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Geoff Dyer for the Indy

 

Geoff Dyer is a polymath-author, who has cast his clear-eyed gaze over a variety of subjects including photography. His book "The Ongoing Moment" traces themes through the history of photographs, making connections that re-map familiar photographs and photographers onto an eclectic and illuminating topography. Dyer's view of photography is like a parallel, personal version of an "orthodox" history of photography, I found it more readable and resonant than those other histories too.

Given his knowledge about, and enthusiasm for photography I was more nervous than usual about the shoot. I might have been trying a bit too hard in retrospect, I rarely light this dramatically but the white wall bounced light to fill-in nicely and the eyes are nice. This is a crop from the original, which has more of the shadows from the banister spindles and the ambient orange light at the top. I doubt I'll have been added to new editions of the book on the basis of this but hopefully not excluded either.

My home, my studio

Some jobs are bigger than others. Some jobs require weeks of thorough research and preparation, complicated logistics and extra personnel, intrepid travel and exotic hardships. Other jobs require you to take a picture of your own fridge in your own kitchen and can be accomplished in slippers.

Last Thursday morning I got a call from Nick Hall at the Saturday Independent Magazine, a regular and beloved client, to ask if I was free that afternoon for a shoot. I'm used to getting short notice on Indy jobs and can almost always fit them in but since I was scanning a small pile of films for another job I was doubtful.

"Would it be close?" I asked.
"Very, if you have a fridge."

The brief was to shoot a graphic image to accompany an article about parents' drinking and the concept was to spell out "mother's little helper" in magnetic letters. Like most households with young children we have enough magnetic letters to spell out the entire lyrics of "supercalifragilisticexpialidotious" so that was no problem. Clearing space on the fridge was more challenging...

I shot and sent a low-res for approval and after some tweaking, to allow space for text and balance we got the final image you can see above. I lit it with a brolly, close-up to get some diffused shadows, and reflected back into the dark bit on the left to brighten it a bit. Done, dusted, nice double-page spread to open the article.

The next day I was even more pushed for time since my wife and I were going away for the weekend, leaving the kids with my mum and dad for the first time since number 2 was born, but when Nick called again and dangled a possible cover shot I couldn't really say no, especially as it was the fridge again. This shot didn't get used, which is a shame since it would have been my littlest's first time in print as a hand model, but you can see the result below.

I had to flip the image to make it work for a cover and then selectively flip the text on the drawing back to normal. This was a mockup from the designer using a low-res version:

The final file was sent five minutes before we had to leave for the station and apparently all was well. Anyway we were already half way to the train when Nick called asking could I reshoot a slightly different version? I made a quick calculation of the fallout from screwing-up our first break without kids in living memory and decided that I really couldn't, this time. So I missed out on a cover but my wife is still talking to me.

 

 

Season's Greetings

I've not been posting as much as I should have this last month, but only because I've been busier than usual. Next year I'll try to do better, honest. I'm planning to write more about my continuing experiments with creating a lightweight, versatile and reliable lighting setup as well as more on shooting comercial jobs and my own projects. I've also had some nice editorial commissions recently that are awaiting publication so I'm hoping to post about those too when they're out. So, in the meantime I hope we can all look forward to a joyful christmas and a beautiful new year.

Have a good one.

Je suis un artiste

Returning from Paris Photo by the first Eurostar on sunday the awakening streets of the city were soon left behind as the train sliced into a misty french landscape illuminated by light as thin and pale as skimmed milk. Occasionally a tree or house rose out from the fog only to whip past the window and disappear. I thought it was the late night and early start that was having a similarly obscuring effect on my attempts to analyze what I might have learned from my first visit to the event but a good night's sleep later I still seem to be staring into a fog trying to work out what I now know about the art-photography world.

