Postcard from Brittany

En Vacances, en Bretagne, 2012

Farmers and those in the tourist trade will see it differently, but August is a quiet time of the year as many of us take our summer vacations. For me, the run up to the annual break is always quite manic; covering for people missing from work, making arrangements for the family and a host of things that need to be sorted before the holiday. This year was no exception added to which we had the unique opportunity of visiting and following the Olympics first hand, and I have had very little time for Joined Up Pictures and photography in general. So I’m rather disappointed that I’ve not been able, or had anything worthwhile, to post over the last three weeks. I’m hoping that I will be able to get back to posting a couple of times each week now that September is almost here.

For our break this year we visited Brittany in north west France, and had a very nice holiday,  thank you. I’m afraid that I have little to share photographically; other than these few observations – 

1. Never take anything bigger than a compact camera when doing any activity like walking or cycling. Carrying a camera bag and lenses is a pain, apart from when specifically taking pictures.
2. I see the world with shallow depth of field, especially when I am really looking.
3. I much prefer to photograph the world with shallow depth of field.
4. I just love that articulated LCD on the back of the G3. It's rare that I want to take a picture at eye level.
5. Why can’t we have bigger monitors on our camera – as standard or as a plug in extra? Most smartphones are much better in this respect than any cameras.
6. I really can’t focus that well any more on the LCD of my camera when wearing contact lenses – I must get my eyes checked.
7. Why can’t we have standardised batteries and chargers? We brought four cameras with us, with four different, incompatible chargers.
8. The greater the tourist attraction, the less I want to photograph it.
9. Everyone is a photographer these days.
10. There are a lot of people out there using very big, very expensive cameras. Bigger than I want, more expensive than I can afford, and that's OK.

Barton Farm Harvest Panograph

After the Harvest, Barton Farm, version 1

 
One of the joys of multiple-image photography is the many different methods that are available to the artist, from the brilliant picture-on-picture images of John Stezaker to the complex panographs of Mareen Fischinger and the still movies of Noel Myles shot from multiple viewpoints, often over extended periods. Although not essential, it is a good idea to have some idea of how the final image will be built and presented. The major decision is whether or not to create a regular or irregular grid of constituent cells.

For a long time now, I have been attracted to regular grid images, particularly Noel Myles images and Hockney’s early polaroid joiners. I’m interested in the way the grid encourages the eye to scan and rescan the image, building up a visual memory. Noel Myles’ term still movie is very appropriate; viewing a row or column of cells in a regular grid has the effect of viewing a strip of movie film. As Hockney said about his polaroid joiners “... you can go on and on looking at these pictures...” To my eyes, irregular grids do not have such a strong guidance or hold on the eye. The eye will pick out details, but seems to spend much of the time viewing the composite image as a whole. 

Last week when I was out photographing at Barton Farm, I took the opportunity to make both regular grid and irregular grid joiners. I posted the regular grid joiners from this session last week. As I said early, I wanted to concentrate on the details of harvest, primarily the small things left over after the field was cropped. I used the Olympus 45mm lens at shallow depth for most of these pictures so that I could control the primary focus of attention for each constituent cell. 

For the irregular grid, the intention was to have a selection of images that had plenty of overlap for compositing, and that the overall picture would be built up of cells with partial opacity to allow a seep through of information from cell to cell.  Because of this all shots were with the camera set on manual, with an exposure set so as to avoid overexposing highlights (ie the sky). From then, it was a question of taking as many pictures as quickly as possible before the light changed, slowly working along the line of uncut barley, moving a few inches at a time to get a stretched perspective and multiple viewpoints. Photographing up close and at shallow depth of field, I chose different points to focus on to give movement to the eye in the final composite. In all, I took 55 constituent cells, and it would not have harmed to have had more. Having grown up with precious film and manual winder levers, free and easy shooting does not come naturally.


I shot all the images at full resolution in RAW. I knew that this was more resolution than I need, but it is simple to make batch changes to resolution and other image settings in Lightroom, and shooting in RAW gives much more flexibility than shooting in jpeg. The actual composition of the completed image was done in Photoshop, with each cell on a separate layer of about 75% opacity, which allows precise alignment to adjacent cells.

It is not a quick process assembling the final image, which took around three hours in total. I need to get this photo printed reasonably large now so that I can get used to looking at it. My wife said that on screen, the image looks rather like an ordinary photo, and I have to agree. I hope that the printed image reads a bit better.

Back to Joined Up Pictures

After the Harvest, Barton Farm, version 2.3

It has been some while since I last published any joiners. The problem, as ever, is one of time. To take the photos for a joiner can take a good hour or so, and the managing, editing and composing of the completed image can take an hour or two further. I have a couple of picture sets that have been waiting to be assembled since January. After a tiring day at work I rarely have inclination to spend another couple of hours in front of a computer monitor, and so this work remains unfinished.

I have taken this week off work and had some time to get out and back to what I enjoy doing. A few days ago I cycled over to nearby Barton Farm to take some specifically to make joiner. For some while now I have wanted to make a joiner about the harvest. The wet weather this summer has meant that it has been delayed by some three or four weeks compared to normal years. This gave me some hope that I could photograph a full field, but as I rode up the farm track a tractor and trailer came charging towards me and I know that I was too late. Never mind; it was a lovely warm evening and so time to change plan and see what I could make of the cropped field.

