Spending more time in the bog

Another day, another day.  Yes it has been a damp and dismal Easter Sunday.  Great.  I spent a couple of hours in the local bog,  taking more photographs.  I have finally cracked the flash with the G9, I found out that the flash works a lot better with the setting on Tv.  Now I know I should have known this but I didn't - always learning something, again if I had read the instructions this would have helped.   Never do!

I had the place to myself and it was great.   This large expanse of woodland and flood meadow is a photography heaven, that is if you enjoy making photographs of damp and decay.  Needless to say I do and the weather was just perfect.  It gave the leaves a wonderful glean, their verdant colours look really great in the flat light.   Back in the studio for can really enhance the colours and and make some fantastic moody photographs.

Experimentation

As photographers we are used to failure.  Unless I am unusual, and in this particular area I don't think I am, we are more unsuccessful than successful.   We do a shoot and take a number of photographs, we look at the contact sheets/images on the screen and select only those that meet whatever criteria we have set,   the rest are discarded.  We define ourselves not by our successes but our failures.  Indeed it is what drives us on, to perfect our art, to make the next photograph better than the last.  But we know failure, we know its frustration, its stigma.   For every success we have a thousand failures.  Indeed recently it has been estimated that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become really competent in whatever field of endeavour we are working.

So why this dwelling on failure?   Well I have had one of those shoots.  I spent most of the morning in  Swithland Woods, a popular woodland area.  For the most part it was deserted and so I had time just to ponder and think about what I was taking.  In fact there really wasn't much to take.   I had continued the experiment with the tilt and shift lens.  I also continued to work with the G9 and tethered flash.  But nothing really worked.   So I changed my approach and started to use 2nd curtain flash on bushes as they swayed in the stiff breeze.  This was far more successful,  but not what I had thought about when I set out.   So this is why I started to think about failure.  Sometimes things go totally wrong.  Sometime they just don't gel but perhaps the worst is when they don't do anything at all.  When you get one of those days it is really frustrating.  Today was one those days.   Still there is always tomorrow.

Another Night Out...

Just got back in from another night shoot.   This sounds really grand but the reality is that I have just spent a couple of hours making photographs in empty fields and road verges - the exotic life of a photographer???  I think not.

As I write this I am uploading the files - in fact it has just finished.  Not sure what they will be like - this is the exciting bit.   The only nature I saw tonight was a rather flat hare which had had an argument with a lorry and lost.

Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930

There has always been something smoldering deep inside me that from time to time comes to the surface (No I don't mean some by product of a curry I might have eaten the night before!).  What I am talking about is the attraction of Piet Mondrian.  For years I had some prints of his work on the wall of my house - much to consternation of my long suffering wife.   I have never really understood what it was about his work that attracted myself to him.  Having given it some thought I think it is the regularity of the shapes he used or was it the thickness of the lines?  Perhaps it was the bold primal colours or perhaps the orderliness appealed to my brain?  Who knows?  What I do know is that what ever subterranean influence was at work then is starting resurface know with my work for the latest project.

Yesterday I sat down and produced a series of images for today's session.  Initially I was going to print a number of single photographs.  I then decided to make them into some form of triptych.   As I played around these photographs I had an experience similar to Roy Neary in the Close Encounters.   I found myself arranging the photographs so that the arrangement became as important as the photographs themselves.   Suddenly, the borders between the photographs were important.  I then noticed that the colours started to leap out rather than the form of the photographs.   To date I have no idea why this might be but I have a feeling that whatever attracts me to Mondrian is also influencing my work.

Review of Practical Work in Progress (Group 1)

The rather formal nature of the title is what our second session at University is called tomorrow.   I am not sure what is required or who, for that matter, is in group 1.  I am not sure I was asleep at the time when this was mentioned.  I have emailed Mike Simmons for an explanation so no doubt I will feel somewhat embarrassed when the reply comes (I wish they would use Blackboard it would be so much easier!)

So just incase I am in Group 1 I have produced these three images/triptych to be going on with.  They are my latest thinking on the theme No Title/No Rules and represent three subject matters I am exploring at the matter: Self; Movement and Colour and Death.    Of the three the last is the most difficult - see previous posting.  However, I still feel it is an import aspect to examine when dealing with No Rules.   After all there are only two rules in life you are sure of Death and Taxes.

On a slightly lighter note I am still working with Flash but I have started to include artificial lighting as well.   I just love some of the bizarre colours you get.

