Digital Photography Practice 1

Well I've enrolled on my new course, DPP 1 and am looking forward to my course material being delivered. I've also put in a large order on amazon so I'll have lots of reading to do in my (non-existent) spare time. Exciting. I'm starting a new blog and it's located here. Please visit some time and see how I'm doing. I'll keep posting the odd interesting (or not?) thing on this blog too.

Deleting Photos

Does anyone else feel a sense of guilt when deleting photos off the computer? I rarely do it, but as our computer has told me it has 1.5GB left of space on it, I have decided to have a cull... I often take a couple of shots when trying to get the right picture, but sometimes can't decide which I like best so just keep them all. I star the good ones and just filter to look at those, so never see the slightly blurry/out of focus/just not right photos. But really, it would be better to look at them all and get rid of the ones that are no good, but I find it hard. I'm rationalising it by saying, well I took it in the first place so I should be able to remove it, but I find it's particularly hard when it's of a loved one for example!

I think part of it is not having a good system for rating photos. I tend to 3 star anything I like and then occasionally give a 4 or 5 star to something really good, but I should use it more rigorously than that, and perhaps delete anything that doesn't get a star at all. I'd love to hear how other people get around the issue of taking thousands of photos and dealing with them afterwards without just buying more and more hard drive space!

However I must admit it feels a little cleansing to start with 150 photos in a folder and whittle it down to 50. It makes the browsing experience much more pleasant certainly! It's probably also good to realise that while it's great to make the most of digital and take lots of photos from different angles of the same scene, it's better to take time at the taking and get it right with one or two shots. Something I'm learning as I progress in my studies perhaps...

But there are some photos that are keepers no matter what technical quality they are... my son must be the most photographed little boy ever (or close to...)

Dress ups

Beyond People & Place...

I sent off my work for the March assessment yesterday. Pretty exciting to send off another finished subject, two years in the making. I feel like I've come a long way but also realise how far I've got to go...

I plan to enroll in Digital Photography 1 next. I feel like I need to improve my post-processing skills and this is the logical way to do so whilst continuing to study for my degree. I'm also going to try to install lightroom and make this my main platform for work.

Other projects I'd like to work on this year, time permitting.

Cropping & shapes – this is a project I'd like to do – make more interesting photographs with a variety of crops, and use these in a project such as one for a magazine.

Macro photography – work on seeing the detail again, a passion I used to have but have not practiced for a while.

Portrait photography – get the studio set up and start taking photos of friends and family (and children, since we'll have two by mid-year).

Off camera flash – I'm getting to grips with my flash more now after completing a short course here in Brisbane. Now I need to get out and start using it more!

Read some of the mass of photography books I have collected recently but not had adequate time to read!

I'm sure there are more, but thats a good start...

Photobooks

I have been reading more recently about photobooks. I like the idea of having the chance to get a message/theme across in a series of photos that flow from one to the next in photobook format. The concept is quite different from trying to produce photographs for an exhibition for example, or a single image for the 'art market', whatever that means these days. Photobooks have been made since the start of photography and cover such an amazingly wide range of topics and subjects.

A photobook I bought last year is Andre Kertesz 'On Reading', which is a delightful small hardback with all photos containing some reference to books/reading. The diversity of the images is inspirational and shows how incredibly observational Kertesz was. This particular book is a reprint and the preface is by Robert Gurbo, Curator Estate of Andre Kertesz. Curiously he proposes that printed books are in demise with the current digital age. I disagree with his statements and believe that since it is now easier than ever to print a book (without even going to a publisher) that more and more photobooks will be printed. For example, the Blurb website, which also hosts the photobooknow competition which continues to raise awareness of the medium makes it incredibly easy to print your own photobook. However, the topic that Kertesz covered in his book is for sure on the demise, as now people are seen 'reading' their phones, laptops or tablet computers instead of books, or not reading at all but listening to music through their chosen device. The world that is captured in this book is indeed going or already gone. Perhaps that is what Gurbo is actually commenting on...

Online Art

I discovered  last year that the Tate Britain has its entire collection online! That's amazing. (link here).
There is just so much art online now, it means that even people in remote parts of the world (I don't actually think Australia is remote, even though it does feel that way occasionally) can view excellent art. Virtual tours such as the fantastic google art project make art really accessible - and as 3D imagery (ie 3D screens etc) improves this will mean we can almost 'walk' around art galleries from anywhere in the world (and the quality of the reproductions are really excellent).

