Beyond the sanity of the world outside Westminster everything appears to be disappearing up its own backside. The Prime Minister is going to lose this vote or that and we’ll then be doing this or perhaps that. You wouldn’t run the simplest store on a local market like that let alone a country that is supposed to be one of the leading countries on the planet.
Just what does meaningful mean anyway?
Today was the first day in the heartland of Brexit britain – Wakefield – 66% in favour of leaving the European Union. Guess what none of the people appeared to have horns or tails. The reason for the visit was to experience/view the latest exhibition at the Hepworth. It didn’t disappoint as the main temporary exhibitions – Magdalene Odundo: The Journey of Things and Modern Nature: British Photographs from the Hyman Collection were first rate. I’m afraid I’m never really any good at explaining why an exhibition is worth a visit and if you wish to get a much more cultured appraisal then take a trip over to my good friend David Manley’s blog. (However he is rather busy at the moment so it might be some time before he posts a review)
Perhaps the most surprising piece on display was a series of small prints by John Blakemore. If you know his work then you would expect brilliantly chosen subjects meticulously printed – these prints met neither of those standards and were startling because of that – perhaps the Hyman collection didn’t have better examples of Blakemore’s work at hand?
What any of this has to do with Brexit is another matter. Perhaps the one lesson to take away from today is that for such an important decision about the nation’s future coming up in the next week or so the good people of Wakefield seemed to be very relaxed.
Interesting.
I am a born worrier. If I have a problem I can’t put it down or stop worrying about it. Over the years for many interconnected reasons I worry even more than I did in the past. This does have a positive aspect in that once I have a problem I will work at it to try and find a solution. My photographic experience in Birmingham yesterday is such a problem and I have not been able to stop thinking about the it.
For those of you who are not aware the problem is that I am using a combination of old Canon FD lenses on a reasonably modern mirrorless camera. If you put aside the exposure issues for one moment the main problem is focus i.e the lenses are manual focus with a small EVF. The way around this is that you use focus peaking effect to show you which part of the image is in focus and here is the core of the problem. The peaking doesn’t correspond to what is and what is not in focus with the lenses. I spent a good part of yesterday trying to really narrow this problem down and came to the unfortunate conclusion that it is probably a combination of not very sharp lenses, a cheap adaptor and undoubtedly a dollop of user error. Whatever the reason I could not trust on the peaking to tell me which part of the image was in focus and so the technology was getting in the way of creating the images I wanted to.
This doesn’t mean that I wasn’t able to capture some interesting images – far from it. In fact I am really pleased with the result I obtained (you may not agree which is fine). It can also be argued that a competent photographer is capable of shooting around a problem with his/her equipment. This is true and hopefully that is what I was able to do yesterday. However, if there is a systemic problem rather than a one off equipment failure then that systemic failure needs to be addressed. The goal should be an image produced because of rather than despite the equipment used. Equally, photography should be a discussion of the image rather than the technology. A counter argument could be that photographers of the past managed to create brilliant images with much cruder equipment than is available today. Again very true but they usual had access to the best technology available at the time (however that might be defined) to help them make the images they wanted.
In short the experiment with the Canon FD lenses hasn’t worked they way I wanted it to and I going to have to accept that and move on. I may be a worrier but once I have found a solution I move on to worrying about how I am going to pay for the solution!
Suboptimal.
The idea of Brexit Britain was to visit a number of places during March 2019 and capture what I found there. The images were to be a random collection with no underlying message. This was how I found Britain in the momentous month when possibly, maybe, perhaps the British parliament and Government might come to some form of a decision regarding the withdrawal agreement between Britain and the European Union.
That was the plan as I started this journey in the city of Birmingham. However, my camera gear, the Canon FD lenses and the A6000, let me down badly. I just couldn’t make the damn lens focus. Sometime they would focus then the next shot they wouldn’t. This meant that many images that might have made the cut were discarded because they weren’t in focus. I spent a foodly part of the session just trying to find out when the lenses were in focus. In short the session became about the gear not the images which is just wrong. The only good thing I can draw from this is that it is a very good metaphor for the whole Brexit progress – one moment it is in focus the next it isn’t and you can never be quite sure why that is!
I have a solution to the problem but it does mean abandoning the Canon FD lenses and possibly my A6000. Just wish finding a solution to the Brexit conundrum was so simple.
It is an accepted aspect of life that the English are some of the worst linguist. Whether this is true or not is not the point here. We English have a reputation. It is especially true when compared to the linguistic skills of the Dutch or Scandinavian countries. They just seem to be able to master several languages when we English only master one. Of course we believe that as english is the lingua franca of the world most people have a grasp of the english language to enable us to get by when we venture out into the world.
This, of course, means that we have missed one vital fact. Whilst the language we use is english it isn’t the language that most of the world is talking to one another in. To them the english they talk to one another is not the Queen’s english but coloquial and sometimes misunderstood by we English. We have this problem when trying to use English english in America where, of course, they use American english. At times it can become similar to the imperial/metric problem – they both describe the same thing but there are differences that if not clarified can cause a satellite to crash into Mars.
I had a similar experience when watching a video by Jamie Windsor today.
Here he expresses his views on how to become a better photographer. On the whole his points are well made but one was to question whether you should be proud of your older images? He was arguing that to become a better photographer you must progress, try new things and challenge whether photographs you made three years ago are as good as you you thought they were at the time “…but if in three years time you’re still really proud of those images you’re probably not doing something right…” (6:30 into video).