Self

Movement and Colour

Death

Developing a theme

As I progress with the project No Title: No Rules I am starting to understand a little better what I mean.   Not only am I thinking about what it means to have no title but perhaps more importantly what it means to have no rules.   Rules are all about boundaries.   We hear it all the time: he stepped over a boundary; he crossed the line; I drew a line in the sand and so on.  Boundaries are an integral part of Rules.  So by exploring Rules I am also exploring boundaries.

This brings me back to last night.  The ultimate boundary is death.  This is one rule we cannot break.  One moment we are alive the next we are gone.   It is becoming clear as I work at the project and problem that this is going to become a dominant aspect.  We may create rules for ourself but there is only one rule we can never break.   When this rule is applied it effects not only the person who dies but also the many people left behind and who we had great impact on.

I suppose rules also are what make us human.  We have rules about all sorts of things.  We give these rule titles and these titles are then applied to things.  This is the way that civilisation  starts and then more rules are developed and so on  until a point is reached when the whole thing collapses in on itself.  Am I making sense yet?  I am not sure whether I am but it is an intriguing exercise to and make order out of the chaos or should say develop0 some rule and give it a title?  

More nocturnal rumblings

Barn Owl - Major Gilbert

Whilst out and about last night making photographs I had my latest nocturnal encounter.  No it wasn't George Michael or anything like that but rather an owl.  As I was standing by the road side making photographs of the memorial for the crash victims I mentioned in my last post a Barn Owl was screeching and making an almighty racket in the field next to me.   It was a experience.   The location of the memorial is by a well used road.  Not too far away the M1 rumbled a continuous noise and yet these were drowned out by the calling of the Barn Owl.

I looked into the field which had no lighting at all and could see fleeting glimpses of a strange ghost like shape flying across the field.   The other worldlyness of the scene was enhanced by the passing car headlights.  In the past such screams have been associated with all manner of things - including an approaching storms.  Well as I write this it is a glorious morning outside with not a cloud in the sky - much the same as last night.

Strange Day...some good and some...well

The day started so very well.   I spent the morning with David Manley, a colleague from my course.  We spent a great few hours setting up his printer and then playing around with cameras.  We also found time to put the world right.  As usual we felt better but no doubt it had little or effect on the way the world worked - no butterfly effect here!

After dark I decided to work on some more photographs for my project.   There are two floral memorials for deaths around the village that I have found very compelling images to capture.   I spent more than two hours working on the photographs and felt I had captured something interesting and well in keeping with the No Title/No Rules theme.

I then started to work on the files in my study and then read one of the notes left on the road sign of the scene of one of the fatal car crashes.   This had a deep effect on me as I read it.  I cannot see all the text but I will repeat some of what I could see here:

It's been a long year without you

The pain still lingers

Our heart ache for the person

As the pain gets harder

You light up our days with a smile

In my heart the pain is raw

No one can ever take you away.

Now I don't know who wrote those words, if they're lyrics to a song; a poem or what but they have had a profound effect on me.   It makes you question what you are doing and why.  This is someone's deep felt heartache that you are examining and I suppose to a degree manipulating.  It is also a tug at the heart to any parent - the raw pain on show can almost be tasted.

So will I continue the work?   I think the answer is yes - but now with greater humility.  This commemorates the death of a real person.  This is not some abstract that you can debate. I don't have the stomach to be unaffected anymore - my Weegee protection has gone and the sadness and hurt is felt all too easily.  A sad end to the day.

Ever tried to focus in the dark? and some sad news

Focusing in the dark.

It's my own stupid fault.  I should know better and as my late father would have said, "...you're old enough and ugly enough to know better..." but I didn't.  I tried to focus in the dark.   For those of you who have never done this before it involves using a manual focus lens,  yes such lens made are still made, and then trying to focus on a particular object.   It is next to impossible!

So why was I doing this contorted and near impossible thing?   Well I was playing around with my Tilt and Shift lens of course.   I was not trying to correct perspective but rather to use the distortion of focus that is produced by the lens.  Now usually I have no problem making this happen but in the dark it was a different case.  Perhaps I should try and use the lens always in the dark and I wouldn't have any problems.  In the end I managed to make this photograph.  So I suppose all's well that ends well.

Some Sad news.

I received some sad news of the passing of a treasured member of Ian's, a colleague on the course, innermost circle.   His Mac G4 is to be replaced.  I spoke to him Wednesday about this impending departure and tried to console him and I think I did I managed to cheer him up a bit with my anecdotes of the anarchy that is running Windows Vista, still can't get the internal CF drives to work! and in the end I think this worked as he was able to pass some comments about Windows that you would expect a dyed in the wool Mac fan to say. Ian has sent all colleagues on the course an email lamenting this passing and I passed on my condolences in the only way that I know how, by pointing out how out of date Apple technology is compared to the latest Windows PC and it is just a shame that Apple are always having to play catch up and you pay through the nose for the privilege.  I think this will lift his spirits.

