THE BEST CAMERA ...

I dread to think how many words have been written on camera and associated equipment reviews. The photography industry is constantly reworking camera and lens models. It feels as if the pressure is always on to upgrade and add more and more pixels. The magazine and online journals seem to profligate this message (of course fueled by the advertising revenue from said equipment companies). It is easy to get caught in a spiral of ‘if only I had this lens my images would be better’.

Many photographers will tell you that they are asked more about the kit they use than the creative process. However haven’t we got this the wrong way round? It is not the photographers’ ability to utilize the equipment as part of the creative process that makes the image, not the equipment per se.

If you are always carrying a full kit bag you may find that your creative decisions are overtaken by equipment decisions, what lens to use, tripod, filters, flash before you even get onto thinking about camera settings and eventually post-processing decisions.

What happens when you don’t have your fully kitted out camera bag with you … for whatever reason you have to improvise. Here enters the camera phone.

“The best camera is the one you have with you”

I was first aware of this quote by Chase Jarvis an American lifestyle photographer. He was an earlier adopter of plugging phones to take images and published a book of his iPhone images in 2009.

We are seeing an ever-greater proliferation of images taken on phones. For many people this is the only way that they take and consume images.

However some photographers will dismiss the camera phone as not being a proper camera, and denigrate the camera phone for only being able to produce selfies for social media feeds.

But don’t be too quick to dismiss the camera phone, as there are some very strong projects that have been created with just these devices. At The Photography Show in March I saw talks by several photographers talking about their camera phone work.

Jo Bradford is an art photographer based on Dartmoor, her work is based around cameraless photography. In January 2015 she was on maternity leave and wanted to keep taking photographs. She started a 365 project based around Dartmoor where she lives. Taking her two small children with her meant that she could not carry her full kit as well as a supply of baby food, nappies etc. So she used her camera phone, posting one image a day to Instagram. The project gained momentum and ended with a following of 56,000 followers. The project ‘A Love Letter to Dartmoor’ features the landscape of Dartmoor and every image is taken on an iPhone. By being freed from equipment worries, the use of the iPhone allowed Bradford to concentrate on the creative process of taking the images.

Julian Calverley is an advertising photographer. He started using his iPhone for recce shots when scouting locations. The ease of using the phone plus its ability to log GPS coordinates meant that a whole area could be scouted quicker. He found that the focal length of the iPhone camera was similar to the lens for his large format. Over time the iPhone images become their own project and now have been published and exhibited. Calverley says that there is something about the spontaniety of the little device that freed up his picture taking. More than once he had revisited a scene with his large format kit but could never match the image taken on the phone.

All three of these photographers have been able to use their photographic skills when switching to the camera phone. Their images, regardless of the camera taken on, show considered understanding of the basics of photography.

The camera phone has alleviated some of the technical decisions over kit and allowed the photographers to concentrate on taking photographs and being creative. The camera phone images have become projects in their own right, developed their own direction and impetus, separate to their regular photographic output.

So is it not about what camera you have; it is all about using the camera you have to hand? Or is that just an excuse to be lazy…

This post originally appeared on the WeAreOCA blog.

NICK TURPIN

In this blog post I wanted to explore how photographers work on a project. As part of the OCA courses, the assignments give students the opportunity to present a series of images in response to a brief. The brief will provide some guidance on the work to be produced, but ultimately the student is encouraged to develop a series of images to be viewed together.

The idea of producing a set or series of images is one that many photographers, not just students struggle with. However it is the key to finding your personal voice and articulating your own style within your photographic images.

Too often we reject project ideas for being too mundane and not exciting enough. We think we need grand scenery or exotic locations to get the viewer (or ourselves) interested. How often have tutors heard this response from a student – “I am going on holiday soon and will take the assignment images whilst I am away.”

Travel gives us all a good opportunity to take photographs and we can hone many skills but it is rarely the best plan for assignments. These assignments are where a development in the process of image making is essential to refine, investigate and explore ideas and photographic styles.

So what do you photograph ….

During February images by photographer Nick Turpin really stood out on my Instagram feed. They are from his project ‘Through a Glass Darkly’. Nick Turpin describes the project as follows:

“These pictures of London Bus passengers in the winter months were made at night from a raised platform with a long lens hand held at 1/40th second, on the limits of what modern camera sensors can record.”

Sometimes reading a description of a project does not do it justice. The photographs are of bus passengers taken during winter nights. Nick is shooting in conditions that most of us would avoid, with many of us preferring to wait for warner and sunny daylight hours.

