P21: camera handling

Another of those rather odd basic skills projects that abound in the older OCA courses.  It is this kind of activity that makes me wonder quite what the course designers were thinking and does have a tendency to diminish my faith in the education I am receiving.  This in particular would make sense in TAOP, but halfway through a second year degree module?  However, rather than explode in a fit of indignation I decided to have some fun with this exercise and use it to explore a variety of different camera handling techniques.

The suggested technique, the 6th image above, of supporting the lens with one hand and operating the shutter with the other is fine if using an SLR, clearly the author did not anticipate mirrorless compacts not having an eye piece, the advent of the camera phone, or even the use of a rangefinder.  And clearly he or she did not give any thought to underwater use while wearing scuba gear, so thoughtless...

Technology has advanced a lot since the original design of this course in 1991 and even since the last edit dated 2006.  A couple of things have actually come full circle.  First of all the boxy integrated lens range finder style has reappeared, although now we refer to them as mirrorless compacts.  This makes for a much smaller camera that can be firmly held in both hands without needing to support the lens.  Secondly the introduction of articulated screens means that we can return to a style of camera use similar to the waste level finder from the boxy medium format TLRs.  Both of these innovations have resulted in cameras whose use is far more discreet than the traditional DSLR with its huge zoom lenses and flower petal hoods.

When I started working on Social Documentary projects I found that my Canon DSLR was simply too noticeable, it drew attention and alerted my quarry to the presence of a photographer.  DSLRs are also seen as "proper" cameras used by professionals, immediately raising suspicion.  My Fuji X100 "rangefinder" is almost invisible to the casual observer, it looks like a basic camera, but captures professional level images.  Its small size and fixed focal length make using it far faster.  Alternatively I have a couple of interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras that have articulated screens, meaning that I can shoot with the camera at waste high.  Even if noticed, the casual observer often thinks I am looking at an image not taking a photo. Finally all of these cameras are nearly soundless in operation, something I certainly cannot say of my 5D2.

Added to the changing format of modern cameras is the huge technological advance in image stabilization and high ISO capability.  Much of the need for drawing in the elbows, pulling the camera close to face, and exerting a strong supportive grip comes from the limitations of ISO 400 film in non stabilized cameras.  If I couple a good IS system to reliable ISO 3200 operation, I get another 7-8 stops of effective hand holdability.  In other words I can shoot hand held at night time on a moving boat and produce acceptable results, more of which in a later post.  This changes the game and permits both changes in handling and also environments in which a camera can be used.

Ultimately, though, the route to optimum stability is a tripod:

This was my set up for the shoot above.  My 5D2 mounts a 24-70 f/2.8 zoom and a 580EX II flash gun.  I have attached a remote trigger with a 10s delay on the shot.  The camera is directly attached to my computer permitting me to see the images as I shoot to confirm focus and lighting.  I prefocused the camera so that I would be in focus if I stood on a certain line on the floor.  This had to be adjusted a little every now and then as different lens meant I was closer or further from the camera.  The rest was simply to hot the trigger and assume a pose.

This was a fun project, a great way to while away a bank holiday morning.  Recently I have written about stress and disillusionment with the current course.  This project is one of the reasons for the latter, my approach was a way to deal with the former.  Photography for me is meant to be fun, I want a degree and I want to do some serious work, but good grief, I am doing this for enjoyment and I really enjoyed this!

Technology

Photography is not about technology, but it is a practice that has always taken advantage of the latest developments in science and engineering.  The early days of photography in the 19th century were limited by and then liberated by developments in the chemistry of film and the printing process. In the 20th I would argue that film technology although changing did not make such leaps, instead the Physics of Optics made for the greatest changes, as lenses became sharper, lighter and more versatile.   Now in the 21st electronics leads the way with the ability of electronic engineering to rapidly shrink the size and cost of devices whilst simultaneously improving utility and quality.

This is leading me to rethink the camera technology that I use and what I consider to be my standard kit. Although recently I have explored the use of medium format film and still see my Fujifilm GF670 as a go to camera for art driven work, I am firmly a child of the digital world.  In two weeks we leave for our annual diving trip to South East Asia, 3 weeks away from the grind of work to kick back and relax, but also to turn my attention back to my original photographic love, the tropical reef ecosystem.  This triggered a major rethink on the cameras I use, both underwater and above.