Now for any passing Mac fanatic that might think that the last item was some serious views please don't.  I love Mac's design and if I was starting out from scratch I would no doubt go down the Mac route.  It is just that to do so now would be too expensive in time, effort and money.  The only thing I would say is that I have used both and I don't really find there is much difference between the two when using Photoshop - so for me this is an added point.   There I have said it.  I too love Macs but not enough to replace all the PC's in the my house.

Saul and the road to Damascus

If week is a long time in politics clearly 12 hours is an eternity for me.  I went to university this morning thinking that I knew where I was going with my project.  I had sorted out in my mind what I was going to do - there was harmony in my collective (Sorry another Star Trek reference!).  Then bang.  A thought struck me.  Bad things thoughts not usually good things - tend to rock the boat.

Isn't it funny where ideas come from.  I was sitting in the journals section of the DMU library paging through back issues of Photoworks.   I came to some work by TONK and this idea plopped out...

'why not break the rules of flash photography?'

I thought about this for a while longer then I thought 'No titles/No Rules'  Suddenly everything started to fall into place.  Last week Paul Hill had asked my what I now called myself as I was no longer employed.  "Student but I don't really feel the need for any title anymore.  I have had 32 years of that" was my reply. No Title.   My previous work was all to do with rules and I am sick to the back teeth of that. No Rules.  It made sense.  No Titles/No Rules.

I know this sounds a little anarchic but what better way to experiment.  No Title/No Rules.

This is a little much to compare this to what happened to St Paul.  I am pretty sure I will not be motivated to shape a new religion but it does make sense to me at least.  So there it is No Title/No Rules.

Display 2007 - Helen Sear

Interestingly we had a talk by Helen Sear, much of whose work would appear to be challenging perceptions.  For me the lecture could not have come at a better time.

One final thing.  The photograph is of the rather excellent  cake that  David Manley brought in.  Paul Hill asked me to take a photograph which I did.

Thinking about a theme

A number of people have said that I need to make the next project about more than 'flash photography'.   I have been somewhat resistant to this suggestion as I don't feel that either I am not explaining myself too well - not unknown - or that other people have not got what I have been saying.  I am not sure whether this is helping or not so I have decided to modify what I am doing.   Instead of just ploughing on regardless I am now going to slightly change my approach.  It is still going to be around flash photography or painting with light but instead it will be in support of the 4 project I have on the go at the moment.   These are:

Leicestershire Landmarks - an exploration of the landmarks that have a significant impact on Leicestershire

Park and Ride - Documenting the building of a new park and ride at Enderby

Jubilee Park - Documenting a local park

Varsity - Documenting my life at University

Very Long Exposure - Michael Wesely

Michael Wesely is a photographer that was suggested by Nick Lockett.  Apparently, the work involves extreme exposure times - measured in months rather than seconds.  His most famous exhibition to date has been at the MOMA in New York in 2004.

Not just long exposure of buildings - 

this one took from the 26th October to 6th November

New York - from the Open Shutter exhibition at MOMA

Michael Wesely

Michael Weseley - very long exposure

Flickr - this link shows the contents of the catalogue from the MOMA exhibition in 2004

Michael Weseley website - this is in German

Google Images Search

New York Times

26th September 2004 - By JEFFREY KASTNER

22nd August 1999 - By WILLIAM ZIMMER - Mentioned when discussing portraying flowers

Experimentation

An Experiment - Frankenstein's Monster?

One of the things we are trying to be doing in this module is to experiment; push the envelope;go beyond our comfort zone.   This weekend has certainly done that for me.   I started trying to work with different settings with the flash gun.  I used my own magnificent??? features as the subject.  As with all experiments there were some successes and some failures.

After this I decided to try some different outdoor shots.  Near where I live there is a small shrine set up to two young lads who died in a car accident.   One is very formal, with a plaque and tree planted.  The second is a road sign next to where the accident was.   They both offer great opportunities for experimenting with flash and painting with light.   Unfortunately when I got around to photographing them the snow was falling and I didn't feel like freezing my...off again.   Perhaps this is the reason why the photographs were not very good.  I'm not sure but it has got me thinking about how I could do the shot better and in the end this is what the module is all about.

More interesting flash links

[No Image - the images address will no copy]

This link was suggested by Kate Luck.  It is the work of Night Photographer.   His work appears to be centred around very long exposure and then painting with light.  Still some interesting images - especially those on the railway line! (Sorry I can't include this in the post as for reasons beyond me the image address won't work??)