But it is these shooting conditions that have created the wonderful luminescent to the images. The condensation on the windows creates a textured layer, through which the viewer is drawn.

Some of the subjects are semi visible, masked by condensation or clothing. They are anonymous and hidden in their own private commuting world.

In other images, the viewer has a more direct connection with the subjects. The rich twilight colour of the sky allowing for bright colours to stand out.

In total there are 42 images as part of the current series which was shot over a four year period. Nick discussed the development of the project,

“The Through A Glass Darkly idea produced pleasing results right from the start and as time went on I fine tuned the idea, shooting closer to get rid of the window frames and making the pictures increasingly more intimate. This year I invested in a 300mm lens simply to continue to develop this project with tighter portraits. Also as you shoot pictures emerge that show you possible avenues, I noticed that some images referenced nicely fine art paintings of the past such as Picasso Blue Period paintings, I then started to look out for those connections.”

It is clear to me, that it is only with time that the project has been refined. The lengthy time period has allowed for the research connections to be made. This research in turn feeds back into the project.

Nick comments:
“I think now the hard part will be knowing when the project is finished. I won’t miss shooting in the dark, cold and wet.”

As students you may not have four years to develop each assignment. However with planning and pacing of workload, time can be allowed to complete work.

Whatever stage you are at with your photographic work, it is worth starting an idea book – could be a separate part of your learning log, a note taking app on smart phone/tablet or a small sketchbook. The format doesn’t matter but it needs to be something that you can log ideas in, don’t reject anything.
This idea book can be dipped in out of as you complete your studies. You may find that later on in your studies you come back to early ideas with a different perspective.

As ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ shows us, the most everyday part of our lives can be transformed into a sustained photographic project

With kind thanks to Nick Turpin for use of his images and words.

View his work at:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_nick_turpin/

This post originally appeared on the WeAreOCA blog.

Powder – Exhibition Review

Powder is a wonderful exhibition document the Royal Gunpowder Mills site.  To read the full review please visit my post on the WeAreOCA blog. 

SKINNINGROVE - CHRIS KILLIP

I stumbled across this film on Twitter last week. I was at home ill in bed and normally I save links to watch at a later stage. However this one I watched all the way through to the end and then I watched it again.  The images have haunted me ever since.  Being familiar with the work of Chris Killip, I wanted to explore the work further as he is a photographer that I often recommend to students.In the 1980s, British photographer Chris Killip photographed an isolated fishing community at Skinningrove, North Yorkshire.  Skinningrove is nestled on the coast between Whitby and Redcar.  It is one of those places that unless you were heading for it, you would never find it.

Over a period of years Killip photographed the community however only four of the images from the series were ever published.  If you are familiar with Chris Killip’s work In Flagrante you may recognize them.

In the film Killip talks about the images from Skinningrove, his relationship with the community and the people that he photographed.  What we gain from the work is a wonderful sense of place and its inhabitants.  Look past the faded fashions of punk rock and the cars of the time, and the images become far more than a historical document.  Combined with the commentary from the film we have a sense of the personal history of the participants and the images are put in context.

In the 1980s, British photographer Chris Killip photographed an isolated fishing community at Skinningrove, North Yorkshire.  Skinningrove is nestled on the coast between Whitby and Redcar.  It is one of those places that unless you were heading for it, you would never find it.

Over a period of years Killip photographed the community however only four of the images from the series were ever published.  If you are familiar with Chris Killip’s work In Flagrante you may recognize them.

In the film Killip talks about the images from Skinningrove, his relationship with the community and the people that he photographed.  What we gain from the work is a wonderful sense of place and its inhabitants.  Look past the faded fashions of punk rock and the cars of the time, and the images become far more than a historical document.  Combined with the commentary from the film we have a sense of the personal history of the participants and the images are put in context.

This context is both geographical in that the lay of land is clearly shown; and personal as the stories of the people portrayed are told.  Families and friendships, rites of passage are all told through the series.  Photographed over a period of three years the work builds up a resonance that only this type of time period can give.  The inhabitants get to know the photographer and get used to him being around.  It is this working relationship between the subjects and the photographer that creates the ease within his images.

For my own interest I wanted to place Skinningrove, the North East is not an area that I am that familiar with.  I searched on Google maps, having found it, I felt further intrigued, zoomed in and picked up the yellow figure to use the Street View function to explore the village. Views from Killip’s images were quickly spotted, now in colour rather then black and white. Little had seemed to change; the boats were still kept on the beach giving evidence that fishing was still part of the way of life here.