In these pictures I initially wanted to show a few remaining stalks of barley and some wild flowers in a simple still movie type grid, and shot accordingly. All of the constituent cells were taken on my Olympus 45/f1.8 micro fourth thirds lens, at pretty much full aperture. For me, joiners are all about the experience of looking, the sensation of seeing individual components that make up the picture. It seems perfectly natural for some of this to be in focus and other parts not when viewing and this is why I want to photograph with shallow depth of field to reproduce this effect. 

After the Harvest, Barton Farm, version 2.1

When it came to editing, the transition from remaining plants and cropped stalks looked too severe, so I think the first picture presented here probably works the best. The second and third pictures are included to give you some idea of how the editing process works. These joiners were edited and composited in Lightroom4, which is an efficient and simple way to build a regular joiner, even if it does have some deficiencies. More about that technique in a future post.

After the Harvest, Barton Farm, version 2.2

It felt good to be out making pictures again, and quickly turning them into finished edits. There has been too much thinking, reading and organising around photography recently, and not enough doing. It’s the pictures that matter.

An Evening by the Water

Getting ready to sail, River Itchen, 2012

I must admit that I love to go out taking pictures by the water’s edge. The light always feels more luminous and there is plenty to photograph. Unusual objects, reflections, colours, textures, patinas; they are all there to be discovered.

Sail reflections, River Itchen, 2012

Last night we went down to the River Itchen in Southampton to take my son dinghy sailing. It was a beautiful, bright warm evening. While he was out doing some gentle racing in the light breeze we had time to go for a stroll, enjoy a beer, and take a few pictures.

Jetty detail, Ocean Village, Southampton, 2012

Unusually these days, my camera last night was my old Lumix LX3, which gets little use since I got the G3. While I love the flexibility of the wideangle zoom lens and the non-cropping multiple aspect ratios of this camera, I really missed the multi-angle viewfinder, speed of operation and the wide aperture lenses of the G3. If only I could find a suitable pouch for the G3 and a spare lens, rather than having to sling a camera bag over my shoulder. Does anyone have a recommendation?

Twyford Allotments



Twyford Allotments – Grass & Wheelbarrow



Twyford is not the prettiest village in Hampshire. With a fairly busy A road running through its heart and the rumble of the M3 motorway within earshot, it’s never as peaceful as one might hope. Despite this, it is a good hub for many in our family. My son plays cricket for the village team, my daughter has friends in the village and my wife often start or finishes cross-country runs from the rather nice Bean Below café. It was for this reason that I was there yesterday morning, with camera bag in hand, so that after the drop off I could pop over to the village’s allotments. 



Twyford Allotments – Leaky Tap, 2012

Sitting on the edge of the cricket pitch, I had often thought that I should return one morning to photograph this small plot of horticulture. I had planned yesterday that I would photograph the elements for a large joiner of the allotments, but when there I realised that I would not be able to adequately capture the depth of the area, so instead concentrated on small details. I still feel that there is an opportunity to create a joiner here, but I have yet to come up with a approach that does not require me to balance precariously on a step ladder.



Twyford Allotments – Twigs



Fruit picking

Albane picking raspberries

Sunday gave us a respite from the rain and wind. So despite lowering clouds, we set off to pick raspberries and tayberries from our local PYO, Ganger Farm.

I had a lot of fun experimenting with my relatively new Olympus 45/f1.8 lens. As my daughter said, ‘this takes really brilliant portraits, Dad!’ Indeed it does; it is a shame I have to hold the camera and press the button.

Deutsche Börse Prize 2012 - the exhibition

You would think a visit to the exhibition of the finalists the biggest photo prize in biggest dedicated photo gallery in the capital would be impressive? Sadly not. Thought provoking? In the wrong way I’m afraid.

As I wrote on Friday, I was looking forward to seeing Rinko Kawauchi’s work in the flesh. The prints presented did look better than in her book Illuminance, but as with the book, it was a strange selection of prints, hung with no obvious narrative or sequence. The prints were shown in a wide variety of sizes, again seeming to lack any real logic about the choice of size. For example, one section of wall contained three huge square prints, about three to four feet wide. One was a picture of a tiny frog resting on a hand. Why so big? The image was over-blown, and looked soft at normal viewing distances. It is an intimate image, and works much better in the intimacy of a book. 

On the other walls of the fifth floor gallery were the pictures of Agbogbloshie, an electrical dump in Ghana, recorded by Pieter Hugo. Set against the hellish, smoking wasteland, Hugo’s pictures painted a formal portrait of the inhabitants, human and animal. Some of the pictures were huge, and presented to an exemplary standard. To my eye, the pictures suffered from this formal distancing. They had a disaster chic that one might expect from a fashion magazine. But this stand-offishness, aloofness, is what big money competitions and galleries seem to expect these days. I wonder what Eugene Smith would have made of this location and story?  

