Oliver Fox Photography

Deaf Boy

2012-01-21T06:23:00.000-08:00

My ears got bunged up and I lost my hearing in one of them. They're okay now though.

Bubble Bath

2011-12-28T01:05:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2011

2011-12-28T01:03:00.000-08:00

Lifeguard Hut

2011-12-28T01:00:00.000-08:00

My annual trip to New Brighton. Oddly it's first, a handheld snap, which is probably the best.

Some Self Portraits

2011-12-18T01:16:00.000-08:00

I got a new coat and I love it...

Revisiting an old photograph...

2011-12-11T08:25:00.001-08:00

God loves bankers too...

2011-12-11T05:52:00.000-08:00

Phew, that's a relief. I was really worried for a while...

The return of the mojo...?

2011-12-11T05:51:00.000-08:00

I shot these in the Turbine Room at Tate Modern. I like them, they're fitting in nicely with my push back to black and white and the unusual. I never thought I would admit to it, but I may be a closet surrealist. All the evidence is there - the body, the smoking gun, finger prints, DNA...the lot. I've just been in denial. Can't blame myself though, it's such a cliché. I mean really, I'll be studying my dreams next.

Upside Down

2011-12-11T05:37:00.000-08:00

Finally got my act together and went out to see what's new, albeit in the same old places. I've realised that the ability to cope with the monotony of the familiar and mundane is a key part of being a photographer. Much of the time it's about waiting for something to turn up or in the case of this one for the brain to catch up...

Room with a View

2011-10-09T13:50:00.000-07:00

Back in Moscow again...

Ver Lad's 40ths

2011-09-17T06:18:00.000-07:00

Me and three of the guys I grew up with on Stapleton Avenue decided to have a bit of a get together near Brecon in Wales.We stayed here...

www.stayinwales.co.uk/chalgrove

It doesn't look like much in the pictures, but it's actually very nice - big and in the middle of a beautiful Welsh valley, not that my photos do the place much justice.

So there we all were - a winemaker, a spy, a surveyor and an IT manager - middle aged and still going strong. Tim is the ruggedly handsome one, I'm the bald one, Aid is the one who doesn't look anywhere near 40 (lucky bugger) and John is the comical / intelligent looking one. Don't look to closely at the pictures as the sharpness is a bit wobbly, probably something to do with all the wine - adds to the artistic effect.

Raw

2011-08-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

Another one which I may get no thanks for, but again I think it captures something different.

Fox does Fashion

2011-08-29T07:00:00.001-07:00

One of the things I have learned on reviewing the images that I took with Bink is that whilst I have a reasonably good eye for detail, I still have some work to do. I think there were a lot of images that I took which might have been a lot stronger if I had come with a clearer vision of what I wanted and taken a little more time. The fourth image is good, but could be improved by moving the strap between the breasts instead of covering the rear one.

Hot Pants

2011-08-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

After a few minutes under the lights Bink couldn't wait to get these trousers off as she was baking in them. She looks great in these shots.

Slight Separation

2011-08-29T06:56:00.001-07:00

Another strange one and again I have no logical reason for liking it, but I do. I think it's down to the slight separation and the feeling like it's in the Pictorialist tradition.

Schizo

2011-08-29T06:56:00.000-07:00

Surreal

2011-08-29T06:55:00.002-07:00

I have no idea whether Bink will thank me for these or not, as you wouldn't necessarily describe them as flattering, but I like them. Her poses are great and I think the surreal effect adds to the vulnerability that she's showing.

Corsetry

2011-08-29T06:55:00.001-07:00

Madame Bink

2011-08-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

This is a new direction for me. I did toy with studio work a couple of years ago, but never really followed up on it as I got distracted by the streets. Having lost my street mojo, I figured I would give the studio work a proper crack and more specifically nude stuff. I have yet to work out exactly where I'm going with this, but I'm clear that I don't want to get into the numpty glamour / porn side of things. I suspect I will head in the direction of the fine art nude (I hate this term - it feels like an apology for enjoying the process of photographing naked people, an attempt to make it something more than it is), erotic and surreal categories. Basically if I can get anywhere near Bob Carlos Clarke or Helmut Newton then I figure I'm doing well.