This, combined with the growing number of blogs means that we can access a world of inspiring photography and art from anywhere. Now the problem is finding the time for this and balancing it with spending time working on my own art. I attempt to do this by alternating reading of blogs/books one evening and working on my own photography the next (although sometimes the balance changes if I have a particular project I'm working on). If my own work is getting a bit staid, then I do more reading of blogs or books.

Sustainability Project

What does sustainability mean to me?

I've been asking myself this question for a while now, and I am going to enter a competition with this same subject (due in a few weeks). I'd love to get peoples opinion on my images and will take any suggestions seriously!!

Thanks in advance.

I've tried to think about what I do in my life to try to be more sustainable. Apparently if we all keep living the way we currently are, we need about 6 earths. We've only got one, so we all need to make changes in our lives to decrease our impact and be more sustainable. The classic images you get when you search online for sustainability are all a bit cliched in my opinion. I didn't want to take photos of small children holding growing plants, of solar panels, or wind farms or globes. I thought about things that impact my life directly. I have tried to take photos of things that are personal to me and give some indication of what I am trying to do to be more sustainable.

On the technical side. For the first time I (finally) downloaded the Photoshop CR2 raw converter so I have taken these 3 photos from raw files and processed them myself. Happy with the results and how quick and easy it was! I should have been doing this for ages!! I also took the first two shots using my big external flash in a somewhat studio style setup. It has been a fun challenge.

Here they are:

Photo 1: ... and three veg

From Sustainability_Project

Photo 2: Live Local

From Sustainability_Project

Photo 3: Double Garage

From Sustainability_Project

If you have any comments or questions please comment below. What does sustainability mean to you?

Perth Street Photography

I was in Perth (Australia) for work a few weeks ago and took the opportunity to take some street photographs. I used my point and shoot camera (Canon Powershot S95), a fabulous little camera which allowed me to be fairly subtle and less in-the-face than the big 30D. It was quite challenging taking photos of strangers in their rush hour heading home, but it was fun too, particularly playing with the strong contrasting light.

Starting off with a quick self-portrait (well, a partial...)

From Street_Perth

Girl at a bus stop (challenging bright light behind)

From Street_Perth

I like the shadows in this one, and the fairly severe expression on this womans face!

From Street_Perth

Look at those shoes!

From Street_Perth

Sneaky photo not looking through camera viewfinder.

From Street_Perth

Strong late afternoon sunlight and great facial!

From Street_Perth

Sleepwalking

From Street_Perth

Nice light separating my subject here from the background

From Street_Perth

Blurry but I like it

From Street_Perth

Still got a ways to go with street photography, but it's definately fun to try!

Light

Popped out today for a quick (20 minute) shoot to get a start on Assignment 3 for People & Place. It has been raining on and off so there were some great clouds in the sky, and I thought I might get a few overcast images for my planned bridge shot. I was busy shooting away thinking the photos were ... ok... then the sun broke through - awesome light. My favourite - dark clouds with sunlight breaking through. Here's a quick (unprocessed) shot...

From Miscellaneous

Great fun. That should mean one ticked off for this project, if I'm happy with my images as I look at them tonight.

Floods and Cyclones

I thought I was coping fine after the floods until the next wave of distaster to strike Queensland reared its ugly head over the last few days. We were fine in the end during the floods, but it was a highly traumatic and stressful experience expecting our house to be flooded potentially up to the upper storey. What were the things I wanted to save? Photos, hard drives and jewellery. Obviously we were looking after our personal safety first, but photos were the first thing on my list of irreplacable objects. Even my beloved camera could be replaced and so was not on the list of things to be taken out of the house in the case of the extreme flooding which was expected early on. Natural disasters happen to 'other people', not to us. Particularly after we'd only just moved into our new house a month previously. Hard to comprehend, even now 3 weeks after the event. We won't be affected by the mammoth cyclone here in Brisbane, but it makes me realise just how vulnerable we all are, having survived one natural disaster already. What have I learnt? Keep living life as full as possible, something we already do quite well, and always have a hard drive of photos ready to take out of the house if the need arises!

From Flooding

Update & portrait photos

A quick update on my one portrait project and other stuff... it rapidly turned into one a week, and now it's one whenever I can manage! The last few months have been hectic, and the next few will continue to be so! We are moving back to Australia in a few days so have been preparing for that over the last few months. It's all systems go (apart from my photography!)

I've recently finished TAOP and sent it off for the next Assessment. I'm excited to hear the results in a few months. The journey has been fantastic for me and I feel I've risen to the challenge quite well. I'm also working on People & Places which I continue to feel more comfortable with.