Where are the pictures? Christopher Williams' empty display

Down one floor to the next gallery. Our first reaction was ‘Where are the pictures?’ In the interests of fairness, I presume, the Photographers Gallery had given each artist the same amount of wall space. Christopher Williams chose to display only three pictures and left acres of unused space. Two of these were large format images of photographic electrical equipment, shot in the manner of competent but dull trade advertisements. The other was a dull monochrome picture of a hay bale; Boring boring boring. I don’t really care if there was a concept behind these pictures; you could not get any sense of emotion or intellect from this ridiculous display.

Intellect and mischievousness were on display on the other walls of the fourth floor. John Stezaker is not a photographer, but takes existing photographs and modifies them in some way. His best work involves the overlay of usually only two images to create startling new composites. In his masks series he places old scenic postcards the faces of press release portraits, skilfully matching line and texture from both images. In his marriage series he boldly cuts two filmstar portraits creating new faces that are at the same time believable and unbelievable. This work is so clever, fresh and unique that I wanted to see more. All we got were a measly selection of four of these pictures. The vast majority of his display was a series, 3rd Person Archive, of small crops of old monochrome images. Smaller than postage stamps, they are, in effect, miniature telephoto pictures that have no engagement from the subject or the original photographer, and are at best, only mildly interesting. Stezaker was nominated for Deutsche Börse on the basis of last year’s exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, the catalogue of which I bought a copy of at the gallery bookshop. It is wonderful, and the DB exhibition is not representative of the work shown there.

I felt quite dejected when I left the Photographers Gallery. The best pictures, those of Stezakers, were not adequately represented. Kawauchi, my favourite photographer there, had not displayed her best work. Hugo’s pictures were steady but somewhat derivative and Williams’ stuff was quite frankly taking the Mickey. The gallery had not put on a good show. If this represents the best in contemporary photography then these are bad times for our art and craft.

The exhibition of the finalists in the 2012 Deutsche Börse Prize runs from 13^th July to 9^th September at the Photographers Gallery. At least it won’t cost you anything to visit.

Worth A Look: Rinko Kawauchi

The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize is perhaps the most prestigious art photography award in the UK. Today the newly refurbished Photographers Gallery hosts an exhibition of the four finalists; Pieter Hugo, Rinko Kawauchi, John Stezaker and Christopher Williams. I must admit that I've rather lost interest in most of these big-ticket photo prizes over the years. Curators and judging panels seem to value the conceptual over the visual in most of these events and most of the victors' work is usually pretty dull & dour. I'm sure that they talk a good story...


This year's prize is a bit more interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibition this weekend; I'll post my thoughts about the exhibition next week. I think I'm going to like John Stezakers juxtaposed torn postcards and found filmstar pictures (not actually his photography), and I'm very keen to see the work of Rinko Kawauchi, whose work I have been interested in for the past couple of years.

I first came across Rinko Kawauchi's work from a blog article by Martin Parr on photographic genres. She was cited by Parr as example of the poetic approach to photography and fits this description well. Her work examines the incidental, the everyday, the intimate and personal details. Throughout her work there are references to birth & death, and fragility and impermanence. 

The work that was considered for this year’s Deutsche Börse is Illuminance published by Aperture, and is her first book to be widely available in the west. I bought a copy prior to her nomination for the DB, after researching her work on the web. The two best places to see her work online is at FOIL and at her own recently launched website. Her work falls into a particular genre or ethic of Japanese photography, of personal, intimate and often of near-field pictures, square and in colour. This style has a natural resonance for me. Whereas I am comfortable working digitally, Kawauchi and her peers often work with old medium format film cameras, the favoured instruments being TLR Rolleiflexes.

I really liked most of her images that I found on the web, and a good deal of what I found in Illuminance. Many of the pictures do indeed show Illuminance; bright contre-jour images, light and airy pictures with a lot of sky, bright lights, myriad rainbows scintillate out of water droplets. There are pictures that are very high key, almost on the point of being over-lit or over exposed. As a counterpoint there are some very dark, dense images such as this shoreline at dusk that provide a more sombre balance. 

However, I have to admit that I still feel some disappointment with Illuminance. For a start, the narrative of the book does not seem to hang together. There are pictures that don't fit with the general concept of the book; pictures of elderly tourists walking around a rock in Japan for instance. There are often pictures of the same subject matter repeated - soap bubbles, road kill, a lame mural, that occur without enhancing or reinforcing the sequence of photos. And there are some pictures that just don't seem very good.

As a physical object, the book production too is something of a curate’s egg. Colour prints are tipped in on both the front and back covers, which are finished in a rather nice muted blue canvas. The title however is embossed in sparkly rainbow metallic, which looks more suitable for a schoolgirl’s annual. 

The book is put together in what is described as a 'Japanese Binding'. What results is something akin to a concertina book, with all the pages bonded to a paper spine, and the whole block bonded to the back cover of the book.

The effect is rather peculiar; pages curl to a tubular 'S' shape when the book is opened.

Even stranger is the choice of paper. Creamy in colour, it has a very matt finish and rough tooth, which has the effect of sucking all the contrast and density out of the images. This sort of surface might work well with gritty monochrome, but seems completely inappropriate for the delicate high contrast colour images. The printing does seems to lack a certain Illuminance... In comparison, Ernst Haas' ColorCorrection, published by Steidl, has images that just jump off the page. Steidl are the gold standard for printing these days, I guess. 