On my way back through the village, a group of people was spied on Chapel Street, a road that leads from the boat sheds. Excitedly I zoomed in hoping to see if I could spot resemblances to those in Killip’s images but this time the faces are not visible due to the blurring of the Google privacy policy. I left Google Street View lacking any more knowledge then I had gained from the series of Killip’s.  I felt disappointed at not being able to see the faces of those pictured and it confirmed that this was the exact power of Killip’s images.  It is his engagement with those he photographs.  By using a large plate camera Killip was in no way discrete in taking his images.  His are not surreptitious photographs but blatant and obvious in having the consent of those he is photographing.

For students this type of engagement gained over such a long time frame is hard to factor in with the pace of assignment deadlines. However, there is much to be gained from having a default location or subject matter that you can use. You may photograph the same group of people or it could be a familiar location, the work could feature just abstract details but where each time you photograph different elements are revealed in the work.The key is a subject matter that you can return to time and time again. Having this default can be a backbone to your personal work, allowing you to try out new techniques, equipment or ideas.

Chris Killip currently has work on display at Tate Britain (until 28 September 2014).

Watch the film here

Image Credits: Chris Killip, Skinningrove; A film by Michael Almereyda

This post originally appeared in full on the WeAreOCA blog.

PLAN + RESEARCH + RESHOOT

Woody Allen is alleged to have said ‘Eighty percent of success is showing up‘, which is fine if you are talking about a movie set, but what about if you are studying photography by open learning? In the video above, my colleague Simon Barber talks about the way student Stephanie d’Hubert has very successfully researched what she wanted to create and the way it might look before picking up the camera. Fabulous work from a student now well into her degree studies. Stephanie has the skills to capture what she envisages, she is using research to broaden and test her creative ideas.

But supposing you are on your first course, how do you actually improve your photographic skills? We have all seen various articles in magazines full of top tips to improve your photography. They often cite the same list of compositional devices – use of leading lines, rule of thirds etc, that we read over and over again. If only it was that easy. Nevertheless there are things you can and should do.

Photography is a skill; don’t use your visual skills and you can see a slippage in the quality of images that you take. Just as a musician can lose their edge when playing an instrument if they leave it too long, a photographer can loose that ability to shoot ‘that’ moment. However where musicians will often play the same piece of music over and over again until they get the performance they are happy with, photographers rarely retake their images.

Think how many times you revisit the same location or use the same subject with the sole idea of improving an image you have already taken. You may take lots of images of the same thing at the same time, from varying angles and experimenting with different exposures or lenses. But this is not the same thing as revisiting and doing a new shoot with the sole premise on improving on images from a previous shoot.

One of my most often given pieces of advice to students is to review their shoots and to allow for a reshoot (or two, or three or even more). Too often a one off event such as a festival, race or fundraising day is selected to use as the subject. Although these events can provide ample opportunities for photographs they have a huge downside in that it is hard to review, revisit and revise your shots. If you are also trying to combine family activities with doing a shoot, the day becomes a juggling act between getting the shots and knowing that family members are getting bored, restless or into trouble!

So in order to get the very best from your images, choose subjects that can be revisited. Work close to home (or within the home), use areas that are easily accessible and can be visited at different times of day. There have been amazing assignment submissions from the most unlikely of locations – excellent photographs don’t have to be taken in glamorous places – in recent years I have seen car parks, local shopping arcades, an allotment and an abandoned car all used to take creative, imaginative and striking images.

One of the bonuses of being a student is that you can take the opportunity to rework any section of a course, prior to final submission. This is rarely taken advantage of. Too often the assignment or project is completed and ticked off the list as done. However reviewing your work and reshooting can prove a valuable learning process as well as improving the final selection of images that you submit.

So how to review, firstly don’t delete images off your camera (unless there is no other option to free up space on the memory card).

Sometimes images are obvious mistakes – camera pointing at the ground or lens cap on. Other ‘mistakes’ may be worthy of more careful consideration. Maybe the composition is excellent but it is the focus that is not quite right. It could be the lighting is good but the framing is a little off.

These are the images that you can often learn the most from – the almost ran’s. Produce contact sheets of thumbnail images. Then use these sheets to review your shoots. This doesn’t have to be lots of writing. Some arrows and bullet points next to the image will be perfectly adequate. However think about what is wrong with the image – why doesn’t it work? Is the reason technical and caused by a problem with focus, exposure, focal length, or lighting? Or is the issue more artistic and relating to framing, composition or angle of view?