Here are a few recent portraits that I've taken, expect a bit of a pause from the blogging, but the next photos will be from Adelaide and then Brisbane!

Jazz Festival, Edinburgh. I took my camera out during the Jazz festival free event in the Grassmarket. It was a lovely day with constantly changing light conditions. I took loads of photos (for the P&P course, though I have not posted them here on my blog yet). These were my favourite portraits on the day.

From Portrait_Project

From Portrait_Project

From Portrait_Project

From Portrait_Project

Princes St Gardens, Edinburgh. This was a sneaky shot, very voyeristic of me, but then she was lying there in the sun so I wasn't being that naughty! I like the composition of this photograph, and it works well with the strong high contrast sunlight. A rare hot sunny day in Edinburgh!

From Portrait_Project

Jupiter Artland, self-portrait. Not terribly inspired, but I liked the artwork and I never miss an opportunity to star in my photos!

From Portrait_Project

Rowena, an amazing yoga teacher who I've been very lucky to study with for the last 2 1/2 years (www.ro-yoga.com/). We had a short photo session in her yoga studio, which is a beautiful light place - perfect for practice and photography. I took some photos for the P&P course here which I will post in due course.

From Portrait_Project

From Portrait_Project

From Portrait_Project

A friend. Would be better without her sunglasses blocking her lovely eyes, but then there wouldn't be the cool reflection of me in the photo too :) She was a reluctant sitter so I didn't push it.

From Portrait_Project

more to come...

Book: 'Between the eyes', David Levi Strauss

The Rwanda projects of Alfredo Jaar, in David Levi Strauss, Between the eyes
This essay is a fascinating look at photographs taken by Jaar immediately after the Rwanda genocide on 1994. I found reading the essay disturbing, but the way Jaar presents his photographs afterwards was what I found really interesting. He has managed to reduce the immensity of the genocide (which according to Strauss, we the public watched glued to our screens and newspapers but didn't react), to single people and the impact on them. He did this initially not showing his photographs, of which he took about 3000 during his time in Rwanda, but by describing them, or just trying to bring Rwanda as a place into our mindset. Then later on he has used single photographs with descriptions (lots of use of words by the sound of things), to really bring home the personal impact of the civil war. From reading 'Between the eyes', I am beginning to learn more about the difficulty of reporting such massive events in a compassionate way that will make the public think. With the onset of 24hour news in our lives we are being dulled to these tragic events, because we see them (internet/tv/newspapers) constantly. This makes it harder for reporters/photographers to make us empathise with the individuals on the ground. I think that the approach that Jaar took with his Rwanda work has been very effective, and I found just reading about it to be incredibly moving. I found a couple of Strauss's quotes key, in relation to war/social documentary photography:
“One terrible truth about photographs is that they can only ever show us what happened, never what is happening or will happen. They are always about something that is gone, and so are in league with death.” this is “the futility of a gaze that arrives too late”.
Pp 103.


Can you hear me? In David Levi Strauss, Between the eyes
Interesting quote from article about modern life – connectivity and the place of art in the busy modern world.

'Artists cannot compete with the Pandaemonium on its own terms; they are outgunned and vastly undercapitalized. The only way to effectively subvert it is to change the rules of engagement, to engage the audience differently. The most basic questions about audience and communication have to be asked differently now than in the past, perhaps especially when it comes to images, but they still need to be asked. The question is no longer, Should there be a global mass-market consumer culture?, but Should there be anything else? With all of the hype about interconnectivity, are we really more connected than before? What is the nature of that connection? Is the Internet the first and only transparent medium, or does its form determine its content? Is art a subcategory of mass-market consumer culture or something different from it? What is the difference between commercial messages and art? Does motivation affect the message essentially? Can you hear me?'
pp164


The highest degree of illusion, in David Levi Strauss, Between the eyes
A discussion about the September 11 attacks – the most photographed event in history. Clearly planned and executed to maximise imaging – ie the delay between then two crashes seemed calculated to allow cameras to turn en mass towards the towers. An interesting observation... Some of the other trends Strauss observes are interesting too – regarding the treatment and reaction to images as opposed to reality. I'm not sure I agree with him totally about preferring images to reality, but certainly this idea in todays image saturated world is something to ponder upon.
pp182

This book is a fascinating if challenging (and sobering) read. I would recommended it to anyone interested in the use of images in a political environment.

Picturing New York

Picturing New York. Photographs from the Museum of Modern Art.