Illuminance can hardly be considered as Kawauchi's magnum opus, and for this reason seems a strange nomination for this year's Deutsche Börse - nominations are for books or previous exhibition. Nevertheless, I look forward to seeing actual photographs in the flesh and I hope that they will have rather more illuminance than the book does.

The newly reopened Photographers' Gallery is exhibiting work from the four finalists in the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012, 13 July - 9 September 2012. The winner will be announced September 3rd.

Discarded on the Beach

Pall Mall, West Wittering 2011

On hot sultry days in high summer, after school and work, we would often take off to the beach at West Wittering. Not that we have had the opportunity this year.

Worm Cast, West Wittering 2011

These two pictures were taken last year within feet of each other; a small worm cast and an off cast from man. Both to be washed away on the next rising tide.

Both pictures taken on an LX3 campact camera.

Summer Low Revisited

I don’t want to go on about the weather, really. But the weather this summer, well really…

 

When you live in Britain, you have just got to get used to having weather, changeable and frequent. We don’t have seasons long climate, the weather is not predictable and that generally makes for a green and pleasant land. I would much rather have the variations in the weather rather than long periods of sameness. But this summer is just too much; too much rain, too much grey skies; too much for most people. The summer solstice slipped past unnoticed three weeks ago. Instead of going out enjoying balmy evenings on walks or bike rides, most of us have been hunkered down inside our houses behaving as though it was winter. People in the office look white, many are working overtime because there is not much to do in the evening. Everyone looks in need of a break.

The last summer to be this consistently wet, grey and dismal was that of 2007. During those damp dark months I made a small series of images that I exhibited under the project name of Summer Low. All of the pictures taken at that time were made using a Nikon DSLR, often with a small amount of fill-in flash, to provide a small spark of illumination to an otherwise drab scene.  I need to brush up this technique with my G3, it might be my only chance to take pictures over the next few weeks. I have had precious little opportunity to get out and produce new work this summer, which is another reason to feel frustrated by the weather.

Mottisfont in Monochrome

Pip’s Hair

This weekend we took advantage of the fine weather and a full retinue of family members to visit the rather wonderful grounds of Mottisfont Abbey, situated on the river Test. Now owned by the National Trust, the gardens are particularly attractive at this time of year, and the walled rose gardens are full of beautiful blooms, and full too of visitors. A good proportion of these too were sporting serious camera gear.

Geometric Hedge

Although I like visiting places like Mottisfont, I find it quite hard to take pictures that excite or interest me. It is just too easy to make another cliché, and the world scarcely needs more ordinary flower pictures. I surprised even myself when I loaded the weekend’s pictures into Lightroom last night. There were a lot of pictures of the family, a few statues found in the garden, but not a single photo of a rose. And despite the abundance of colour in the gardens, the two most satisfying pictures ended up working better in monochrome.

On West Wittering Beach

On West Wittering Beach, 2006

Don’t they grow up fast? This picture stopped me when I saw it this morning. It was taken six years ago and the children have all grown up so much in that time.

This evening started off warm and bright and put me in mind of the occasional trips we used to make to the beach after school and work on summer evenings. My wife would bring the children down to West Wittering beach where we would rendezvous for a picnic. As soon as the food was finished or they become impatient the kids would rush down to the water for a swim and a splash.  The beach is very shallow at Wittering and on days when the tide was out this could take some time.

On this particular evening we had taken down some plastic rings for the kids to play on. I tried to get some shots of them in the water but it was difficult to get a good composition from the shore with the children playing out on the water. I knew my best chance for a picture would come when they came back in after their swim, but I would have to make sure they would all be together so that I could get a tight composition. As they came out of the water I asked them to gather together and then to race back to Mummy. I can’t remember what the prize was, but they shot off. I had one chance, when they were together and running animatedly. Fortunately I caught the moment, and made a memory.

Worth a Look: Mareen Fischinger

Panographie Times Square © Mareen Fischinger

One of the great things about the internet is the way you can come across a new page and then discover something new, fresh and exciting. This happened the other day when I read a rather nice article about photocollages over on DPreview by staff writer Barney Britton, which laid out an easy to follow method for building photocollages in Photoshop, along with some good examples. One of the bad things about the internet is the way that some people will post negative and even rude comments about a subject that they have no knowledge of, and Mr Britton got some of those (why?...).
 

Panografie Notre Dame © Mareen Fischinger

The exciting thing on this page, buried in the comments, was a recommendation of Mareen Fischinger’s Panography pictures. And what pictures they are; energetic, lively and exciting images of mostly communal urban spaces. Familiar landmarks look as though they are dancing.

Panographie Landschaftspark © Mareen Fischinger

Mareen Fischinger is a professional photographer from Cologne, and the panographs she has created are her personal project. Unlike the joiners of David Hockney and Noel Myles, her pictures are always based from one viewpoint, but of course, capturing many moments in time. She talks about how she likes to capture the changes in the scene, and this results in the lively, busy feel to many of her pictures.