Paris Photo is a collection of exhibitions and a sort of photography gallery trade-show. The exhibitions are simple enough and worth the event in themselves, often showing in the many palais around the Seine or along the more elegant boulevards. There were many that I would have liked to see and those I did see (Edgar Martins, Larry Clark, Steidl, Anonymes) were excellent. The trade-show seemed more complicated, at least for photographers, because for many of us it's a glimpse into a world which is seductively unavaliable. A world that promises great rewards to a few, selected by criteria which are unwritten, unspoken, unknown, inconstant and possibly unhinged. Still, there seemed to be plenty of photographers at Paris Photo who, like me, were walking around the 120 or so stands asking two questions over and over: where is the door to this world and how do I open it?

It's not just that I would like to have my work sell for £10,000. It's not just that I would like the creative freedom to work on any project that interested me. It's not just that I would like to be taken seriously, you know, as an artist. It is all these things that make the art world look like a nice place to go.

So here's what I think I've learned from Paris Photo:

1. Gallery's don't sell images, they sell artists.
2. A photograph becomes a work of art by a combination of factors: The intention of the photographer, the contention of the gallery and the confirmation of the buyer.
3. Gallery's call inkjet prints "pigment" prints.
4. If in doubt: print it big.

Any cynicism I feel about the art market does not prevent me from recognizing that I saw some great works in Paris. Over and above the confusing machinations of a scene that clearly didn't want to tell me much, there were images that clearly did. I think that's got to be a good sign.

S95 in Montreal

I recently went to Montreal and decided to take only my new Canon S95 to give it a proper test drive. I'm still as impressed as ever with it's image making and I'm thoroughly enjoying the sheer convenience of a proper camera that fits in a pocket. I've uploaded a gallery of images from the trip to my website, it's unlinked but you can go direct via this link.

Compacts and compromises

In the past I have been guilty of breaking one of the most sacred rules of being-a-photographer by not having a camera on my person at all times. If I'm not working and I don't have to carry a bag filled with kit I often choose to leave the camera at home and risk missing the shot of my life. Although I do get a kind of perverse thrill from this recklessness, it's the freedom from faff that leads me to do it. Having a camera around one's neck is a pain, having it in a bag is a bother and I've never had a pocket-sized camera that I really enjoyed using and could get good pictures from. But times change and technology is a wonderful thing and I have now found a camera that slips neatly into my jacket, is a joy to use and makes great images. But first let me discuss it's compact predecessors, each good in some way but none as complete.

My first compact was a Fuji DL Super Mini back in '96. Very small and nicely made, it was nicknamed the sardine tin because of it's shape and metal housing. The lens was good enough to produce near-SLR quality prints but in the end it had winder problems and had to be retired. Here's an old image I shot through the window of a deli with it:

I replaced the Fuji with a Ricoh GR1, which was the other hot compact of the day that has since evolved into a near-identical digital versions. The Ricoh had aperture priority and exposure compensation dials on the top panel allowing a fair degree of manual control and an understated matt-black-ness that whispered "I'm a discerning pro, incognito". I don't know if I was unlucky but this camera suffered from winder problems too and I went through a few replacements on warranty until I reluctantly gave up and moved on. Here's a Ricoh shot:

After the Ricoh(s) died I eschewed compacts for a little while and tried to carry my Leica around but although I got images I often didn't take it out. It's is a measure of my lack of dedication to my craft that even with the good fortune to have the preeminent tool for street photography at my disposal, a Leica rangefinder, I still neglected to carry a camera at all times. The fact is, I find even a Leica is a bother. But no excuses, I am a sinner and when I'm called to account by the Great Picture Editor I know for sure that the pictures I've missed will outnumber the pictures I've captured. Still time to redeem myself I hope...

When I went on honeymoon to Japan in 2005 I took my Leica, and my wife and I borrowed a digital Ixus. The Leica took all the most beautiful shots of the trip but the Ixus got used more and so, on the way back through Tokyo, I bought my first digital compact, the just-released Panasonic Lumix DMC LX1. Back in 2005 I was still shooting on film so this was my first digital camera and an introduction to the pros and cons of the new medium. I pretty much bought it on the strength of the Leitz lens and I did get some OK images:

The LX1 had a few features I really liked, image stabilization, a choice of formats and control over flash levels. There were quite a lot of manual controls, even manual focus but this was clunky to use. It still felt like I was compromising a lot on image quality and usability for the sake of convenience and what I really wanted was a smaller, more compact Leica, with manual controls and a peachy lens.