Anyhow, after a bit of research I found Madame Bink and booked her for a day in her London studio (http://madamebink.co.uk/). Bink is great, not at all what I expected. She is very professional, but also really laid back and easy to work with. She also knows her eggs both in front of and behind the camera, so I actually learned a lot from her. So much so that I'm wondering if the quality of the pictures is down to me or her. Naturally I will tell everyone that it's down to me.

We spent the day going through a series of sets focused on nude, fashion and my current obsession with doing weird blurred stuff. So I'm going to do a series of posts covering the different styles. This first post is the classical nude stuff.

40 in Moscow

2011-08-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

I was away in Russia when I turned 40. I didn't get much of a chance to see the city as I was working during the day and hitting the bars and restaurants in the evenings. So I didn't get any decent pictures. I got to see my birthday in at the bar on the top floor of my hotel, overlooking Red Square at midnight...pretty awesome. We told the waitress it was my birthday which resulted in a series of drinks on the bar, which was good of them. But the next day was even more impressive. When I got back to my room after leaving the office I found the balloons and doll in my room. So after finishing my calls I went up to the bar to say thank you and have a quick drink only to find everyone knew it was my birthday. It was gone ten by the time left the bar, so I had to get room service. They also new it was my birthday and brought me a birthday cake with my dinner. To be fair it's the Ritz Carlton, so you kind of expect them to go a bit further, but I think they seriously knocked it out of the park when I was there. Great people.

Mort

2011-07-30T03:31:00.000-07:00

I'm worried I might be turning into a dodgy goth...

Skulls

2011-07-30T03:29:00.000-07:00

New Links

2011-07-24T13:27:00.001-07:00

Herman Upmann

2011-07-17T03:30:00.000-07:00

Spirit of the Sect

2011-07-17T03:18:00.000-07:00

I really liked the images that I took of the shoes (that I will never wear), so I'm going to muck around with it as a theme (the weather isn't great so I have to find something to shoot). I think in conjunction with the shots of the shoes themselves they might work as a group...

Lazy Post

2011-07-09T02:04:00.000-07:00

New Shoes

2011-07-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

I can't possibly wear the things because the soles are the best thing about them. I like the last image, it looks like a dogs head...

Split Tone Mad

2011-06-30T22:45:00.000-07:00

These are some of the views from my office on Bishopsgate. They're not the best as I wasn't happy wandering around taking photos when I really should have been working, so they're more like snaps. I was also using the Voigtlander 15mm which tends to distort things and finally the windows were dirty, which doesn't help. So I fudged them all by applying my new split tone preset. They're good enough I guess, but you kind of wish for the time and space to use a view camera.

Vegas Revisited

2011-06-26T02:30:00.000-07:00

I've been fiddling around with split toning in Lightroom. It's something I had wanted to do since using one of the presets on my NY and Vegas shots, which I thought was undermining my creative integrity as it's not my own take on things. Anyhow, this is my new version of the Vegas shots...

Brighton Snaps

2011-06-26T01:59:00.001-07:00

In Spite of the Weather

2011-06-26T01:56:00.001-07:00

A Forgotten Vegas Shot

2011-06-26T01:54:00.001-07:00

Old Photo

2011-06-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

This was from Madrid. No idea why it didn't post it before...

Professional Oli

2011-06-23T14:15:00.001-07:00

Polaroid Squares

2011-06-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

She sells love shells...

2011-06-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

Stonehenge

2011-06-18T08:08:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to get down to Stonehenge for a while and I thought today would be good with all of the clouds to get nice moody shots. Of course I didn't follow that theory to it's natural conclusion - rain. It took three trips back and forth between soakings to get a decent shot, but I didn't have time to get anything good. At least I've had a chance to work out where all of the angles are.