Panographie Arc de Triomphe © Mareen Fischinger

Although shot from a single view point to give a very wide angle of view, she subverts the big picture by slightly altering the arrangement of the constituent images. Combined with arbitrary angles of each individual frame, the resultant complete panograph looks as though a pile of transparencies have been thrown onto a lightbox and magically rearranged themselves. Fischinger presents iconic, familiar places with a fresh perspective, such as the Arc de Triomphe above and the Beauborg below.

Panografie Centre Pompidou © Mareen Fischinger

This fairground scene crackles with energy and movement.

Panografie Kirmes © Mareen Fischinger

Mareen Fischinger makes no secret of her technique, and has generously shared her working method in an article on Photojojo. But technique alone won't make a picture; a vision is required. To find out more, hear Fischinger talk about her interests, motivations and approach to panographies in this neat little video.

»Panography« from Mareen Fischinger on Vimeo.

Worth A Look: Vivian Maier

I have a fairly catholic taste in photography, and have collected books that cover many genres. In the past, I've always found it difficult to go into a bookshop with a good photographic section and not come out with a purchase. I hope it’s not a case of me getting old and set in my ways, but in recent years the number of books that have really appealed to me seem to be getting a lot thinner on the ground. There seems to be a lot of really dour, dull books out there by contemporary photographers, and a large number of re-hashed, re-assembled compilations of the very famous names, who are already well enough represented in my library. And so recently I found myself in the bookshop of the Tate Modern, looking for new titles to excite me. The only book, by some distance, was the really quite excellent Vivian Maier Street Photographer.

Vivian Maier Street Photographer by John Maloof

For those of you who don't know the story, Vivian Maier spent most of her adult lifetime working as a nanny in New York and Chicago. She lived alone, never married, but she had one passion, and that was taking photographs. It would seem that she was not one for putting herself or her work forward, and her pictures were never seen outside of her meagre home. Her work was not even forgotten, it was simply unknown, and would have remained that way if a Chicago historian, John Maloof had not purchased a major part of her archive, now around 100,000 negatives, from a storage container sale. Fortunately, Maloof realised that he had stumbled across something extraordinary and in the four years since the discovery has responded to circumstances and become the curator of the Vivian Maier archive.

Sept. 29, 1959, Esther St., New York, NY by Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier Street Photographer is Maloof's first book to emerge from the legacy of pictures, and no doubt more will come as the archive is explored and understood. The images presented are wonderful. Shot square format on her Rolleiflex, she has captured street scenes of New York and Chicago, beautifully composed, timed and exposed. It is interesting how a loner or maverick, as Maier apparently was, felt comfortable in taking pictures of people at close quarters. The pictures speak of a curiosity and enthusiasm of life.

Jan 26, 1955, Uptown West, New York, NY by Vivian Maier

Her work invites comparisons: pictures of down and outs hint of the work to come from Diane Arbus, some street place shots remind one of Walker Evans, self-portraits seem to herald Lee Freidlander’s later images. For me, these comparisons ask some awkward questions about one’s own involvement and relationship with art. Maier’s pictures were effectively unseen before Maloof’s discovery. They had no influence on any other photographer and did not become milestones in the development of the medium. She was undoubtedly a skilled photographer and had some style of her own, her work as good as many of her contemporaries, but she does not really fit into any history of photography. She may yet influence later generations, but she had no impact on her contemporaries. This is where many artists find themselves, unable or unwilling to get the publicity to bring their work to a large audience. Given different circumstances, it could have been Vivian Maier who was held up as a leading artist in post-war American photography.

January, 1953, New York, NY by Vivian Maier

The book is well designed, and pictures are printed very nicely in a warm black that suits the images well, and the paper is an opaque clean white with a good weight and sheen. At 128 pages long it is a good read and a book that I keep returning to. I have seen some rather critical comments about the print quality and book design on the web. Let me assure you that book design is very good, and the printing is excellent too. I have no complaints at all with my copy, which is a fourth printing.  

One thing the book does lack is a good history of Vivian Maier, but this is an understandable omission as it is still early days in piecing together an accurate record of Maier’s life. A current history can be found at the Vivian Maier website, and I recommend a visit. I think this book will appeal to many photographers, and  John Maloof should be applauded for the excellent job he has done in bringing Maier’s images to the public’s attention.

Vivian Maier Street Photographer is published by Powerhouse Books. 

Flaming June

Summer Low – Rain Tree © Graham Dew 2007

We English do rather like to talk about the weather and go on about the rain. Here we are in glorious June, when it should all be tennis strawberries and long balmy evenings. Instead, it’s been raining for weeks now, it's cold and dark, and last week’s jubilee and half term holiday have been a complete washout. Is it too much to hope for some sunshine?