In the meantime I had taken the plunge and gone digital, trading in my much loved workhorse, a Nikon F5, and a ton of kit for a Canon 5D, so when I started looking around for a replacement compact I was inclined towards the Canon G9, which would allow me to use my new 580EX speedlight. I should have loved the G9, it's a very capable camera with a good blend of features from DSLRs and compacts and it will fit into a jacket pocket, though it's a bit bulky. I should have loved it but I didn't, it wasn't fun, it felt like a less user-friendly, slightly crappier, smaller version of my 5D. Perhaps the chemistry was wrong? Anyway here's two pictures from that rather troubled relationship:

At least now I know what I want from a compact camera:

• Easy and fun to use so that I want to take it everywhere
• Image quality has to be good enough that when you take a really nice image you aren't sad you didn't have a better camera with you
• Fully manual exposure controls
• Fast lens and low noise
• It has to lead you to experiment and produce surprises
• Fits in the back pocket of a pair of jeans

Not much to ask.

And here is my new love, the Canon S95. I'm not going to review it, you can find plenty of exhaustive reviews elsewhere, but it does all the above with style and ease. I particularly like the fact that you can choose to shoot in square format. This might seem a slightly daft gimmick, you can always crop later right? But I love shooting square format, not cropping square format, there is a difference.

I'm currently working on two projects specifically tailored to the abilities of the S95 and now, when I leave the house I pat myself down for my keys, my phone and my camera. Perhaps I will finally be able to keep that sacred rule.

 

 

Alter Egos

Quite a lot of my commissioned work is basically location portraiture and I often feel like I get stuck in a rut doing more or less the same thing every time. When you only have a few minutes, minimal kit, no previous sense of the location, no assistant and a fairly rigid page-space to fill it's tempting to simply do what you know will work and hard to take risks. I've been feeling for a while that I needed an opportunity to experiment and so I decided to do a series of portraits of my own choosing, unfettered by the demands of publications and the paralyzing fear of screwing up.

So it was that a couple of weekends ago I drove out to the Welsh borders to photograph a group doing Live Action Role-Play (LARP). I'd done a reportage feature story on LARPing many years ago when I was with KATZ pictures (the feature sold once, in Greece) but later I'd thought that it might have been more interesting to photograph more inside the role-play rather than from the sidelines, poking fun at all the juxtapositions and silliness. The idea of photographing the players "in character" seemed like it would both provide a wealth of portraits and say something more interesting about the way people create alter egos in different situations. I found a few groups online and was hugely lucky that the Legion of Dreams agreed to let me come along to one of their big weekend events. Legion of Dreams are one of the longest established LARP groups in the country and they have an awesome site at their disposal for their events, comprising woodland, miniature canyons, caves and a replica iron age settlement. For me it was the perfect combination of subjects and locations.

I took with me the kit that I usually use for location portraits: a Canon 5Dmkii, 35mm 1.4, 85mm 1.8, 580EX speedlight, STE2 TTL transmitter, a lastolite stand and brolly outfit for the speedlight and a 1m lastolite reflector. I brought a few more bits and pieces but I was keen to see what I could do with a fairly limited and very portable outfit. The kit above fits into a couple of small bags and I've put it all on a bike many times, the brolly outfit has been an invaluable tool for quick lighting inside and out in combination with the TTL transmitter. I scoped out locations and subjects on the Friday evening and did 16 separate shoots on Saturday, trying to vary the feel of each portrait according to the character I was photographing. A couple of times I did find myself falling into familiar set-ups but I also tried out some new ideas, combining ambient, flash and reflected light to add drama without it looking completely artificial. I unexpectedly enjoyed the results from using bare flash, without modifying it with a shoot-through brolly as I usually do. If nothing else I've gained confidence enough to use the flash to model as well as just light the subject.

Since the LARP shoot I've decided to invest in a two-head Bowens travelpack kit and I expect I'll be posting more about my experiences in location lighting before long. In the meantime here are some more images from the shoot:

You can see the rest here.

Steve McCurry: Reflections

Watch in HD here.

