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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All done and dusted... I hope

Having examined the hard copy of my revisitation project I realised some shots needed redoing, and a look at on-line aerial photo-maps found one location I had struggled to find on the ground. So more trips with the camera and 50mm lens were ordered.

The book needed another edit to include one new picture, and I added one which had been omitted to balance out two I decided to remove. After much checking and rechecking I am 99% sure the project is complete. It's time to order a hard copy and make sure.

The scene below isn't part of the project, just something I took along the way. It is an illustration of the old and the new though. The entrance to the railway has been rejuvenated in the last couple of years. Not the A-board though!

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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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Two views of hawthorn

A sign that spring is well under way is the blossoming of the hawthorn. It's something Hockney looks forward to and becomes obsessed with during the brief flowering period.

On the right tree it can look like the foamy spray from a fountain or waterfall cascading along the branches. A visual impression that the camera fails to translate in a straight photograph.

Having made some nice-enough photographs in the muted evening light (which was a bonus for photographing the white flowers), using an out of focus background to make the blossoms stand out clearly I wondered if there might be a way to convey the feel of the blossom.

Zoom blur is a trick that can be overdone and is usually carried out to express movement - in a cartoony sort of way. What made me try it on the hawthorn I'm not sure. I think it was because I 'see' the blossom as being in motion. Quite a number of attempts were made, and if I was the obsessive type I'd have made more, and probably have further attempts, to try and get the perfect shot.

However, for me photography is all about speed of image making. Try something, if it works great if it doesn't no big deal, move on. If I wanted to spend time working at a perfect image of hawthorn blossom I'd reach for paint and brush. But Hockney does it better than I could.

No doubt most people today would have added the effect in Photoshop. Far easier and more controllable. Never looks quite right to me unless it's done manually with the camera. Even when well done it can come across as something added to try and rescue a failed photograph. Doing it at the scene also lets you try more options and keeps that connection with the subject that is a sort of feedback loop.

I quite like the way the picture below turned out. Sure it's not perfect, but it would never be great art even if if it was. If I get bored again while the hawthorn is in flower I might have another try. My boredom threshold has probably already been reached though.

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The proof is in the printing

My Blurb book of old and new photographs arrived today. I'd laid it out and ordered a hard copy to save me making a mass of prints and so I could see what the effect was like.

What was immediately apparent, and which hadn't been when studying either pictures on my computer screen or comparing the black and white prints with what was on the camera's LCD, was that two of my recreations had been taken from positions that were way out. One of them with a different lens too.

Having even the fairly small, printed-on-paper, pictures one above the other made the inconsistencies obvious and pointed up the importance of hard copies of photographs. They engender a different way of viewing to pictures on a screen.

The current version of the book is only a draft with a working title. Not that I expect to ever sell any. Not at Blurb prices at any rate. Their iPhone apps can be made reasonably cheap, but that seems to defeat the object of on demand printing to my way of thinking. When I get everything sorted to my satisfaction it will be something I can look at now and then, and show to anyone daft enough to express the slightest interest in the pictures!

I went out today to try and correct my errors. While doing so I took time out to play with a few ideas between the two locations I was revisiting. Some had promise. Most I didn't work through to a conclusion. It's not a good idea to try and use two different ways of looking in the same day. Once the then-and-now pictures were out of the way I got a bit more focussed on the new ideas. The one below sorta, kinda succeeded.

And there was an Elliott Erwitt dog sequence interlude.

Erwitt does it better. But I doubt his wheelie bin photographs are a match for mine!

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