Return to Normality

Policemen, Pera Hera Festival, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Photo taken with Nikon 35mm/f1.8 DX standard lens. © Graham Dew 2010

In 2010 we went on holiday to Sri Lanka, and one of the highlights of the trip was the Pera-Hera festival in Kandy. This is a spectacular parade of musicians, dancers & painted & bejewelled elephants. Held at night, I knew I would need to use a flash to illuminate the procession, as I did not expect any substantial spotlighting to be in place. I wanted to use fill-flash, relying on the small amount of light from burning torches and decorative electric lighting to provide the ambient lighting. The only sensible option seemed was to use a large aperture lens which would allow me to make the most of the limited amount of lighting available from my flash and from background lighting. And so I treated myself (any spending on photo gear is a rare treat) to a new Nikkor 35mm/f1.8 DX lens. This lens is the DX sensor equivalent to the standard 50mm lens in 35mm film terms.

Torch Bearer, Pera Hera Festival, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Photo taken with Nikon 35mm/f1.8 DX standard lens. © Graham Dew 2010

My world of photography began back in the early 80’s when I bought my first SLR, an Olympus OM10. As was the way in those days, if a camera came with a kit lens, it would be a 50mm, not the ubiquitous zoom that we get bundled with our cameras today. From the early Leicas in the 1920s onwards, the 50mm was standard issue on 35mm cameras. It was an obvious choice. The fifty was the standard lens, the one manufactured in the millions, and as a consequence was usually the cheapest lens available. It was light, often the smallest lens made by the manufacturer. It was bright, and usually had a maximum aperture of f/1.8. It was very well corrected, because the focal length is easier to design and build than wide-angles below it in focal length and telephotos above. The large aperture combined with the focal length made for a lens that was very easy to focus (manual in those days), and gave the best illumination of the ground glass viewing screens. 

It was interesting to see how people used the 50mm focal length. It is difficult to do exact comparisons between the eye and camera lens, but the view through a 50mm lens corresponds closely with that of the eye – with practice you could keep both eyes open with one eye to the viewfinder and one eye to the surrounding environment. 

Street View, Morocco. Photo taken with Nikon 50mm/f1.4 AIS standard lens. © Graham Dew 1991

This ‘normality’ of field of view divides opinions about the standard lens. For many people the normal, undistorted, unstretched, uncompressed view gave a transparency to the lens that suited their subject; people, things, the near distance. Well suited to capturing people in their surroundings, it was the lens of choice for environmental portraiture, and for documentary workers too. Cartier–Bresson claimed to use this lens all the time, and it is clear from looking at the work of many of the greats of photography that the standard lens was used to make the majority of world’s most famous images.

For almost two decades I took all my photos on a Nikon FM2, with a small collection of lenses – a 28, 85 and 50mm lens. All of these lenses are encompassed by my modern 14-42mm Lumix. In those film days, I reckon about 80% of my pictures were taken on the 50, 15% on the 28 and the remaining 5% on the 85mm. However, if my usage is anything to go by, the modern zoom spends most of its time at either end of the focal range, and very little time in the middle. I guess that I am looking for extremes of viewpoint, and that the natural look of 50mm easily gets overlooked. However, the standard lens does offer an extreme in use – that of wide aperture, and in consequence, shallow depth of field. 

Rogue Oats, Barton Farm, Winchester. Photo taken with Nikon 35mm/f1.8 DX standard lens. © Graham Dew 2010

Depth of field is a key intrinsic characteristic of photographs. Although painters and illustrators can mimic soft-focus, it is not inherent to their process. In lens based photography there is an element of focus depth in every image made. Used carefully, shallow depth of field can guide the viewer around the picture, change the balance of importance of the picture, and simplify the background to suggest rather than describe.

Whilst shallow depth of field can be a very appealing tool, its biggest drawback is the accuracy of focus needed to get the correct elements sharp. In the old film based days I would rarely use my 50mm at f1.4 (or my 85mm at f2 for that matter) because focussing had to be so precise that inevitably my camera or the subject moved before the shutter was released and the picture taken. Any subject not directly in the centre of the image could not be focussed really accurately – focus and recompose would inevitably give errors for close object. These days auto-focus has moved on tremendously, and modern mirrorless cameras allow accurate focussing anywhere in the image. Moreover, face recognition AF is a technology that really works, quickly and accurately focussing on eyes whilst you can concentrate on composition. Nowadays wide aperture lenses can be used fully open with confidence.

Seaweed, Sennen Beach, Cornwall Photo taken with Panasonic Lumix 20mm/f1.7 standard lens. © Graham Dew 2012

When I changed my camera system from Nikon DSLR to micro four thirds, along with the Lumix G3 and kit zoom I bought the 20mm f1.7 Lumix prime lens. Equivalent to a 40mm lens in 35mm film terms, this has all the benefits of the standard lens with a slightly wider field of view, which suits me even better than a ‘50’. It is a great lens for photographing things, a lens to use for stuff that is near, and can separate out the subject from the clutter. The camera feels very small, almost pocketable and very well balanced with this diminutive lens, making it a joy to use. I get the feeling that it may even become my normal lens.

Gawd Bless Yer Ma'am!

Can you see Anything?