The shot below is okay, but it's not pin sharp (I may be judging it a bit harshly as it's out of the Nikon not the Leica) and it 's a little scruffy with the road and building in the background, not mention the shadows of the tourists as I was only exposing for 2 minutes.

I will try again with the Leica and a slightly better angle when the weather is better.

Another Sleeper

2011-06-12T05:25:00.001-07:00

The Drought Continues

2011-06-12T05:23:00.000-07:00

I really don't seem to be able to get it together. Being back at work isn't the excuse, the problem is that I'm not taking enough photographs mainly because I'm not excited by the things around me. Probably not a good reflection on my attitude at the moment. It may also be that I am constantly looking for the extreme and not the mundane. Yet the mundane has something going for it...

Apathy is Violent

2011-05-28T09:39:00.001-07:00

Me

2011-05-28T09:38:00.001-07:00

A Lovely Day in the Country

2011-05-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend at the Nurburgring and the Spa Francochamps circuit. I didn't get any decent shots at the Nurburgring as I was busy writing my will and you have to travel a bit to find a good spot to take photographs. The next time I go I might do that instead of drive, because this weekend has taken a few years off both me and the poor car. Spa was the better of the two days, as it was much better odds at 50:50 as to whether or not I would get out alive. Although according to the instructor who went around with me at the end of the day those odds where getting shorter the longer I stayed out.

The photos aren't up to much, but I think the whole point was to enjoy the weekend in the car, not behind the lens, so job done. And I was with a great bunch of guys which made the whole experience even better.

Southbank Beach Hut

2011-05-02T01:36:00.000-07:00

The Royal Wedding

2011-05-02T01:35:00.000-07:00

A good day for the happy couple, a bad day for the feckless photographer. I ended up in Kettners drinking champagne and martinis, having spent most of the wedding capturing little of any value. Best part of the day was the Lancaster bomber flying over Trafalgar Square. It was all worth it just to see that.

Hull

2011-04-25T12:50:00.000-07:00

Liverpool Graffiti

2011-04-25T12:48:00.000-07:00

Oddly, it's the last of these which may be the best...

New Brighton

2011-04-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

There's no way anyone is going to be able to put New Brighton on the map in the same way (or any way) that Martin Parr did in the 1980s, but there are a couple of opportunities for the landscape photographer, if only the weather would help out.

Nice Message

2011-04-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

Not the most pleasant message, but a strong image...

Anti Cuts Protest Diptych

2011-03-26T17:23:00.001-07:00

Nothing...

2011-03-26T17:18:00.000-07:00

Smash the place up...

2011-03-26T17:17:00.000-07:00

It was a good day for the country today. Lots of people out there expressing their frustrations from their many different perspectives and doing it in a community spirited way. Naturally there was the minority perspective hell bent on smashing the place up and dominating the headlines. So well done to them, they've achieved their aim...fuckwits.

It strikes me that when you see the people of the Middle East out on the streets you don't see too many with their faces covered (the women notwithstanding). Given the way in which their countries are governed this is an act of courage. Whilst our police forces have their moments, they are nowhere near as sadistic or malevolent as their opposite numbers in countries like Libya or Bharain. So why is it that the muppets that caused the trouble today mostly have their faces covered? Democracy is about transparency, so if you cover your face it means you're either too spineless to stand up and be counted or you're trying to get away with something. The people who caused the trouble today are probably both.

The sad thing about the second image below is that Ann Summers represents the best of British endeavour. This is a business that has been home grown from the ground up, so smashing a window is kind of like saying "we don't like success, even if it's off the back of hard working Brits". I'll repeat my initial thought from above...fuckwits.

Nice Girl / Noisy Girl

2011-03-26T16:51:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure she would appreciate the title, but as sweet as she looks in the first couple of images, she was definitely vociferous in her views about the cuts...

Anti Cuts Protest Bits and Bobs

2011-03-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

Anti Cuts Protest People

2011-03-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

I think there are some really nice images amongst these. The couple in the first two are great, I really like the Scouse Solidarity and the last two hit the mark...