I have just checked out this book which I found at the local library. It provides an interesting history of photos in a place which has been heavily photographed for most of photographys history! The emphasis is on the MOMA, which has supported photography for many years, and includes work by 'famous' photographers, and also a few news photos and unknown photographer shots. I found it to be really enjoyable to look at. There are a couple of beautiful Alfred Stieglitz photos (Flatiron Building, 1903 in particular) - I quite like the soft focus and dreamy character. The early shots of 'skyscrapers' are great, and I also really liked some of the clever cropping and unusual lenses used in the 1920s (eg Bernice Abbott and Ralph Steiner). A real minimalist photo that I liked (particularly in it's B&W nature and strong geometric design) is Charles Sheeler 'United Nations Secretariat, 1951. The range of subjects is incredibly diverse, the 1940s section in particular - from shopfronts, to subway portraits (Walker Evans), abstract unusual views (Lisette Model, Times Square, 1940), blurred lights & distorted focus & double exposures, studio portraits (Irving Penn), and a couple of real comedy shots - such as Helen Levitt (New York. c. 1945 - a shot of a woman bending over with her hed in her childs pram, the child is grinning hysterically!). Also Weegee's 'the critic', 1943 is a classic comedy shot of three women, two dressed quite smartly with a third caught looking on with a look of criticism - fabulous capture! The range of photographs seem to capture every aspect of life in the city, and the photographers whos names we (mostly) now know very well appear to have grasped something of the soul of the city. A few more favourites: Lee Friedlander, 'New York City, 1966' - a street photo of a womans head from behind (in fur) with the shadow of a man on the top - it looks like the man is wearing her head as a hat!! This is a fun book and I'm really glad I picked it up for a look.

Published by the Museum of Modern Art
ISBN: 978-0-87070-763-6

Day 2, portrait 2

Today I went out in the rain to take some photos. Already this project has forced me to make some changes to my photography - I put on my lightest lens (the plastic fantastic - 50mm f/1.8) because I was already laden with my 5 month old and all the associated paraphernalia (one of the main reasons I have not been taking photos much lately). This meant that I could whip the camera out when I needed to take a photo and not worry about changing focal length. This is good for street photography, though some people would certainly say that a shorter focal length would be better (it is closer to 80mm full frame equivalent). Anyway, it suited my purposes for today.

Today's photo is of a young woman waiting at the bus stop - she is nicely looking up at the electronic board which tells us when the next bus approaches. I don't think she noticed me taking a few snaps, and I am quite happy with this photo. I have cropped a little to remove some bright reflections from the left side of the photo from the wet road. I really like the way the umbrella frames the photograph, and her hands are neatly crossing her chest.

From Portrait_Project

One portrait a day...

OK, I have decided to step right out of my comfort zone and have challenged myself to a new project. I am still working on finishing up the last few bits of The Art of Photography, and am also working on People & Places, but personal projects have been lacking lately (apart from photographing my son which gets a lot of time dedicated to it!). I have decided to attempt to take one portrait every day. I won't limit myself to a new person every day, and don't know how long I'll do this project for, but one of my main challenges with people photography is having the guts to talk to people and pose them. The best way to overcome this is mileage, i.e. taking loads of photos of people. So my aim is to photograph one person every day and semi-regularly post them here on my blog.

Initially I'm starting close to home (very close...). Self-portraiture is a challenge because you can't look through the viewfinder and frame the shot, you can't see what the photo will look like and you need to do everything yourself. The easy bit is that you don't need to pose someone else and if you look like an idiot then it doesn't matter!! I am inspired by loads of female self-portraiture artists... particularly Francesca Woodman who is a favourite, and I quite like the work of Gabriela Herman, Heather Evans Smith, and also a fellow OCA students work I discovered recently, Penny Watson.

Self-portraits are introspective (or can be), and can be very honest and open – thus are a challenge to do well. I am starting with a simple shot using a handheld camera and large aperture and hope that my photos are vaguely focussed but not worrying about a bit of handheld induced blur. In fact, I have tried to blur a few of the photos on purpose (Woodman-inspired). Below I post the first attempt in this project, which is sure to be a massive challenge for me... Please comment to help me with my challenge!

From Portrait_Project

I think the lighting is not ideal, a catchlight in the eye would have been better, but the shallow DOF and bokeh outside of the main face area is effective. A good starting point?

Inspiration

I recently visited the Photographers Gallery in London. We were lucky to see the exhibition 'fresh faced & wild eyed 2010', which is work by recent graduates - an incredible range and variety if images. Most were sets, from two or 3 works up to about a dozen photos. All were inspirational and thought provoking and some were particularly clever and original!