I have been shooting digital cameras underwater for 11 years, starting with a 2MP Canon Ixus in a tiny box, graduating to an Olympus WZ5060 bridge camera and then to a Canon EOS 20D/40D DSLR setup.    Each time the amount of equipment I needed to carry grew larger and larger, and when coupled with Heidi's video rig, meant we had roughly 20Kg of camera equipment to carry on each trip.  Not only are the housings heavy, but the nature of underwater photography requires backup, 3 cameras have died on me over the years.  During the same period of time airlines have become increasingly fussy about the amount of checked and hand luggage that can be carried.  When diving they offer an additional 10Kg on top of the 20Kg of standard luggage, which helps, but with our combined dive, photo kit, and other essentials (clothes) coming to 100Kg, our hand carry was becoming unwieldy.  We routinely carried 15-20Kg of camera gear in large camera rucksacks.  Not only was it painful to carry, it was also getting harder and harder to fool the check in staff.  Underwater this is not such an issue, as the kit is pretty close to neutral buoyancy, but it did have its challenges in heavy current.

At the same time my 40D setup was 6 years old, one camera had already needed to be replaced, and the housing was beginning to show its age.  My first consideration was to house either my 5D2 or 7D, requiring a simple replacement of the housing, but retaining the lens ports and flash guns, cheap and a definite upgrade in quality.  But, not solving the weight issue.  Another way to go would have been one of the new high end compact cameras, a Canon S100 or G14/G1X, but this would have been too great a step down in quality.  What I needed was something with higher quality than the 40D, offering flexibility, but much smaller.  The answer needed two technologies to come together.  The first was the advent of affordable machined aluminium housings from a Hong Kong company called Nauticam.  Up to this point I had been using Ikelite polycarbonate housings, low cost, but very heavy, existing aluminium DSLR housings were in excess of 3000 Euros without lens port. The second was the advent of mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras offering DSLR quality in a very much smaller package.

After a great deal of thought we both opted for a Panasonic GX1 micro 4/3 system, equally capable for video and still photography.  Using the same cameras meant sharing lenses and most importantly having a backup system should one fail.  In my case I also switched out my strobes from the heavy electronically fired Ikelite DS125s to much smaller optically fired Inon D2000s.  The former are triggered by a sync cord that links from the strobe to the camera making a direct electronic contact and permitting TTL operation.  This requires several connections through waterproof bulheads and is not the cheapest option, a Y cable firing two strobes costs 200 Euros and this is the one part that will certainly break so two are needed.  The Inon strobes are very different, they link to the camera by a "wet" fibre optic cable and use the pulse of light from the cameras onboard flash to trigger the external strobes.  Cheap and cheerful, although perhaps not so reliable.

The photo above shows the two systems assembled, the diminutive GX1 system in front of my 40D system.  The smaller size means less drag underwater and almost a 50% reduction in weight from 8.5Kg to 4.5Kg in the hand.  Simply carrying this from my room to the dive boat will be so much easier!

Another key advantage of the Panasonic camera is that it is operated entirely using the screen on the back as a viewfinder.  Normally this would rule the camera out for me, I require the option of a proper viewfinder, EVF or optical.  However, underwater, wearing a diving mask, using a camera that only offers an eyepiece is very challenging. I am unable to see the whole frame and when using the camera lose spatial awareness in the water.  This and the diminutive size of the system make it far more versatile underwater.  I will be able to maneuver the camera into locations that previously would be impossible.

Finally the Nauticam housing is a itself a work of art, a simple box, but one that is very elegantly engineered.  All controls are accessible and visibly marked.  Diving is not hard, but also not easy, there are a lot of things that must be constantly monitored such as air consumption, nitrogen loading, depth and buoyancy.  Adding a camera into the mix really complicates things.  Having clear labeling of buttons takes away another thing to remember.

This internal shot shows how a set of gears and buttons take the controls through the housing and onto the camera.

With the camera comes lens selection.  Underwater there are two pretty much standard lens types, ultra wide angle and macro, with little in between.  The nature of water and how it absorbs light means that a successful photograph is rarely taken more than 1m from the subject.  A wide angle enables close approach whilst retaining the ability to view a large expanse of the reef.  Wide angle lenses also generally have very short minimum focus distance coupled with high depth of field even at large apertures.  So far I have bought an 8mm fisheye and a 12mm f/2.5 prime, both of which can use the same dome port on the housing.  Fisheyes are excellent underwater lenses the distortion not being readily noticeable in a world where straight lines are rare and the tiny minimum focus enabling very close approach to subjects.  The 14mm is a more standard wide angle good for schooling fish and wreck diving.  On the macro side I have a 45mm f/2.8 Panasonic lens, equivalent to 90mm FF.  Previously I used a 60mm on my 40D equal to 96mm FF so I have  a pretty similar setup.  The smaller imaging sensor of the GX1 will, however, provide an further boost in the effective magnification of the lens to roughly 2x.

