up a template in Lightroom to put a border round the pictures and print the date. Smashing. hastily I went on-line and ordered more paper and two albums in the same size.

Ten minutes later, looking at the A4 prints in the album I came top the conclusion that the image area was too small on the 5x7s, but A4 was a bit big. What to do? Get the guillotine out and chop an A4 sheet down to 8x10. With some fiddling that gave me an image area that Goldilocks would have liked. Not too big, not too small. Just right. Luckily the paper and album people were happy to change my order and my goodies are due to arrive tomorrow. I already have plenty of ink. All that remains now is for me to be disciplined enough to make prints on a regular basis to populate the albums. That might be a challenge too far!

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Two steps back

At least the rain did a bit of a disappearing act this week, which made a change. I still didn't manage to find much time to get out and about. When I did it was doing the same old rounds and finding little had changed.

The egg signs do change and there was sad news to record.

 
Like most of the pictures I've taken of late it is nothing more than a record of things. The same applied to a chance to photograph some sheep up close. I managed to fool the Zwartbles into thinking they'd get some food when I stood by their field gate. As always when there is a gate or ditch in the way viewpoints are limited and you end up with photos of sheep but not pictures. Certainly none worth posting in a blog that's supposedly about photography.

On the moss all there has been to see is the standing water. Which is slowly receding. I've made a few pictures which might come in useful if I ever get down to rounding them all up and putting them in some sort of order.

This implement has caught my eye many a time. The play of light over it made for a slightly better picture than most I've made of it.

Tired of the moss and lack of farming subject matter in general I went back to walking along the canal. There's not much there that I haven't taken photographs of before. Still, sometimes a change of lens makes you see things differently. Not all that differently perhaps.

Having to poke a lens through a metal security fence rather limits your compositional options. I managed to make this one work out pretty much the way I hoped it would. Although taken by the canalside it might find its way into the moss/veggie project.

In desperation I've been adding a few pictures to what I was thinking of as my 'Home Range' project but which might now become my 'Walking Distance' project. The random sightings of 'stuff' I see as I wander around the parish.

The church included.

A couple of times I have gone out late in the afternoon looking for sunsets. A sure sign of desperation. When they don't look like materialising I give up early. Wander off and see them develop when I'm too far away from where I hoped to photograph them to go back. I don't have the patience required to wait for the perfect light for landscape photographs. Which is probably a good thing. It means I sometimes stumble on more interesting pictures.

Sprouts, beef cattle and chicken sheds. All gloriously back lit. Much better than yet another sunset picture in the traditional style to my mind!

Another of my perennial subjects is that of privacy and security. I took advantage of the low angle of the setting sun to lift this picture a little.

Then back to more water lying on the fields.

All in all pretty grim. The new lens is growing on me, but despite my initial enthusiasm at getting rid of the blue hue I find myself still struggling with it, and despite my best intentions finding the 35mm end just a little too long. However, I prefer it that way to having the permanent temptation of 24mm. I certainly don't feel I'm missing the 150-300mm range though. Which is definitely a good thing.

All I have to do now is learn to love the 85mm focal length - at the third attempt. If I was sensible I'd stick with a 24 to something or other and get on with it. But I do like using two cameras with two fixed focal lengths at time. More so when in a restricted space such as an auction mart though. Out in the wild a zoom is more practical. especially when you have obstacles between you and the subject. When I'll get the chance to go to an auction mart remains to be seen. Poultry sales have been hit by a double whammy of virus restrictions. Covid-19 for the humans and avian influenza for the birds. Trying times all round.

 

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