I was particularly taken by the work of Simone Koch (http://www.simonekoch.co.uk/wahl.html). Her piece 'But we must cultivate our Garden' was really excellent - quirky images, mixture of people and place, closeups and abstracts; it really made me think about what made a set of images clever. I hope to be able to do something vaguely similar with my final assignment for TAOP, not in terms of including people in so many images, but taking photos that are not obvious and making them interesting.

We also saw Briony Campbell talking at the Friday lunchtime talk. Her work 'The dad project' was moving and impressive, though I thought the photos didn't tell enough of the story - the captions were needed which I think is a bit unfortunate. I have seen similar works, both online and at a visit to FOAM gallery in Amsterdam. To take such a personal experience (a relative with a terminal illness) and photograph it takes some guts, and she said that it had helped her grieving experience. I'm not sure it's the most original piece of work however, though it certainly was very touching.

I think those students who chose just a few images to present often resulted in stronger impact for me - sometimes it's difficult to make a choice between 'favourite' images, and I think this is actually a very important part of the process of photography (something I myself struggle with at times). But it also distills down the piece of work into the key images and it you can't get your message across in those images then perhaps the work is not strong enough? Another photographer whos work was very impressive and memorable was Anna Linderstam, who had her subjects hypnotised and then photographed them in that state. The massive triptych that results is visually stunning and very effective.

Spring is Here

and is beautiful indeed. Here are some shots from nearby Harrison park taken late one evening last week when I managed to sneak out of the house when the wee one was asleep... photography of anything other than him has rather taken a back-seat lately! Hope to be back onto it soon though...

From Miscellaneous

From Miscellaneous

Self-Portrait

Last weekend I decided to have a bit of a play with my new flash and take some photos of myself. The setup was quite simple - flash through white umbrella, me against a cream wall, with a bit of natural light coming in through the window. I thought for the People & Places course it would be useful trying being on the other side of the camera for a change! Though using the timer is not ideal, as you need to hold the expression at the right time, which lacks spontaneity. Somewhat of a solution would be a remote, but I'm not sure you can get one for my camera, and I don't know how much I'd really use it. Also it's quite hard to set the focus up. I think I did OK on this shoot, but sometimes the eyes are a little soft (not a problem so much with these torso shots, but a major challenge for head/shoulders shots). Anyway, here is one of the photos, post-processed to B&W in photoshop. It will also explain my upcoming absence from photography activities, until the baby shots start coming in!!

From Miscellaneous

People and Places

I have enrolled in another OCA level 1 course - People & Places. Taking photos of people would have to be the one area of photography where I often feel out of my depths. However, it's an area I'd like to improve at, especially because our family will be expanding in February when I'm expecting our first baby... now that will be a challenge!!

As a start, I found this article which has some interesting views on 'what is portraiture?'

More to follow!

Cramond

I went to Cramond on Sunday afternoon in search of a good sunset to enable me to continue on with the projects for this section, but it was quite grey and overcast, and no good sunset appeared. Anyway, I managed to shoot quite a nice landscape shot of the causeway out to Cramond Island, so I thought I'd share that with you all. I'm not sure if it's a bit dark, so I welcome comments as usual.

24mm, f/22, 15sec, ISO 100, Tripod, graduated neutral density filter to decrease brightness of water on left side of photo.

Francesca Woodman

At a recent exhibition at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, entitled 'Artist Rooms', with works by Damien Hurst and other big names, I came across a photographer who tragically died quite young, who's work I thought was very inspiring. Her name was Francesca Woodman, 1958 - 1981. Her photos are B&W, often of young nude women, often blurred (sometimes quite ghost-like), often the faces are not shown. The movement softens the line of reality, and softens the body - creating often feminine, sensual shots. The prints we saw were small, and soft around the edges. They seemed quite experimental. I've done a bit of reading online, and looking at more photos, and if you are interested, the wikipedia page has excellent links to her photos. It's fascinating seeing some of her early shots, which she took when she was a young teenager.

Links to some of my favourites: Space, untitled 1976, Space2, angel series,

In fact, the more I look at her photographs, the more amazing I think she seems.

Another interesting photographer I discovered while reading about Woodman is Duane Michals (b. 1932), whom she may have been influenced by. This site has an interesting analysis of his work & art. I like his mix of surrealism and obvious sense of humour evident in some of his photos. I also like his attitude of not following the pack but trying to be different in ones photography, something I would like to strive to do more as I develop my own style.