All of this has led me to a reappraisal of what I use above water.  I am a camera nerd and one with a good job that affords regular equipment purchases and upgrades, but there is a limit to what I can use.  I have a comprehensive Canon DSLR setup with both FF and APS-C cameras and lenses.  Alongside that I have an APS-C mirrorless Samsung system and a variety of fixed lens compacts, the jewel being being my Fuji X100.  Now I have a micro 4/3 system to feed and nurture.  It is becoming too much, so time to readjust my approach.

First of all I am heartily sick of DSLRs, they weigh too much and are hardly discreet.  However, I have yet to find a smaller camera that can compare to my 5D2 coupled with an L series prime for image quality.  On the other hand, I am finding that the micro 4/3 system is far ahead of my APS-C DSLRs, neither the 40D or even 7D can compare at high ISO.  I plan to sell these cameras and the EF-S lenses that I have, 60mm, 10-22, 15-85, and 17-55.  I will be sad to see the lenses go, especially the 60, it has been a constant diving companion for many years, but time to move on. I will gradually replace these with fast zooms for the micro 4/3 system, built around an Olympus EM-5 for above water work.

This will leave me with the 5D2 and medium format film camera for more considered work, the Samsung mirrorless with pancake primes for discreet street photography and the micro 4/3 for travel and scuba.  Oh and a bunch of nifty little pocket cameras for when I want to take a walk but not really think about photography.  Still too many, I know, I must kick this habit someday, but it could be worse, there are far more dangerous things in the world to be addicted to than cameras.

Las Vegas

Although I have neglected my studies badly in the past few months, I did not stop taking pictures or trying to use my camera to explore and comment on the world I find around me.  Recently I have been traveling quite a bit, a week in Las Vegas was followed a week later by a week in Singapore. Whilst Singapore was a blend of work and pleasure, Las Vegas was simply work.  I needed to be in an all day meeting on Friday the 22nd February in Palo Alto, just south of San Francisco.  I planned to spend the earlier part of the week in the valley, hopefully meeting my boss of two years for the first time.  Unfortunately my organization was spending that week in Las Vegas where we were organizing the annual HP Partner event.  So, rather than a week in California, Nevada became my destination.

I was quite excited about this, I have been to Vegas before, but not armed with a camera and intent.  My plan was to use my spare time to image this crazy city.  What spare time.  I arrived in Vegas after a 20 hour journey (not the easiest place to get to from Munich) and settled into a routine of work and sleep, the only breaks were to grab some food and one late night foray to a local drug store after my reading glasses broke. My bosses boss, a quite senior VP, was going to have to present our strategy and progress to Meg Whitman, CEO of HP, and yours truly was responsible for much of the content.  The end result was precious little time to take photographs, although as events transpired there were other reasons for my lack of photography.

As I progress with the OCA I begin to realize that my job and my studies cannot be easily separated.  In a sense this is a further realization that documentary photography is a subjective activity, one that must feed upon the photographers own viewpoint and life experiences.  I cannot easily document my work, firstly it is not terribly interesting, secondly doing so would probably get me fired.  However, I can take advantage of the opportunities it brings and in particular travel.  My current role does not call for too much travel, just a couple of times a year, once upon a time I would be making up to 10 long haul trips a year.  I miss it a little, but on the whole am happy to keep my feet on the ground these days.

The first photograph from my trip to Vegas is a scene familiar to many travelers, early morning and my ride to New York sits at the gate waiting for departure.  The winter sun was just burning off the morning fog and the airport slowly came into view.  The reflections in the window add to the sense of this being the beginning of a journey rather than an aviation shot, look closely and I am reflected in the left side.

Roughly 20 hours later, this is the arrivals hall at McCarren International airport, welcome to America and please take care that no one shoots you.  Heidi is a US citizen and I work for a US corporation.  I could move to the USA pretty much any time I wanted. This, of all aspects of of American culture, keeps me away.  I find it hard to understand with even the most cultured people having this desire to own and use deadly weapons.  I grew up in the countryside, even working for a gun club, launching clay pigeons on the weekend for shooting competitions, so have been around guns, but machine guns?  This photograph is also a statement of style for me.  I do not find photographing people very interesting, not difficult, just not very compelling.  What I find interests me are the signs around us that point to the culture we live in.  This is a pretty obvious statement, but it says far more about modern US culture and the challenges of that society than would any other photo I could have taken in the airport.  I very deliberately pushed the advert to the right to allow the option of an exit from this twisted world.