Anti Cuts Protest Signs

2011-03-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

Bottle Wire

2011-03-20T06:49:00.000-07:00

When I was staying with my parents over Christmas I noticed that when you scrunch up the wire you sometimes get around wine bottles it looks really cool. I have no idea why they put wire around some bottles and not others, seems to be a Spanish thing, possibly Italian too. I think I like the second one best...

Street Porn

2011-03-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

I took this picture a while back before someone added the blood/mascara running effect. I chose not to post it, because it was too obvious, now it's great...

A bike...

2011-03-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

Will and the People

2011-03-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

Initially I thought this might be a graffiti artist modifying the idea of "power to the people", but it turns out that it's some ultra cool pop band doing some ultra cool advertising. Ever the curious, I took a listen to their music. Ultra nothing. It's amazing how predictable the kids are nowadays. I wish somebody would do something new, even if it's crap. That's how The Sex Pistols got started after all. Nonetheless the seem like a happy bunch, so maybe I should mind my own business.

Concrete is cool...

2011-03-14T08:09:00.001-07:00

A cheerful outlook...

2011-03-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

Flying home...

2011-03-08T06:01:00.000-08:00

Madrid Street Performer

2011-03-08T05:58:00.002-08:00

Not perfect, but okay...

Madrid Oddity

2011-03-08T05:55:00.000-08:00

I like this one a lot...

Madrid Building

2011-03-08T05:51:00.000-08:00

Madrid Hotel Portrait

2011-03-08T05:49:00.001-08:00

Mercado de San Miguel

2011-03-08T05:48:00.000-08:00

This market is amazing. The concept is pretty simple, you can take the produce away if you like, but you can also grab a table and enjoy a glass of wine and some food, which is top quality. This chap was cutting some slices of Jamon Iberico for me...

I'm glad I don't work for a bank...

2011-03-08T05:44:00.000-08:00

...yet.

Madrid Surfaces

2011-03-08T05:32:00.000-08:00

I like the first of these, I think it's calling for a general strike. The second last is cool too.

Madrid Graffiti - Black and White

2011-03-08T05:26:00.000-08:00

I like these images. The shadow on the first one changes it into something a little more interesting. The second is just a nice cacophony of scribbles. The third is weird and the last has nice lines.

Cafe Central - Ara Malikian

2011-03-08T05:21:00.000-08:00

On Sunday night we went to Cafe Central in Madrid to see the violinist Ara Malikian. A seriously good evening. Lots of Rioja and good company, but the man himself was very good. Nice bloke to talk to too. I wasn't sat in the right position to get photographs of him, so I had to snap the pianist instead. He was pretty impressive too. I used the Voigtlander Nokton for these. I'm quite impressed with its performance.

I'm back!!!

2011-03-08T05:16:00.000-08:00

It's been far too long, but I have been really struggling with my mojo. I have taken some photographs in the last few weeks, but they are of a more personal nature and not something for this blog.

So what fixed me? Madrid! A great city. I went a few years ago and had a great time then too, so maybe I should go a little more often. My technical ability has waned a little, so I didn't get as many photographs as I might normally, but it's a start. The next few posts will cover the trip, but the first of these two is pretty good. Very Phillip Lorca di Corcia.

Red Door

2011-01-21T01:44:00.000-08:00

I've walked past this door numerous times and have tried to shoot it just right. I think I'm almost there with this one, but probably should have captured the whole door...

Orange

2011-01-21T01:43:00.000-08:00

I really like this shot. It's as if the orange graffiti is floating above the surface it is on...

Dreary Wall

2011-01-21T01:41:00.000-08:00

Gloomy, grey, rainy days...

2011-01-21T01:17:00.001-08:00

Slumber

2011-01-21T01:14:00.000-08:00

So, I'm back to this again. Based on some encouragement from friends who thought it might be a good idea I set the camera up to do time lapse whilst I was sleeping. The downside is that I had to leave the hallway light on to allow for decent exposure times (around 30 seconds a pop), which meant it was a disturbed sleep as I prefer the light to be off. Another downside is I could only get about 70 odd shots before the battery gave out.