Interesting Video

Warning - this video deals with the boring aspects of photography - equipment and kit that someone uses for flash photography.

More Flash Photography Links

My colleagues on the course have been very helpful in suggesting links and leads to follow.  These are the latest Sian Hedges:

Tim Simmons

Norway 2007 - Tim Simmons

Gairloch Lightpath #2 - Tim Simmons

Playing around with flash

I spent yesterday thinking about how I could use flash to make some interesting self portraits.   I have to say that I enjoyed the experiment and have learnt a great deal.   The main aspects that I looked at was strobe lighting and using my flash gun as a spot light a la Nick Turpin.   Both have had differing results.

The strobe light was my first attempt at anything like that and to be truthful it wasn't too successful.  However, I learnt a lot and have realised it is not as easy as I might have thought.  Clearly I need to work at this.

As for the spot this worked a lot better.   When I used flash before I was not in control of the light it produced.  The flash gun just went off and I might have bounced it off of the ceiling but that was about it.   However, using a piece of a black paper to focus the light in just one spot was a revelation.  It has made start to think a lot more seriously about what can be achieved with just very simple equipment.  In fact, it is more rewarding to see what I can produce using this type of set up than any fantastic studio set up.

In the end, I suppose, this is the point of the module.  It is to make work in areas that you have never worked on before and learn new and exciting things.   It should also open up new possibilities that you just didn't know where there.

Shooting tethered

Perhaps not the best self portrait in the world but it is a start.   The real reason I have posted this is not show off my wonderful face but rather to celebrate that I have got my camera to shoot.   The story is really quite boring and so will fit in just right on this blog (I hope that is not the reaction of the reader but I just don't know!)

Anyway, the story.   As part of the flash development I decide I needed to shoot tethered as this would give me greater feedback than the small LCD on the back of the camera.   I tried to set it up last Tuesday.  However, whilst the software installed it kept failing.   After a frustrated hour or so I decided to call it a day.  I duly reported my frustration at the course meeting the next day - much the the amusement of a certain Mac user(You know who I mean KL!).

I gave this matter some thought on Thursday and decide the only way forward was to uninstall the software and install the latest software that had come with one of my 40D.   I checked the software and yes it was for Vista - the other software had come with me aging 5D and didn't support Vista.  I had tried to down load the latest software from the canon site but clearly this didn't work.

So there I was today (Friday) surrounded by camera boxes, CD, cameras and my laptop.  It took a while to uninstall the previous versions, I had installed all the packages on the disk.  I then installed the new software and after a few false starts it worked.   The I am using Adobe Lightroom to view the photographs on the laptop and this works really well.  I have to say that it is not exactly straightforward setting up Lightroom to shoot tethered but once you have gone through all the steps it does work well, apart from the fact I cannot get the software to convert into DNG.   If you want to see who to do this then view the excellent video on this from Lightroom for Digital Photographers.

So now to making best use of this new skill/set up.

Nick Turpin - is this the way forward?

Youth #2 - Nick Turpin

I have spent a short time looking at the work of Nick Turpin and I have to say I find his work fascinating.  I love the way he is able to coax fairly ordinary equipment to produce extraordinary results.  However, this has started me to think about what I want to produce during this next project.   Do I want to produce photographs that enhance the day or are they going to be control the night? 

Ray Bolger - Gjon Mili

To explore this a little further I need to explain one of the influences I have had on this journey.  I found a marvelous book in the library - see posting 21st Jan - by Gjon Mili  Many of the images were black and white the predominant colour is black (I know black is not a colour but a lack of one).  Now when you compare these to Turpin's photographs you start to see my problem.   Both photographs are of their time and so reflect this.  However, they do show the different styles, one , Turpin, uses the flash to enhance the colour of the street.   His ability to place light in a very specific area of the image is as impressive as it is imaginative.  The second, Mili, use the flash in a totally different way.  Here he explores the ability of a strobe to isolate and enhance the action.  He freezes that split second that we are never aware of.  In a way it almost entering the quantum realm.

So which is the way forward.  Well I think at this stage the answer is both and neither.   To be aware of these influences and experiment with them.  The hope is that at the end they will help me produce some impactive photographs.

More Flash Photography

I am not sure what this is saying - perhaps I am starting to, sub consciously, to create photographs that meet other people's perceptions.   Anyway, another in the series of photographs experimenting with flash photography.  

"... beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression...they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will…" - Yoda to Luke Skywalker