However, for all my reading and viewing, one of the aspects of this great art that drew me into it in the first place still remains, I am a gear head and love the technology of photography. I grew up with digital technology, we had a computer at home in 1980, although one that came in a bag with instructions on how to use a soldering iron. Today we have 3 desktops powering various things in the house, 3 or 4 laptops, 2 iPads, 4 or 5 Internet radios, and the list goes on. This is largely driven by living abroad, but needing a regular BBC fix, the computers do service as TV's most of the time.
When I was younger I was prodded in the direction of photography with a Russian manual SLR followed by a Cosina with built in exposure metering (miracle at the time), however, I simply did not have the patience with the process as it was then. When digital cameras came along, that was a new beginning, wedding a camera to a computer, brilliant. I started with a 640x480 Minolta and things simply escalated from there. With the advent of my first DSLR, a Canon 20D, bought 6 or 7 years ago to use underwater, a new element emerged, GLASS. I started collecting Canon lenses adding a new one every now and then extending my capabilities and broadening the range of subjects I could tackle. I now have a good range of prime and zoom lenses to turn to. During last years 2 wedding shoots, I carries a 16-35 f/2.8, 24-70 f/2.8, 35 f/1.4, 135 f/2, and 70-200 f/2.8, plus two bodies, 2 flash units, tripod and a plethora of spare batteries and the junk that fills a camera bag. Needless to say, whilst I got some very good photos and put both brides in tears with the subsequent book (acid test for wedding photography), I also ended up with a strained shoulder and extreme fatigue.
During my landscape course I routinely hauled my Canon 5D2 and a bunch of prime lenses around, again resulting in a variety of neck problems. As time progressed I found myself devolving to a single zoom lens, my 24-105 f/4, and my yet my work continued to improve. Finally for Assignment 5, I have shot the whole assignment using a Fuji X100, a tiny (by comparison to the 5D2) camera with a fixed focal length of 35mm (Full Frame Equivalent). Each time I downsized it changed how I used the camera and ultimately how I looked at my subjects, the Fuji forces me to work the space, rather than simply turn the zoom ring. I have learned a couple of key lessons. The first is that the photographers vision makes the image, not the camera. Secondly a small camera is discreet and non-threatening. My final assignment for Landscape took me into communal but private spaces, the inner courtyard of blocks of flats. A large conspicuous camera could have led to confrontation or at least suspicion.
As I now embark on a new course it is a time to assess how I take photographs and what I use to take them. The lessons from Landscape are very much relevant to this course. A large black heavy camera with a substantial lens hanging off the front, especially a white zoom telephoto, will signal to everyone that a photographer is on the prowl. Germans, in particular, have a distaste towards being photographed without their permission. The country has a long and disturbing history of the use of surveillance photography to incriminate and then ultimately destroy people. It is actually illegal here to take photographs and publish them without the explicit permission of anyone "featured" in the photograph. In the age of Facebook this is largely ignored, but is a signal to the sensitivity of people to photography. Discretion will be a key to my success or failure with this course.
Here is the equipment I used for Landscape Assignment 3 and next to it what I used for Assignment 3:
The small silver lens next to the Fuji is a brand new WA converter that takes the lens from 35mm FFE to 28mm. The Fuji is just as capable as the DSLR in creating photographs and in fact at higher ISOs is substantially better. The loss of weight and tiny size make this a superb camera to work a crowd. It does have a singular downside, whilst 35mm is my favored focal length for many uses, it is quite short. To go longer I need a different camera. That's where the latest addition to the family signs in:
Before receiving the Fuji X100 as a very surprising Christmas gift from my wife (love has no bounds) I had invested in small and very cheap Samsung mirrorless system camera and a set of pancake prime lenses. The NX100, whilst capable was not a great camera, so I have added the new NX20 to the system and an image stabilized 60mm. With a fold out screen and decent Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) this is a far better camera, effectively a tiny DSLR. The whole system, with 20-50 zoom, 16, 20, 30, and 60mm primes, is still half the weight of the full frame DSLR sitting next to it. I admit straight away that the DSLR is a better camera, but I suspect that with the Fuji and the Samsung I can go places and take shots that would simply never happen with the heavier conspicuous DSLR.
Before finishing this eulogy to my technology obsession, I would like to briefly document the other side of the shooting process, my workstation for developing digital images
As with the build out of camera systems, it is equally important to have a good quality post processing environment. Mine is based around a Windows 7 desktop. To this I have attached a 30 inch monitor as a prime editing space and an aging 24 inch monitor. The second monitor is very useful when working through large numbers of images as pictured or when working in photoshop as a place for the toolbars. Both monitors are calibrated and to the same standards! The strong blue caste of the right hand monitor is barely noticeable to the eye and should serve as a warning that even when properly calibrated an old monitor might still be way off. I do all colour adjustments on the primary screen and printed output is fine. On the right is a RAID array containing 4 x 1TB drives in a striped configuration meaning that it will survive a single drive failure. This is then backed up to a set of 1TB drives that otherwise sit on a shelf disconnected from power. The last key piece of technology attached to the computer is a graphics tablet for detailed photo editing, enabling a degree of precision and comfort impossible with a mouse.
Hanging off the computer is an Epson 9 ink R3000 A3+ printer and a V700 photo scanner. The printer is superb and I am more than happy with the results it produces especially combined with Epson's Archival Matte paper. I use the scanner less often than I thought, but it exists for archival work, I have a set of old family photos that I want to turn into a book for preservation purposes.
Turning to software, like many photographers I am fully bought into the Adobe view of the world. Lightroom is my primary tool, I use it for managing my images and for RAW conversion. Although I have Photoshop CS4, I rarely ever use it, I find that Lightroom is more than capable of the degree of processing that I want to do. I use the word processing, rather than editing. I change colour balance, contrast, and do apply perspective corrections where needed. Cropping and spot removal are the only real changes to the actual pixel data that I do - I crop almost all photographs, I don't buy into the perfection of the frame as taken. The only time I turn to Photoshop is for printing, it manages the print work flow far better than Lightroom. For pure photographic purposes I now find that Photoshop is largely an expensive irrelevance.
In a very real sense this is my Digital darkroom, I can take images from camera to print sitting at my desk, I can also update my blog and keep in touch with my classmates - I am sitting their right now typing on the keyboard.
All this technology is useful, a key part of my studies at the OCA, and a reflection on being 48 years old with no kids or a mortgage. However, it is simply a means to an end and honestly not the most important part of my photographic practice. The following image is where I really learn:
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Looking at other photographers work is central to my understanding of the art and developing my own practice. OK, Amazon are getting rich at my expense, however, living abroad I don't have access to libraries so am gradually building my own a few books at a time. This set points to my interests and my initial naivety about photography. The Newton book is a good example of something bought on a whim at the start of the course, not terribly informative to anything i am ever likely to do, although very impressive imagery. My own interests at present still rest with the New Topologists and the photographers who emerged from the Duesseldorf school, however, I have a little of pretty much everything, expect perhaps Japanese photographers.
This is the one bone of contention between Heidi and I, I have been very clearly informed that when we next move house I can carry the bloody books myself.
So that is my photographic world, I am very lucky to have this, but need to continually remind myself that photographs are not made in front of a computer or in the pages of a photobook, they are waiting to be created outside my front door.
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