I don't think the images are particularly interesting. They're just pictures of a bloke in bed, sleeping. I was hoping that I might see something interesting that I would never have known because I was asleep, but nothing was there. The only thing of note was how disturbed my sleep was, but that was because the shutter occasionally half woke me when it fired.

I suppose the images might have been more interesting if I was attractive and naked, but that isn't me. Maybe installing a camera long term to cover the whole room and shoot for a year would be a more interesting project, but a real ball ache without guaranteeing anything of genuine interest.

Jack

2011-01-20T09:37:00.000-08:00

Shortly before Christmas I went to visit some friends up in Harrogate to meet their new boy for the first time. He's a little corker and blessed with a temperament that most parents would gladly swap a kidney or two for. I was a bit rusty with the cameras, but managed to get a couple of nice shots...

Photographer's Block

2011-01-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

The streets aren't giving me anything at the moment. The same old places in London, but nothing really changes. Slim pickings as they say. I took the following series of images after finding this website...

http://www.insomnium.co.uk/

It's not really my thing, as I find surrealist art can be a bit predictable. Nonetheless, there are some great sequences on this website, particularly in the People gallery.

I wasn't unhappy when I took the sequence, I was just mucking around. But seeing as I'm fairly hacked off with my lack of output at the moment I thought I might as well post them as opposed to leaving them to languish on the hard disk collecting digital dust.

Review of 2010

2011-01-19T07:43:00.000-08:00

2010 was probably the best year yet for my photography. I did lots of interesting things and met new people who have helped me improve my photography, either through reassurance or inspiration. I have also begun to understand a lot more about what I want to do in the future.

Project Work

New York - I went to New York as a part of my trip to America. I took lots of great photographs and even managed to get quite a useful gallery out of it, weird though it is.
London - I have narrowed my focus on London down to graffiti and surfaces. The black and white work I was doing is largely complete. I feel that I can't do much more with that and have a complete set of images that I am happy with. The Fore Street Avenue and Surfaces images are something that I am very happy with, but I feel they are sketches for something bigger. What that might be I don't really know yet.
Graffiti - See above for the black and white work. This is something I will always be attracted to, but I think I am looking for the things that are more subtle, less obvious, but more telling.
Choose a cause such as Election 2010 and follow it - I didn't do this, primarily because my full time job wouldn't allow me the time. I can't say that I'm too disappointed, but I do still want to do some documentary work involving people.
Try and create a different perspective on Street Photography (like the Sartorialist) - I haven't achieved this, but I do think I am beginning to develop a style and an interest that is specific to me. I feel that only a well defined and significant project (in terms of size) will finally help me to nail this.

Blog

I have really enjoyed my blogging this year and this is reflected in the significantly greater number of posts made in comparison to 2009 (257 versus 65). This was in large part due to my work in the US, but even so...

Increase the number of followers to 100+ and putting some regular features in - Getting followers is a bit of a bugger. I've realised I'm not really doing this for anybody other than myself. I do ask people to follow me and I've had some really good feedback, as much for the writing as for the images, but I'm not overly fussed about building a readership. On this basis, putting features in doesn't really add value. I guess the whole idea is that it is a diary and in this respect it works very well for me. I know I do have a small following and I hope they continue to enjoy the blog for what it is.
Review other websites and blogs - The idea behind this was to get link backs to build my followers. In line with the comments above this is something that has not been done.
Get some categories in there (Graffiti, Street Life, Sleepers, Humour, etc.) - Done, although I would like to do a little rationalisation.
Equipment (not reviews) usage - Again given the comments above, I don't intend to help people improve their own photography through my blog. However, I may set up a separate blog to do this if I think there is value to add.
Book reviews - I will from time to time do this, but from a more personal perspective. I can use this to encourage myself to think more about other photographer's work in a more meaningful way than just leafing through their images.
Comments on photographers - As per the last point.

