Down the drain

More and more I'm realising how my pictures work best as groups or collections. Looking back through some older files I see recurring themes which can be pulled together. Going right back to when I began rediscovering photography I was taking photographs of ditches and drains.

What the photographic attraction for me is with ditches is hard to say. Partly an anglers affinity with water, partly my fascination with man's impact on nature and nature's constant retaliation. And there's the straight lines. Snowfall always seems top get people out with their cameras, but it is terribly difficult to photograph. Grey skies don't help make for picturesque scenes, but the light does keep harsh shadows at bay.

As ever the flat land is difficult to work with. One way is to get a high viewpoint, another is to get in close and concentrate on details. The three frames here were all conceived as5x4 crops, two being shot as such using the in camera cropping facility. I'm not sure why, it just felt right. No doubt there would be many who would clone out the branches intruding into the top right of the first picture. I considered it, but somehow the 'imperfection' feels right. The world is messy. Why tidy it up?

I like the even light, the muted colours and the banality of these pictures. As with many of my recent 'landscape' photographs they really work better larger where the texture and detail is revealed. They were all taken within a few hundred yards of home on a walk through the woods to the fields beyond.

The wood itself poses a different problem. Being able to see the wood for the trees! It's somewhere I've been before with a camera and struggled. It's early days, two recent visits are forming ideas, and a project may evolve. It's all about trying to use your personal vision instead of trying to replicate pictures you have seen that others have made. Being so close I can make short visits to the wood at any time of the day. Like the sandplant it's a place that people use, and abuse, in an unregulated way. Although it is visited by many dog walkers, mountain bikers and kids messing about, wit the attendant rubbish, there is wildlife. Not just the expected birds and squirrels in the trees. I have seen hares in the wood in harsh times and rabbits at any time.

---

This and that

Yesterday was another of my cultural visits to Liverpool. Despite there being a bitter wind with threats of snow causing me to refrain from dawdling I managed to snatch one shot that has something going for it in a minimal, graphic kind of way on my way to the Open Eye Gallery.
 

The exhibition I wanted to see was that of the landscapes of E. Chambré Hardman. The prints were a totally different experience to seeing the pictures on the web. Not so much because of the change of scale, but because some seemed to be printed in a fuzzy, painterly, way. I'm still not sure I liked it.Nor was I taken with the rustic romanticism of a few pictures. The quarry and cooling towers were more my kind of thing.

The other exhibition was in a modern vein. One piece that stood out as less contrived (although it was a composite panorama) was Tabitha Jussa's Eldon Grove. I guess when it comes to 'landscape' photography I lean towards a documentary style in my preferences. Which is probably why I picked up a book that was in the gallery's sale. I've been thinking of buying a copy for some time but having a chance to flick through the pages made up my mind. A Landscape of Wales by James Morris is a far from romanticised view of the principality, yet it isn't sneering either. The photographs are just what they are.

Talking of books, my printed version of the pictures of dry patches arrived today. I was wondering how the photographs from the X10 would reproduce in the laser printed form I assume is used by Blurb. I think they've turned out pretty well with none of the blocked shadows or lost detail I had feared might occur.

With using a tripod more frequently of late the ball head I have was frustrating me. Framing my shots is the only technical aspect of photography which I obsess about. Having a camera 'droop' after the head is tightened drives me nuts. I'd thought about getting one of the pistol grip heads but wanted to try one out beforehand. Luckily for me I bumped into a friend of mine who has one last week when we were both out with our cameras, so I gave it a whirl. I was impressed enough to get one for myself.

Me being me, however, I have swapped it round to operate left handed and back to front! I got to try it in anger at the quarry last time I was there and it worked a treat. I can grip both the trigger and the camera to line everything up just right. And there's no 'droop' either.

After posting the previous blog entry I made a larger jpeg of the first picture and set it as my computer's desktop. This has become one of my ways of seeing if I can live with a picture. In this case having it fill the screen completely changes it. The intricate details that drew me to make the shot are clearer, and it makes a lot more sense. So much so that it's making me wonder if an A3 printer might be a sound investment. There are times when I'd like to see a print that's larger than A4.

---

Previsualisation

If you don't previsualise your photographs you're just walking around taking pictures of thinks that interest you. That was the gist of a post on a forum a while back which I managed to avoid getting into an argument over. I don't see anything wrong in wandering around looking for interesting things as a strategy for making photographs. Not if your life doesn't depend on making great photos. Where I beg to differ with the theory is probably in the definition of previsualisation.

The term conjures up in my mind a great deal of forward planning. Almost in the way a painter might make preliminary sketches to sort out ideas of composition and colour before starting on a painting. The final outcome being decided on in advance and worked towards. This degree of conceptualising might be advantageous if you have a customer to please, but if you are working for yourself then, for me, once the image has been conceived there's little point in going through the tedium of making it manifest. You might as well give a technician the brief and let them get on with it - rather in the way that Damien Hirst (among others) relinquishes the making of his art objects to his minions.

What appeals to me about photography is that enables you to wander around and find pictures in the world. Pictures you would never dream up in a thousand lifetimes. Pictures that can only be deciphered and understood after they have been made. The trick is to put yourself in the places these pictures are found more often than not.