This review process can seem a bit negative, but what it does do is highlight areas that you can work on. Take some time to reflect on your work. It can be that you are making similar mistakes time and time again but not noticing it.

The results of this review process seem to magically filter through the brain and the next time you shoot these mistakes don’t appear. Images that weren’t working before can now happen. (Unfortunately you then find that new mistakes are happening as you further experiment so the review becomes ongoing!)

So, that’s my advice , but I would be interested in knowing what you have found works for you.

This post originally appeared on WeAreOCA blog.

IF YOUR MEMORY IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH ...

I read with interest Eva Wiseman’s article in The Observer on Sunday 22 December 2013 titled “Our addiction to photographing our lives”.

There has been a long fascination with photography and its function in relation to memory.  In my academic writing I have investigated both the process of remembering and that of forgetting.

This article follows on the general theme of recent discussions around vernacular photography.  Many of these view our ‘addiction to photographing our lives’ in a negative way.  In this article Wiseman quotes the study of Dr Linda Henkel titled ‘Point-and-Shoot Memories: The Influence of Taking Photos on Memory for a Museum Tour” published in the journal of Psychological Science.

The study abstract informs us:

“Two studies examined whether photographing objects impacts what is remembered about them. Participants were led on a guided tour of an art museum and were directed to observe some objects and to photograph others. Results showed a photo-taking-impairment effect: If participants took a photo of each object as a whole, they remembered fewer objects and remembered fewer details about the objects and the objects’ locations in the museum than if they instead only observed the objects and did not photograph them.”

 It is from this passage that Wisemen takes her article.  Her argument is that the photograph stops us from remembering.  What Henkel calls the ‘photo-taking-impairment effect’. Reading this I am referred back to “Camera Lucida” where Barthes describes how the photograph

“… actually blocks the memory, quickly become a counter-memory.  One day, some friends were talking about their childhood memories: they had any number: but I, who had just been looking at my old photographs, had none left.”

The photograph has become cast as the evil memory blocker.  But before you throw your camera phone apps to the wall there is more to this.  Henkel’s study investigated further and this is not mentioned in Wiseman’s article.  The abstract continues:

“However, when participants zoomed in to photograph a specific part of the object, their subsequent recognition and detail memory was not impaired, and, in fact, memory for features that were not zoomed in on was just as strong as memory for features that were zoomed in on. This finding highlights key differences between people’s memory and the camera’s “memory” and suggests that the additional attentional and cognitive processes engaged by this focused activity can eliminate the photo-taking-impairment effect.”

This second part of the abstract describes  ‘zooming in’.  For us photographers there is hope for our memories, provided we work in the abstract.  As a photography teacher, I have always urged students to get closer to the subject.  The words of Robert Capa were written in permanent pen on the whiteboard in my classroom:

“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”

(Rather less frequently do I alert students to the fact the he lived and died by this maxim!)

So it seems that in order to preserve (and possibly enhance) the memory recall capability from your photographs you should explore the subject.

Get in close, abstract, distort, look up, look in, look across, look down and whatever you do, leave plenty for the imagination to play with.  What’s stopping you?

Postscript:

An article in The Guardian from 10^th December 2013 challenges the research further.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/reality-check/2013/dec/10/does-taking-photographs-ruin-your-memory

This post first appeared on WeAreOCA blog.

HEADLESS WOMEN

On Wednesday 27th November 2013, an image appeared in The New York Times that caused wide scale debate in the US.  However, on this side of the Atlantic there barely was a mummer.  In fact, if I hadn’t been forwarded the piece it would have passed me by unnoticed.

The front page on 27th November featured an image of a female torso.  The head is cut off – the frame cuts through her neck. She is placed at a slight angle with a garment covering part of her chest.  On one side her shoulder is exposed and the garment covers part of her breast with the top most part of the areola exposed.  Above this a scar, and above this, on the indentation of the shoulder, is a Star of David tattoo.

The story is about a push to screen for breast cancer in Israel.  A World Health Organisation report has identified Israel as having one of the highest rates of breast cancer in the world.  Jews from central and eastern European regions have a high risk of carrying genetic mutations for both breast and ovarian cancer.

The image gives us this message clearly:

Woman – shape of body

Jew – Star of David tattoo

Scar – medical procedure/injury

Breast – relating to this part of the body

Black – death

The image is stark.  It strikes you, the viewer boldly.  The tattoo, scar and partly exposed nipple vie for your attention.  There is no face, no eye contact with the subject; she is anonymous.  We are seeing an image that confronts us with the evidential scars of both the subject’s medical history and religion.