Administration

Start printing my work at the point of editing and archive the prints - I am doing this and it is proving useful as a way of helping me improve my workflow and critique my work in a more traditional manner.
Consider creating a new Lightroom catalogue and workflow - Not done. I will do this shortly when I run out of space on my current hard disks.
Don't buy any more kit other than consumables - I bought two new cameras. Completely dunderheaded in one case and extravagant in the other. I now have two M9s and the D700. This is more than enough. When I start work again I will probably get the new Fujifilm X100, but I may wait a while.
Sell some of the kit that I have and am not using - I have started doing this, but have a way to go yet.

Other

Submit my photographs to magazines - Not done. To be honest I completely forgot about this as a goal, it's not something I am thinking about at the moment, so don't plan to include it for 2011.
Start selling the images - I have set up the capability to do this through my website and people have asked if they can buy images, but I'm not sure that I want to go down this route just yet. So whilst the functionality is there it is not enabled.

Unplanned Events

Lots of things happened in 2010 that I didn't plan for...

Mental Health - Whilst they are not entirely original I am very proud of these images. It required a bit of pluck to go into the property and I think that what I produced has genuine emotional impact.
Street Photography Workshop - Meeting David Gibson and Chris King through this has been a real pleasure and in turn they have introduced me to new people, in particular Christophe Agou who was kind enough to spend some time with me in New York.
America - Six weeks in a Dodge Challenger with only me and my cameras. A great little adventure and something that I plan to do again soon, albeit in a different place.

Spooky Thumper

2010-12-05T04:40:00.000-08:00

Weird Ones...

2010-12-05T04:39:00.000-08:00

I went for a stroll around London with a good friend of mine yesterday. He with his insanely annoying talent with the Hipstamatic and me with my insanely expensive Leicas. I have to admit that I was paying scant attention to the process of photographing things as I was more content to have a chinwag than anything else, so wasn't overly optimistic that I had caught anything worth bothering with. So I'm a little surprised with what I did get - oddly attractive in their own simple minded way. I particularly like the protester which has been there for a while from what I can gather, but is protected by shutters which were briefly up yesterday.

Christmas is coming...

2010-12-05T04:23:00.001-08:00

At last...

2010-12-02T02:24:00.000-08:00

...the snow has arrived in Woking. I've been watching the news wondering what all the fuss is about, because all we've had is a light dusting until last night. We now have a healthy 4 inches and I have something to photograph.

Back to the Old Stuff

2010-11-29T15:42:00.000-08:00

Nothing new here. A bitterly cold day, but I couldn't find anything to reflect that. However, the first shot is a cracker. It's obviously graffiti, but this artwork is only found on the boards that are used for building sites, so I am assuming it is commissioned. To the uninitiated it might be construed as offensive, but it is actually quite touching. The other two shots are useful too.

Autumn

2010-11-29T15:33:00.000-08:00

Irony

2010-11-26T17:13:00.000-08:00

Over the last week or so the wheels have properly come off and the cameras have done nothing useful other than look pretty whilst gathering dust. So having lost my mojo it was with some surprise that the one thing that has brought me back to life was the one thing I put the boot into in one of my recent posts - Hipstamatic. I am prone to talking utter bollocks from time to time and my thoughts on the app are part of an internal dialogue that I am going through about photography, my current thought being that everything is contrived and that all the tools I use have limitations and control my decisions on creativity to a greater or lesser extent. It's what I choose to do in spite of those limitations that defines the quality of my output. Perhaps a little less thinking and a lot more shooting will help.

All of these images were taken at the Goodman restaurant on Old Jewry in the city. Good food, great staff and a good selection of whisky. We seem to struggle with the wine list though.

Readings

2010-11-17T05:38:00.000-08:00

I was leafing through Deus Ex Machina by Ralph Gibson in the image from my last post. And what with trying to plough through Chris Townsend's introduction to the Francesca Woodman book and reading Alix Cleo Roubaud I seem to be lost in a sea of surreal, conceptual photography. It's the only thing that's cheering me up at the moment.