I’m too much of a liberal to be a monarchist but I’m grateful for an extra day off work this week, and in general think the Queen has done a reasonable job of the rather peculiar role that she was born to. Can you imagine who might have been able to be President in her place? Without patronage from the political parties or from the landed classes? Without corruption or self-interest? Answers on a postcard please…

So as one of her majesty’s loyal subjects I travelled to London on Sunday to watch the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant, where over 1000 boats sailed down the River Thames to accompany the Queen to celebrate her 60 year reign. The last monarch to celebrate such a lengthy reign was Queen Victoria 115 years ago, and it is plausible that we may have to wait as long again until the next diamond jubilee. It’s a shame there was not a visitor guide for this year’s flotilla, so I have prepared a handy cut-out and keep guide for the next one, perhaps in 2127.

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A Visitors Guide to the 2127 Jubilee River Pageant

Getting There

In 2012 we used a train to get to London. I guess in 2127 you will also be using trains as the last drops of petrol will have long been wrung out of the planet and even the rich will not be using cars. Our 09:23 train had its last spare seats filled at Winchester, and many had to teeter and sway for the over an hour. I guess the situation will change by 2127 and there will be no seats at all on standard class tickets, because at the moment I can’t see any increase in the size or frequency of trains. First class will no doubt be wonderfully sumptuous, and affordable by only those sorts who these days use Range Rovers and Mercedes as their commute-to-the-station runabouts. Everyone else will get the opportunity to feel dirty and poor as they are beaten and squeezed, bullet train fashion, into standard class.

Finding a Spot to Stand

Yes, But Where is the River?

If you caught the 09:23 in 2012 you were already an hour late to catch the last free spaces on the walls of the Thames. In 2127 you will have turn up the day before to grab a spot, but it is likely that by then all public spaces will have been sold off to corporate sponsors, as were many of the bridges this year. True, access to these bridges was also granted to invitees of the riparian boroughs, which is much the same but is funded by the public purse. This year there were only three bridges that could be crossed on foot, once you had your bags checked. Judging by the queues these must have been manned by the UK Border Agency practising congestion tactics for this year’s Olympics. Visitors from Winchester are advised that if you want to view the pageant from the North Bank in 2127 then please travel via Oxford to get to a suitable railway terminus. Let’s face it, there’s no point trying to watch the river pageant from the South Bank unless you are right up by the wall. Better to be on the North Bank where the elevations are higher and you can get longer sightlines around the curve of the river.

Meeting Friends

If you would like to meet up with friends and family to view the event please first invite them to your home and travel with them. Any movement along the South Bank was cleverly designed to eject you from the riverside into a confusing maze of roads in the surrounding area, only to be denied access back to where you started. We spent over an hour trying to get from the Tate Modern to meet friends at London Bridge only to end up back at the Tate and even further from the river wall. Our daughter, down from university for the weekend, nearly didn’t complete her rendezvous. One of the great innovations in policing in recent years has been kettling, a method by which the police help ordinary people to make new friends if they share a common interest, such as free movement about the city to visit their families, a situation in which my daughter found herself. It’s a bit like being friended on Facebook, except that you are stuck behind metal barricades and can’t get unkettled. Unless you have a mother who by shear persuasive force can wear down unflappable stone-faced policemen until they become meek little lambs and let you through.

You will naturally meet a lot of new friends at an event like this, especially if you have a marginally better vantage point than they do. People will naturally sidle up to you, become part of your personal space and assume that you are only there to reserve a position for them. It’s all very friendly.

British Rain Needs a British Brolly

Watching the Event 

If you are more than four deep from the wall you won’t be able to see anything, so you need to get extra height. People were, in 2012, standing on bins, benches and dangerously narrow bollards. Flimsy trees and appropriated chairs and tables were pressed into action. It was as though the thought of a thousand small boats had induced some sort of warped Dunkirk spirit and plucky subjects found novel and potentially lethal ways of watching the spectacle.

Is the Queen on that Boat?

We spent about four hours perched on the plinth of an ugly fibreglass anatomical statue outside the Tate. Although far back, the height of the plinth and the slight slope up to the Tate gave us a clear view of the surface of the river. Well, it did when we got there. By the time the flotilla passed us the tide had gone out and the level in the river dropped by two or three meters. Which meant that we saw two-tenths of bugger all. Thank god the Queen was in a tall barge, and we got to see her. As far as we were concerned the flotilla was only made up of six boats. We were amazed to see so many craft in the television news reports later that evening. It looked like a different event.  My advice to spectators in 2127 is to do what the tradesmen did this year; turn up with step ladders and decorator’s platform and get one up on your fellow visitor. Or take along a mini scaffolding set with you. Fortunately, by 2127 global warming will provide you with an extra couple of meters of sea level which should help a little.

Getting Home

Seeing Getting There (above) only in reverse, plus being very cold, very tired, and very wet.

Convalescing

Convalescence is a frustrating, limbo period full of thwarted aspirations and inability to complete even simple tasks. It is a time of contradictory physical and emotional reactions. Physically you feel that you should be able to more than you can. Small tasks are much harder and take much longer than you expect, others just have to join the ever growing list of postponed jobs. Emotionally, you feel you should be grateful for getting past the worst, but actually you feel frustrated about the slow rate of progress, and at the same feel guilty that you know that there are those who have to cope with much more intractable problems.

