Sunday 14 February 2010

Creating the wowless factor!

I have a vision of someone I envy, I have no evidence but I’m sure this person, exists… This person, a photographer, lives in a world which isn’t governed by the internet, they make photos for the love of the art, hopefully they sell prints and their art is appreciatively hung on many a wall.

Unfortunately I’m not that soldier. When I set out on the path to become a landscape photographer I started uploading my photos to Flickr in the hope to gain some recognition from my fellow photographers. This can be an addictive practice, collecting “wow” comments and icons of waving kittens can certainly boost the ego of the budding photographer.

Thankfully, as I’ve developed as a landscape photographer I’ve kicked the Flickr habit and only post there occasionally now with the aim of showing some of my Flickr friends what I’ve been up to and to get feedback on some of the photos I’m undecided about.

Last week, in a moment of weakness, I decided to join 1x.com which for those of you who don’t know, is a similar site as Flickr except for the fact that all the photos that are submitted are judged for worthiness by the site’s moderators. Other 1x.com members can also vote on whether a photo is worthy of inclusion.

At first inspection this does make for a website with generally impressive photos (I only looked at the landscape section but I’m sure this is also true of the other portfolios). But, and it’s a big but – the body of work there suffers from the same problem as all the other online social networking photo sites, its pretty much full of photos with an instant hit of ‘wow’. It’s the photography equivalent of eating bag after bag of your favourite flavoured crisps – great to begin with but sooner or later you’re going to get sick of them (perhaps not the best analogy, I can eat A LOT of crisps before I get sick of them!).

So this brings me to Mr(s) Internetless, a photographer who doesn’t seek recognision from social networking sites, someone who has enough self conviction to believe in their own creative skill, someone who doesn’t feel the need to churn out endless dynamic clichés to please the eye of the internet gallery visitor. The problem for me is that these internet ready images only really work on the internet, do people actually put these things on their walls? I for one, wouldn’t want an instant hit photo in my lounge, shouting at me every time I walked in the room.

I would much rather have a piece of work that operates on a subtle level, a quiet image that portrays a mood and has feeling, something I want to keep coming back to – something wowless! That’s what I aim to do with my own photography, I aim for a subtle pallet, tone and balanced graphic compositions (I’m not of course saying that I always achieve it!). My desire to find my own set of rules means I often ignore the obvious – golden hours, thirds, digital aspect ratios. This does mean that I stand less chance of being accepted by the moderators as 1x.com but so what!

I urge any photographer to seek out their own way of seeing, develop their own style and photograph what they find interesting, if that isn’t starburst suns kissing the horizon over a time blurred sea that’s all good – embrace the wowless! And if your more subtle photos don’t attract waving kitten awards on Flickr, don’t be disheartened, sooner or later your work is going to start to attract the attention from people who appreciate the considered subtleties of your work.

Monday 15 February 2010

Getting out of the doldrums

I know that we all go through those periods when we fall out with our photography. We struggle to see what the point is, why we're doing it and we wonder if we'll ever make a decent image again. Couple that with the inevitable destructive practice of comparing our work with others and that's it – photography depression.

Well, I've been suffering with this for the past few weeks, after a good period of photo-making running up to new year and a burst of enthusiasm for all things creative in the new year, things have gone a bit.... flat.

So this morning, having woken up late having not slept well last night, I was feeling rather miserable. I didn't want to stay in and work on stuff I didn't want to work on, I was sick of sitting about not wanting to do anything so, by midday, I'd managed to muster the motivation to go out with the camera.

I was out with Paul Arthur a couple of weeks ago at the Roaches at the south end of the Peak District, where I thought I'd made a good photo only to discover when I processed it that something had gone horribly wrong with the exposure (I'm guessing I'd nudged the aperture ring round to the wrong setting, I couldn't have got the metering that wrong!). So I decided to return there for another go as near by webcams were showing up some fog which I needed to make the composition work.

Although there was no fog when I arrived, meaning my second attempt at the photo wasn't going to be today, my little outing made me realise how important landscape photography is to me on a number of levels.

It's easy to get dejected sitting at home, thinking about creative direction, about the next stunning location where your most brilliant photograph is waiting ready for you to rock up and take. The fact is, it's not going to happen, imagine all you like, you've got to be out there, and chances are, the next great photo you make is probably not going to be something you've pondered over, it's just going to be something that arises from being out in the field, working at a composition that's presented itself. So I realised whilst I was out there today, standing in the rain, that new ideas present themselves whilst your out 'in the zone' – forced to look for new ideas due to the weather I decided to make some black and white images which I think could make for an interesting series of photos. I wouldn't have come up with that sitting sulking at home watching re-runs of the news on Sky and eating mini chocolate eggs!