Still, like Ralph says - he's only as good as his next photograph and that's why he looks forward to the next day. Which is alright if you're as good as he is, but I get his point.

I'm going to go and do a bit of dusting...

Bedtime

2010-11-17T05:25:00.000-08:00

I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall at the moment. A fruitless trip to London yesterday and a lack of ideas for something new. Not to mention my attempts at photographing myself sleeping. I had another go at the long exposure a couple of nights ago, but the negative came out black. Zero light may be a big issue. Next I had a crack at doing time lapsed photos only to find that the composition meant that I was barely visible in the images. And it turns out that the weird shot from a couple of posts ago wasn't weird because of the long exposure and changing light, but probably because the film had been sitting in the dark slide for at least a year.

There were some salvageable images, but my brain isn't giving me what I want...

Battersea Power Station Again

2010-11-14T08:39:00.000-08:00

I took this shot ages ago, but only processed it this morning. It's okay, but my inexperience with processing may have caused some slight vertical streaking. I'm trying to work out whether large format is all a bit of a faff or genuinely worth the effort. I certainly feel more of a man when I get it right.

Large Format Slumber

2010-11-14T08:33:00.000-08:00

I decided to have a play with the big camera for the first time in ages. Of course I had to take a photograph of it first...

The image below is an 8 hour exposure of me while I was sleeping last night. I'll probably do the same again tonight, but this time I'll stop the exposure before the sun comes up as this caused the burn out on the left side of the image. In my defence I did dream that I had closed the shutter in good time, but after I woke up and checked, that turned out not to be the case.

The exposure was a complete guess - 8 hours at f32 using FP4. Reciprocity failure is massive and my mistake in not stopping the exposure before the sun came up probably allowed a reasonable image to form. So it's either HP5 tonight or a wider aperture.

I like what's happened though. The strange mottling on what is a smooth cream wall, the burn out, the odd band in the top right, the multiple exposure look of the bedsheets, etc. The only disappointment is that I am not more visible in the picture. Other things went wrong too. I had to do a slight adjustment on rotation because the composition was slightly off which is unforgivable on a large format camera. And the amount of dust I managed to get on the negative required a good stint of spotting to get rid of most of it.

Hipstamatic Thoughts

2010-11-12T20:20:00.000-08:00

Once again I was in London unarmed, but for my iPhone and the Hipstamatic app. Normally I wouldn't be bothered, but my company for the evening was an avid and very capable Hipstamitacist. Every time I see his stuff I start mucking about with the app myself. The trouble is that I have a philosophical problem with the thing. No matter how compelling the images, I'm not happy with the idea that I am relinquishing creative control of the final result to the post processing done within the app. Moreover the images are contrived - a throwback to a bygone era.

At the moment I am reading the Journal of Alix Cleo Roubaud. In the introduction her husband explains some of her attitudes to photography, much of which struck a chord with me. In particular I appreciated her view that printing alone takes that which is captured and truly makes the image. There's nothing new in this, Ansel Adams was a major influence in this respect, but it's easy to forget how important the final product is at a time when you click the shutter and an instant later you see the image on the back of the camera and on the computer screen a short while after that. Roubaud was working in the late 70s and early 80s so all of her work was done in the traditional darkroom, a place where the photographer could expand upon his / her initial idea through the control of light and chemicals. And a print was a one off, never to be reproduced in exactly the same way at the next attempt. Similar maybe, but never the same. As much as the choice of subject and the composition of an image are important in defining the photographer's perspective, the work done in the darkroom can also have a significant influence in this respect.

Today, this creative process is largely done in Photoshop and at the end you simply click "print" and you can have as many copies as you like and they are all exactly the same. Much of the time the final image is not even printed and exists only on the computer screen. But this doesn't mean that we have relinquished the creative element of producing the final image, we have simply made the last step a lot easier (the nightmare of monitor and print calibration notwithstanding). If anything the creative possibilities have been expanded through software such as Photoshop. So why use an app that wants to take us back in time and asks us to relinquish control over the final image? With Hipstamatic you still get to choose your subject and in some part the composition, but not what happens to the image after the shutter is fired.