This is not to say I don't have vague notions of what I want to make photographs of. The subjects, in a broad sense, are clear in advance. It's the specifics I don't previsualise. And any chance discoveries can sidetrack me.

The quarry has been in my mind since the visit the other day. I have ideas of what I want to photograph there buzzing around my head, but no idea how to go about it. I can only decide that by trying different things until they start to work.

When the light changed this afternoon promising blue skies and a colourful sunset I downed tools and grabbed the cameras to try and snatch the last couple of hours of daylight. I had one fairly clear idea of trying panoramic shots among the gnarled trees I'd found. By the time I pulled into the car park the sun had disappeared again and the coastal plain was being covered in mist. It was bloody freezing too!

I was there, so I could at least have a dry run even if the pictures would be either grainy or lacking in definition due to the flat light. Given more time, and more light, there could be something to work with there. The intricacies of the branches and the details of the, mosses, lichens and fungi are lost on these web-sized images. A shame because those are the properties that appeal to me about the environment.

Dragging myself out of the gloom I made another attempt at a view over the quarry to the plain. I liked the result, compositionally, but the file needed too much work to get the colours and contrast to my taste and ended up looking artificial.

I seem to be getting used to the ultrawide angle though. Starting to 'see' (previsualise?!) with it's perspective. So much so that as I was walking away I grabbed a shot more or less on the fly (just the one frame) of something that I found interesting and got a composition I really like. If I'd realised it at the time I'd have made more than a snapshot. Technically it's rubbish. So I fiddled with it, slightly more successfully than with the landscape,  but still proving that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. One of these days I'll get to spend more time at the quarry one a day when the light works in my favour. I can already previsualise the photographs I'll make....

---

I don't get it.

What is this fascination with using out of date film, or making digital photos look like they were taken forty years ago and just discovered in a dusty loft?

Just before Christmas I wrote about finding a camera I hadn't used for years and finishing the slide film that was in it. I also found a 35mm film cassette. It turned out that the lone cassette was empty! The film in the camera finally came back from the lab - with a note saying the film hadn't been stored correctly. No surprise there. The pictures were awful. Two here could have been okay had the film been in top condition. One I've converted to black and white because it was the only way to salvage anything from it.

I'm still trying to finish off a roll of black and white I put in my Pentax in the spring of last year. Using the camera today (I took two frames) I realised that part of the attraction of film (for me) is the physical use of the camera. Winding on the film and cocking the shutter just feels good. It seems to connect me to the picture making process. The slide film was in a motorised compact and it wasn't anywhere near as pleasing to use. In fact it felt quite like shooting a digital compact. The noise the mirror of the Pentax makes when it thunks back down is so more pleasing than the rattle of a DSLR shutter and mirror too. Is this just nostalgia? Is it some wierd nostalgia that makes people debase their photos to look aged?

---

Out and about

It was a funny sort of day. A frosty and slightly misty start seemed an ideal combination to try and find some new looks at the sandplant. As it was going to be a big tide pushing the birdlife close in off the saltmarsh there would be birdwatchers using the bunds to get an elevated view. Not only am I interested in the detritus and plantlife in the sandplant I'm also interested in the people who use it for recreation. Although I usually get there when it's deserted.

Sure enough there was ice to be found, and a fresh scattering of junk. With the tide due to peak around noon I was there before the birdwatchers arrived, but there were soon plenty arriving to flock together at the favoured viewing spot.

I've got well over 150 shots that have something going for them from the sandplant now. The latest selection from the near 200 I took today are here. Many are variations on a theme. I keep them all because the time will come when I edit them down to a manageable collection. Most of the similar shots will be rejected. That's no reason to not take more. The hope is that one will really stand out. Another reason is that there might be some that stand out as individual images but don't fit the flow of the series, in whatever form it finally takes. The form is slowly coalescing in my mind's eye.

Then there are shots like the one below which almost achieved what I had in mind, but somehow fell short of the mark. These are saved for future reference.

Apart from the birders there was a lone dogwalker in the plant today, and also a visitor from Malaysia and her daughter who were taking photographs. The daughter had a new camera and was ardently taking photographs of cracks in ice and all manner of things and clearly absorbed in what she was doing. It made me wonder if all photographers retain this childhood inquisitiveness. I'm sure that it's a simple fascination with looking at things that makes me take photographs.

With the air being still and the mist blurring the horizon I was wishing I'd made provision to photograph the incoming tide. As it was I snatched a few half-hearted 'could have been' shots of the water flooding the marsh before heading for lunch

Snow was threatened for later but it seemed unlikely. An afternoon with the tripod at the quarry was in order. As soon as I got out of the car it began to sleet. I wasted too much time trying to capture a view over the quarry to the land beyond. The low cloud was just that bit too thick to make the scene work.

Taking a turn down the side I worked a few more ideas that failed, in part due to the light but also due to sleet on the lens.

I am finding the tripod less restrictive than I used to. The legs could be faster to adjust though. But framing shots isn't the problem it used to be. Heading back to the car I noticed a path through the bracken which didn't look 'official'. That inquisitiveness kicked in and I followed it. It lead to an area of twisted moss covered oaks, ferns and lichen encrusted rocks. If the sleet hadn't been doing its best snow impersonation I could have amused myself there for some time. As it was I noted it down for a return visit or two now I feel like I'm getting a handle on making pictures of softer natural forms.

---