I’ve spent the last week recovering from a biopsy which has taken a sample of muscle tissue from my right thigh. When this was first proposed I thought that it would only entail a fairly thick needle puncturing my muscle. I expected a bit of bruising and stiffness for a couple of days, but nothing really to get in my way.  What actually was required was a 60mm incision at the top of my leg, which has left me fairly well immobilised for the past week. Yes, this was small beer, non-traumatic, elective surgery and I’m not complaining. But the disjuncture between my wishes and my capabilities is still frustrating.

Fortunately I’m past the worst of it now, and I’m determined to go out and start enjoying the summer weather as soon as I can. And maybe do some of those delayed tasks…

taking the biscuit? not really...

Coffee Tables and Prayer Books

If you have a love of photography then it is inevitable that you will have a love of photobooks. I’m not an avid collector by any means but over the last few months I thought that it was time that should corral all my books into one place. So I set off to that Nordic temple of wood, IKEA, and bought myself a new bookshelf to house my collection from the last three decades. I divested all the other bookshelves in the house of their photographic volumes and opened long sealed packing boxes to be reacquainted with half remembered books. By the time I had finished I had filled the new shelves to bursting point, had a pile of books looking for a home and still had nowhere to put all my art books, self-made photo books and technique books. Another trip, another meal of meatballs and cranberry sauce, and now I am sorted. 

Off to buy a book case - IKEA Southampton

If I were a collector of Penguin paperbacks or first edition hardback novels, then I could have laid out my shelves evenly but my collection of photobooks has almost every size imaginable. Despite my dedicated bookshelves, I still have some books that are so large that they have to lie on their rear face and still overhang the shelf. The biggest of these is Chronologies by Richard Misrach. Several years ago I was fortunate enough to meet John Blakemore at a workshop and, he suggested that I might like to look at Richard Misrach’s The Sky Book. I nearly ordered a copy from Amazon, but I prevaricated and by the time I had made my mind up to buy the book it had gone out of print and prices were already out of sight for me. So when Chronologies was published a couple of years later I jumped at the chance to purchase this ‘greatest hits’ volume. I failed to take notice of the book dimensions when ordering and was staggered by the size and weight of the lump delivered to the door. At 39 x 31.4 x 3.4 cm and 3.7 kg it is a seriously oversized tome. 

Chronologies by Richard Misrach

The size is just the first hurdle with book. To read the book you have to find a table and chair, and then turn the book so the spine is on the top. Chronologies is printed portrait format but the images are laid out in landscape. This means that the table has to be deep; the book has to be flat to stop the early pages from flipping back on you. All of which means you have to stand up to look at the pictures. In fact the whole book id poorly designed. The book title ‘Chronologies’ gives a disguised warning – all the images are presented in chronological order, not in any relational order, so the book lacks any structure. Projects or groupings stop and restart at various parts of the book. And finally, each photo is printed with a quarter inch margin on the page, so the book has no rhythm either. The quality of the printing is undeniably excellent, but you get the feeling that you are flicking though a pile of bound-together proof prints.

Wider than a coffee table

Misrach is a brilliant photographer and his pictures are well worth spending time with. But this book is so unsatisfying physically that it rarely comes of its inadequate shelf. Perhaps I should return to IKEA, buy a set of table legs and convert the book into a coffee table.

So, if big is bad, then is small beautiful? Again, you can go too far. The smallest book in my collection is Influences by Brian Griffin. This is a beautiful object, measuring a diminutive 14.5 x 11 x 1.5 cm. From its hand tooled calfskin cover, gilt edged pages and velvet lined slip case, it feels more like a prayer book than a photography portfolio. Griffin’s portraits are graphically strong. They need to be, as each image is tiny - no larger than 6 x 6 cm. And therein lies the rub; the pictures are really too small, and too few, to warrant more than a few minutes with this book.

Influences by Brian Griffin

Small and beautifully formed

So what is the ideal size of photobook? For me, this is largely determined by where I wish to use the book, and that is determined by when I get some free time. So that means on the train and in bed. In those places, even A4 is too large. A5 is fine, but octavo (9” X 6”) is probably optimal, which happens to be the standard size of a hardback novel. I have very few photobooks that are near this size. I have one book that is very close to this size. Deus ex Machina is an anthology of just about all of Ralph Gibson’s projects up to about 2000. Printed as ‘block’ style book that the publisher Taschen has a penchant, it has an amazing 768 pages. Unfortunately it is a paperback and being so thick it feels like a heavy miniature accordion in your hands – you can never look at the pages laid flat.

Thick and Chunky - Deus Ex Machina by Ralph Gibson

Of all the books I own, the 2008 Steidl hardback edition of Robert Frank’s The Americans is pretty much perfect (21.6 x 18.8 x 2 cm). It sits nicely in the hand, the pages lie flat and the paper and printing are beautiful. It is a superb example of the craft of photobooks and it just happens to be one of the greatest books in the history of the art.

Perfection - The Americans by Robert Frank

Recommended Reading: On a similar theme, Mike Chisholm wrote a great article on oversized books over at Idiotic Hat.

Nil by Mouth

Or rather, nil by keyboard...

I've been laid low by a minor operation over the last few days. I do have a number of articles almost ready for posting, but failed to get them completed before going under the knife. Normal service will resume shortly...

Summer evenings here again...