Photos aside, it's just good to get out there, it's great to see how the colours of the moss and heather intensify in the rain – and there's no cup of coffee like the one from a flask after you've climbed your way up a muddy slope :o)

Another good thing about getting out there to do some photography is the drive there and back – it's a great opportunity to have a think about life and get some ideas going in your mind about how to get things moving and how to get yourself out of your creative hole.

So hopefully by motivating myself to get out for the afternoon I've come back with a couple of decent sheets of T-Max, if not, I've got myself an idea for a project and I got some exercise out in the rain!

Monday 22 February 2010

Keep it quiet – Expired film

I’m in two minds about writing this blog post –it’s something I really should be keeping to myself. But oh well, hopefully you won’t believe me anyway!

There’s a lot made of film expiry dates – there’s fear about colour shift, increased grain… fears that after the use by date has passed film is fit for nothing but the bin.

It even goes beyond use by dates, if your precious collection of Fuji Velvia is tucked away next to the chicken drum sticks in the freezer it’s feared the emulsion will melt away into the heavens leaving you with a box of expensive but totally useless sheets of plastic.

I’ve never really followed this way of thinking, 4x5 sheet film is expensive stuff – a sheet of Fuji Velvia is currently around the £2 mark, Kodak E100G around a massive £4 a sheet – you don’t want to be leaving your shutter open by mistake when you’re using that stuff! I always keep my eyes open for expired film – there’s some bargains to be had out there (possibly partly down to the very paranoia I’m talking about here!), and the truth is, as long as it’s not been stored on top of a radiator for the past 10 years, chances are it’s going to be fine.

You normally find that film that is sold on auction sites has been stored in either a freezer or at least in a cold place. A lot of this stuff comes from people who have been stupid enough to give up film and move over to digital (don’t worry, they’ll be back ;o) so they’ve been pretty careful with the storing of their film. Of course there’s nothing to stop them saying it’s been frozen when it hasn’t but that’s just a chance you’ve got to take.

I have a few boxes of Velvia 100 Quickload, dated 2006-8. I got them early on when I moved over to large format before I realised the error of my ways! As I didn’t really care much for it I wasn’t going to bother taking up any more freezer space to store it – I’m told the film to food ratio in our freezer is tipping too heavily in the favour of film as it is! So it’s been lying around the house, at first in the outside storage cupboard and then in my office room where it’s pretty warm. Generally not ideal places to store film.

When I came to use it a couple of months ago (I find it’s good for autumn colours if nothing else) the resulting 4 years out of date, stored in a warm office transparencies were absolutely fine, just as good as the in date Velvia 50 sheet I exposed at the same time. 

I also tried out a couple of sheets of Astia which I found lying around in a double dark slide the other day, no idea how old they are but they’re going to have been in their a long time, and the double dark slide had been stored in the office for a at least a couple of years. Again, the results were fine – no obvious colour shift, no excessive grain.

As my much loved Fuji Astia is cruelly being taken away from me very soon I’ve been stocking up, I’ve got in the region of 1,200 sheets so far (if anyone has any they don’t want, do let me know!). This has included buying up some out of date boxes, the oldest one of which ‘expired’ in 1998, remember way back then – Billie at number one with “Because We Want to”? With the last remaining boxes of 50 sheets of Astia going for $90, this box of 50 was something of a bargain at $6.17! I was told it had been stored in a refrigerator but 12 years out of date – even I thought this might be pushing it.

So this weekend I did a test – I loaded up a Grafmatic with a sheet of 12 years out of date Astia, one sheet of Quickload (expired 2005) which I removed from it’s envelope and put in the Grafmatic, and a sheet with a use by date of 2010. The Grafmatic let me fire off 3 shots in quick succession of the same scene and then processed them all together in Kodak E6 chemicals.

The results are pretty amazing – the 12 year old film is very close to being identical to the 5 year old film, slightly less saturated maybe, grain is fine. And compared to the in date Astia – well there’s very little difference. It’s actually closer colour wise to the 1998 stock, the 2005 having a slightly bluer cast. Of course we’re also comparing 2 different version of the film here, the 1998 and 2005 film is Astia 100, the 2010 is 100F – so this may account for any differences in colour – the 100F does look more neutral.
The fact is, if you didn’t have the others to compare them with you wouldn’t see a problem. So my $6.17 box of 50 sheets were a bit of a bargain!

So… I’d rather you didn’t buy out of date film, it would leave all the more for me to pick up cheap! If you must follow my example though I would recommend testing a sheet before you have to rely on it. And if colour is critical use your film that’s closer to being in date. For me any slight colour cast you may get isn’t the end of the world, it’s all fixable.