Steve McCurry's images are both iconic and accessible but it's possible that some of their strength has been diminished by their familiarity. To see some of them afresh is to rediscover them as photographs rather than calendars, postcards or posters. In this short film he discusses some of the images on show in a retrospective at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Of his most famous image, the Afghan girl, he tellingly remarks: "It's better to be known for one great picture than not to be known at all." In fact there is a wealth of great pictures in McCurry's archive, which spans the globe and the last 30 years.

Photojournalists on film

A couple of weeks ago I was very kindly sent a review copy of the acclaimed documentary "Shooting Robert King" on DVD, but I only got around to watching it a few days ago. The film charts, sporadically, 15 years of the life and photographic career of Robert King, beginning with his arrival in Sarajevo in 1993 with the intention of becoming the youngest recipient of a Pulitzer. In the beginning Robert is naive, idealistic and, we discover, a little damaged. In the end he is cynical (though optimistic), weary and a little damaged; and while he never gets the Pulitzer, King does grow into a trusted and respected photojournalist, a "safe pair of hands", an experienced and hardened professional. The cost to his well-being for this education is mostly paid in years of alcohol and drugs and loneliness but he's come through that and now the payments are less reckless: time in the woods, time with his family, time to not be at war. While the "damaged photojournalist" is an established archetype and King fits it as far as it goes, both he and this film avoid becoming cliched through honesty and a sense of humour. Soon after arriving in Yugoslavia a more experienced photographer tells him his "military style" trousers could get him into trouble at checkpoints, "Yeah I know" says King "but they dry real fast".

Shooting Robert King joins a long list of films about photographers, documentary and fiction and watching it reminded me of examples of both so I thought I would do a quick round-up of some of my favourites in no particular order:

• Salvador: Oliver Stone directs James Woods as a photojournalist covering 1980's El Salvador. Includes cautionary tales about running out in front of fighter planes and when to shoot from the hip to avoid unpleasantness.
• War Photographer: Documentary about James Nachtwey. Reinforces much of the Nachtwey mythology as the quiet, humble, sensitive and driven photographer explains his need to photograph war. Sequences where we look through a small camera attached to Nachtwey's SLR give a mesmerizing insight to his extraordinary image-making.
• Blow-up: Michelangelo Antonioni makes a kind of mood-movie about life in 60's London with an out-of-focus narrative about a body in the park and photographic evidence. Great Herbie Hancock music.
• Public Eye: Joe Pesci does Weegee, OK his character is called Leon "Bernzy" Bernstein but it's Weegee made fiction and only just. Contrast your DSLR and laptop with the Speed Graphic and car-boot darkroom.
• Born into Brothels: A great film, a great project. Children from red-light Calcutta show us their world through their eyes.
• Rear Window: Jimmy Stewart's itchy, immobilized photojournalist see's more than is good for him when he starts to watch his neighbours. Hitchcock let's us indulge our voyeurism but for a price.

I've only scratched the surface so please add your own in comments.

Thinking about looking

Toiwa Sethogwe © Dominick Tyler, from Exiles from the Kalahari

In my final year studying philosophy at UCL I tried to convince my tutor, the brilliant philosopher Jonathan Wolff, that I could combine my growing love of photography with my studies by submitting a photographic dissertation, that is a dissertation in the form of photographs. I failed to convince him, not because he wasn't open to the idea of photography having philosophical value, but because I couldn't really explain what it would look like and what it would communicate. It was an interesting discussion though and I often think if I'd been more diligent in my philosophical studies I would have been able to find some way to look at both disciplines through the frame of the other.

There are, of course, diverse writings on the philosophy of photography from Sontag to Barthes, some of which I've battled through but my ability to read philosophical texts in general has suffered from years of attention span contraction. How wonderful then to find "Philosophy Bites" a blog that presents interviews with leading philosophers as podcasts. A recent addition to the growing library is Cynthia Freeland on Portraits. Cynthia Freeland is Professor and Chair of philosophy at the University of Houston and has written extensively on art theory and aesthetics, her latest book "Portraits and Persons" is particularly concerned with what makes a picture a portrait.