This last part in the process is important to me, even though I don't make significant alterations to my images, I do have a view on how I want them to look after processing. In general, for my colour work I go for high contrast, punchy images and for my B&W work I go for high contrast, gritty images, in many cases destroying detail in favour of impact. My standard workflow is to decide on whether to convert to B&W, which is driven by the choice of subject, then to make cropping adjustments, followed by corrections to contrast, colour and sharpness. Cropping is relatively rare and always minimal. Aside from my square format images I never take out more than 5% of an image. In fact as time goes by I find myself cropping less and less and it's almost always perspective adjustments because no matter how hard I try the Leica is a bugger to get clean lines with in certain circumstances. I am getting better with it, but I really should be using a large format camera when I want perfect composition and let the Leica be the free wheeling hippy of a camera that it is.

Largely speaking I know what the final image is going to look like as I am taking the shot. In this respect I am pre-visualizing the end result. But there are times when I don't think things through and this is probably my biggest disappointment and lesson from the US trip. I should have taken only the Leica with me. It would have significantly narrowed my creative options and forced me to shoot much more consistently whilst I was away. I should also have given more consideration to the themes I wanted to follow and the overall feel of the work. It turns out that style is actually quite important in supporting the substance of an image or series of images. The lesson has been learned though and it is why I have been sat here for the last couple of weeks wondering - "what next?".

Ever the schizophrenic and in thoughtless opposition to what is written above, Hipstamatic does produce some interesting results. The first shot below is poor, but weird, so interesting, then forgettable. The second is visually quite effective. And the third is odd - what's the moon doing in the top left corner? Perhaps this is one of the good things about the app - randomness. But I still think the images are contrived. I look at them and I don't feel that they are mine.

As with any camera you could spend a lifetime learning how to use Hipstamatic and get ever better results. The guy I spent this evening with is producing some really great stuff - stuff for which I can put aside my own philosophical qualms and enjoy for what it is. But I have my Leicas and they are more than enough to keep my attention.

Stills

2010-11-09T14:33:00.000-08:00

Prophylactics

2010-11-08T12:33:00.000-08:00

Great word - "prophylactic" - not sure about these though. I'm thinking about starting a separate blog dealing with the square format still life pictures that I seem to like doing. I've done a bit of work on it and will test drive it with a few folk to see what they think.

This second image is entitled "Sabotage"...

Hospital Flower

2010-11-08T11:52:00.000-08:00

Still Life Panel

2010-11-07T05:24:00.000-08:00

I can feel a theme forming...

Hipstamatic

2010-11-07T04:59:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who's pretty handy with this iPhone app. It's not something I use a great deal, mainly because I like to use my "proper" cameras to capture images. But I didn't have any with me yesterday as I was watching the rugby, so the iPhone had to do...

More Objects

2010-11-07T04:52:00.000-08:00

It's interesting to see how the lighting (colour temperature), ISO setting, aperture and shutter speed all affect the look and feel of a shot. The crushed bottle in my last post was shot in the evening with the wall and ceiling lights on at ISO 640, 4s @ f16, against black velvet with black card top and right to kill off light leaking onto the background. This choice of setup had more to do with the wine swilling around in my belly than any sensible decision making process involving what remains of the grey matter, but it produced a good result. Shot in daylight in a white tent at ISO 200 and 4s @ f22 the result is far less interesting.

However, the following images were shot in this latter setup and look pretty good...

Squished

2010-11-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

I guess it's been a slow week. I like the image below though. I really should fiddle around with still life some more.

Sunflower Seeds

2010-11-02T14:11:00.000-07:00

The grey rubble is sunflower seeds on the floor of the turbine room in the Tate Modern. I'm getting into my arrangements of photos, I quite like the splittedness of this one, a nice little diptych...