Initially my reaction is that this is nonsense. A good photograph, however you judge it, is a good photograph no matter when you captured the image. Equally, in our digital world post production is so much more where the magic of photography lies than in the past and an image captured three years ago can and probably will look different if you post produced it today compared to three years ago. Then it struck me. I am not the audience he is trying to address but rather a younger audience where ten years ago is almost a lifetime (Instagram is less than 9 years old for example) which is very much the same as the English as a Second Language problem. I am now old compared to most photographers; my experiences are very different to theirs and I need to understand that.
To illustrate this point the three images on this blog were captured in the 1970’s and have been post produced in the last few years (the last two today) and reflect my formative period. They all have technical problems associated with them but nonetheless I feel they work for me. Whether they work for you is another matter because you bring a whole different set of preconceived ideas to viewing the images and I accept that. What I have to come to terms with to most of the people who might view this post 3 years is a long time and 40 years is, well, more than a lifetime.
All that I want is another baby
Ace of Base
So that is that then…winter is over! Spring is here, well at least as far as the meteorologists are concerned (and me). Whether the weather shares this point of view is another matter. Now we are into March what was the last three months like for me photographically?
I’m afraid to admit this but it has been the usual hotch potch of images with no underlying theme. I have no core photographic interest but rather a scattergun approach to what I capture. Yes some are shot with a wider project in mind but most are things that caught my eye whilst I have been out and about.
I have started to work on a new approach to making photographs using my A6000 and some old Canon FD lenses. The results have been frustrating in that I can’t rely on my photographic skills and abilities to make the image I want to make with the equipment I have at hand. Probably one of the reasons for this is that I am chopping and changing from the full manual lenses with slightly dodgy optics to my latests Sony and Zeiss lenses. The one great thing about the set up is that it is so light (my A7 and the prime lenses aren’t exactly heavy weight large format cameras) and makes for a great street photography set up.
Whilst talking about weight this has been the underlying driving force to my camera gear this winter – reducing it. I ended autumn selling a zoom lens I bought only 3 months earlier and replacing it with a prime lens. The reason for this was because I found the weight around my neck just too distracting. Perhaps it is because I am getting older and the thought of lugging a load of gear around with me is not something that attracts me anymore. Strangely enough I don’t miss the flexibility offered by the zoom. ( I felt the same when I sold a similar focal length zoom lens for my APS-C set up in the autumn. Although the Canon FD lens replacement is causing one or two issues as I have moaned about in this blog a number of times – including this one!)
So what does the spring hold? Apart from Brexit I have one or two ideas rumbling around in my head including finishing the Ironstone Benefice project. (As I write this even Brexit is still clouded in uncertainty and there is more than outside chance that the leaving process may be prolonged for several months longer – that will be fun!)
Overall the photographs I have produced during the last winter have been very rewarding for me and I hope that for those of you who have found this blog have given something to you too.
You can never plan the future by the past
Edmund Burke
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so near at hand…as Paul McCartney didn’t write. Perhaps, I might have rediscovered some of my touch at making reasonable likeness sketches. Such is life.
BTW, these sketches are supposed to be the women of the moment Olivia Colman and Dwayne Johnson – you decide which one is which.
I somehow seem to have misplaced whatever talent I had for making a drawing that is reasonably likeness of the person I was drawing. Not sure where it might have disappeared to but it ain’t here at the moment. I can make generic drawings such as these but nothing else at the moment.
Whenever I try to make something that starts to resemble a likeness it falls to pieces. I suspect it maybe because I spend more and more time creating digital paintings than with pencil and ink pen on paper. Perhaps it is something totally different?
I’ve just scanned through my work for the last 12 months and the last time I made a drawing on paper that actually resembled the person I was sketching was Sir Ian McKellen and that is 12 months ago! At this time I was attending an portrait art class so this may have had something to do with it?
When I put my mind to it I can make a reasonable likeness with my iPad such as Billie Piper or Sir Jonathan Millar. With pencil, pen and paper it doesn’t seem to work out and I find myself abandoning the drawing.
The elephant in the room here is photography. 2018 saw photography take an ever greater proportion of my creative output and this no doubt has affected things. So perhaps I should do the hard work and start to sketch again with pencil and paper and see where that takes me.
See I told you it was a first world problem!
Beyond the difficulty of shooting in bright sunshine it was another crazy winter’s day – at least if you consider nearly 18 degrees and brilliant sunshine a winter’s day! The nature at Calke Abbey today looked completely baffled as this sort of weather shouldn’t really show its face for at least another month at the very earliest. This time last year it was the beat from the east!
This was taken almost 12 months ago – not quite the same but more usual. Of course we could still be hit with really bad weather blowing in from the east – perhaps just in time for Brexit day!
I do hope winter is over but I fear what that means in the long term.
One final thing – if the Labour Party has decided to support a second referendum then perhaps this unseasonal weather is an omen for things to come? Unless of course you voted for Brexit last time around.
Happy Days?
This weather is crazy. On Friday it was 18 degrees C and we haven’t had a frost as such for some time. Whilst on a personal level it is wonderful not to have to endure a harsh winter you do have to worry what this is a harbinger for? On Friday I was out using my FD lenses again and as usual they were a mixed bag of trick and I am starting to have second thoughts again. “…patience my young padawan…” I can hear myself saying.
As if to underline just how crazy the weather is this morning it was back to something resembling what it should be at this time of year – mist and fog. However, it wasn’t that cold and flowers are appearing that shouldn’t be out for another month.
We live in crazy times and we seem to be getting the weather for it…today is forecast to be almost 18 degrees again.
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