The image does have other connotations, it references on many levels, and it has struck a nerve in the USA.  For the readership of the New York Times, it caused a reaction strong enough for many to voice an opinion and to warrant a follow up piece in the paper, explaining more about the image and a comment from the subject of the photograph.

Many of the later comments defend the image choice but even within the New York Times newsroom the image provoked discussion on its use.

So what is it, in this image; that has provoked the reaction.

 For some the reaction could be around the tattoo, the use of religious iconography which some refer to in the comments as branding and a reminder of the atrocities of the Holocaust.    For others it could be the hint of the breast that is seen, but the photograph hardly seems to be pornographic.   Is it the scar itself, the cutting of tissue in the breast that causes the sensitivity.

Or is it caused by the lack of identity with the subject.  We can’t see her; there is no facial recognition.  Compare this to images of women that stand out as prolific photographs, three spring to mind straight away – Lange’s Migrant Mother, Nick Ut’s image of Kim Phuc from Vietnam and Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl.   All feature ‘ordinary’ women not celebrities, whose visual identities have become part of our history.   They all gaze out of the frame whether it is directly or indirectly and we can picture their faces clearly in our minds.

Another image appeared on the front page of the New York Times five days earlier and gives us further insight into the reaction.   This time the story is on the shooting of Michelle O’Connell.

Like the previous image, there is no face for us to identify her; the dismemberment is to save the viewers from the gore of her untimely death.    The frame again cuts through the neck as her body lays twisted on the ground.  There are guns by her side, providing a clue to how she died.  At the top of the frame, a bag, purse and shoes, which along with the carpet provide the evidence of a domestic setting.  To the right hand side a figure stands, the legs and shoes evident.

Again this image has drawn strong comment for its use on the front page.  For some of the commentators the two images, within the same week have proved too much.

In an image saturated world, where death and destruction are commonplace it would seem that it is headless women that cause consternation.

This post originally appeared on the WeAreOCA blog.

FREE FROM IMAGES ...

Just over a week ago, on 14 November 2013, the French newspaper

Libération was published without images.  The reason given was to show the importance of photography.  The front page stated:

“Libération vows an eternal gratitude to photography, whether produced by photojournalists, fashion photographers, portraitists, or conceptual artists. Our passion for photography has never been questioned – not because it’s used to beautify, shock or illustrate, but because photography takes the pulse of our world. To choose Paris Photo’s opening day to “install’ these white images highlights our commitment to photography. It’s not a wake, we’re not burying the photographic art [...] Instead we give photography the homage it deserves. Yet, no one can ignore the calamitous situation press photographers now find themselves in, especially war photographers who risk their lives while barely making a living. And for those whose work went on show today in the Grand Palais thanks to shrewd gallery owners, we might think that the odds are in their favour, but it’s all smoke and mirrors: the art photography market is currently confused.”

The issue was published with framed white squares where the images would have been.    At the back of the issue, the flat plan was shown for each page, this time only the images were shown and not the text.

This strategy raises many questions.  The responses on the BJP page concentrate on the death of photography and a debate on professionals vis à vis the equipment they use.

In our image saturated world it is hard to remember a time without photographs. The world of smartphones and tablets, of Twitter and Facebook, of Pinterest and Instagram means we are constantly visually connected to the world.  However as a photographer this is not what I am interested in.  There is so much going on with this particular issue of the newspaper and its relationship with photography that this post could take many different paths.

The path I wish to focus on is the empty squares.  These boxes filled with the white of the paper, framed by a thin black line where we have nothing to validate the text.  We use photographs consistently to back up anything that we read.  The cry across social media with every image posted – ‘Look here’s the photograph’  – as it provides proof of what is being said.    The post modernists could have a field day with this issue of Libération, with the margins and the edge of the frame providing ample slippage for meaning as it tumbles through the empty boxes.

On November 14, Libération took the bold step of making you read the paper.  No more quick flicking through, glancing at photographs, skim reading the captions until a story caught your eye enough to read the whole article.  In this issue, you either resorted to the scissors and cut out the images from the flat plans at the back and made your own version, or you had to read the text.  For the lack of photographs, says more about our engagement or rather lack of engagement with words, than our consumption of photographs.

It is not perhaps the death of professional photography that the commentators on the BJP article should be writing about, but rather the subjugation of the written word to the image.

Photographs used with the kind permission of BJP

This post first appeared on WeAreOCA blog.