As I mentioned earlier, I did not get to see much more of Las Vegas than this, 14 hours a day at this tiny desk wedged between the two beds in my room, a fairly typical setup. Waking at around midnight or shortly after, I work through the night, fueled by Starbucks (very conveniently located just next to the lift in my hotel).  At around 6-7am my boss would come on line for a quick chat and then I would work until 6pm or as late as I could before sleep became a necessity once more.  It sounds a lot worse than it is, I like my work and the pressure is kind of fun, it pays for my goodies.  All I ask for is that hotels would put in desks at a height that is consistent with the chairs they provide, I enjoy carpal tunnel just as much as the next man.

The first night I was there, I had no choice than to make a foray into the night.  On the flight across my reading glasses had broke and whilst I do not normally need them I cannot work from a laptop screen without them.  At home I have a nice big monitor and a decent working distance.  The web showed an all night Walgreen roughly a half a mile away down the strip.  This gave me a chance to take some nighttime shots of the city and test the high ISO capability of my new Olympus EM5, quite happy with the results:

But, what a ridiculous place.  This was a short walk in which I met more prostitutes than in my time so far, wearing very little given  how cold it was.  I suspect they were more interested in a warm room than my money by this stage.  Going for a walk at 3am in Las Vegas is not for the faint hearted.  I did not do it again, a decision given further impetus by a multiple shooting and murder a day later on one of the junctions I had to cross that night.  Seems the world of rap is still not at peace.

The result was that most of my photographs were taken from within the safety of my hotel room:

One aspect of Las Vegas that I knew in advance I would not easily be able to capture was the gambling, I do not think the casinos would be happy with me wandering around taking photographs.  I also felt sorry for the poor souls on the casino floor.  No matter what time of night I emerged people were sitting at slot machines mechanistically pulling the lever hoping for that miracle of instant wealth.  Most were late middle ages to quite senior, most massively overweight and many in wheel chairs.  They would have made interesting portraits, but it would have been exploitation as well as probably getting me thrown out of the hotel.

I did get a chance to photograph the gaming machines, in the airport!  There truly is no escape in Las Vegas from the urge to gamble.  I am a mathematical physicist by training a science that is ultimately all about probabilities.  I never gamble, except on lost causes such as the lottery - I know I will lose, many of the people I saw in Vegas did not have that belief, they were going to win  For the losers (and that is almost everyone) the airport is the last chance to turn it around, or rather to spend the very last cent left.  This is the horror of Vegas, the exploitation of the weak and elderly, people with limited income, to further fund the rich and powerful.

Vegas was not what I had hoped for, but it was still a visually interesting place and one that I managed to spend some time looking at with my camera.  The airport provided the best material in the end, perhaps becuase this was the only place in which I was unable to do any work.

Over the years I have made many business trips, usually with a camera, and have many similar images that I have collected, views of airports, out my window, shots of my workspace and sometimes colleagues.  A project that has sprung to mind is to mine this archive and use it to look back at myself...

Checkpoint

Defined in Wikipedia:

Checkpoints are locations in a video game (generally found in action games) where a player's status is saved and where the character respawns in the status saved by the checkpoint. A respawn is most often due to the death of the in-game character, but it can also be caused by the failure to meet an objective required to advance in the game. Some of these checkpoints are temporary and last until a new checkpoint is activated, the level is cleared, or the player loses all his/her lives. Most modern games, however, save the game to memory at these points, known as auto-saving. In some games, bonuses are awarded for passing checkpoints.

Why a checkpoint and why the reference to a video game?  For the past 2-3 months I have repeatedly tried to regain my enthusiasm for this course and even for photography.  Each time I thought I was getting there my interest waned and I drifted away, spending much of my free time watching movies or playing video games.  At the beginning of this "dry spell" I did need a break and took Christmas off, however, it is now the end of March and my break continues.

I have tried to solve this problem repeatedly, each time ending up in a dead end, again drifting indolently in my free time.  There are reasons! In mid-Feb for 4 consecutive weekends I spent over 14 hours sitting on a plane with roughly 20 hours of travel.  9 hours time shift was followed a week later by 7 in the opposite direction.  In between work days stretched to 14 hours, just enough time left to eat and sleep.  This is supposed to be the quiet time in my annual working calendar, a time following corporate year end close and preceding the planning for the following fiscal year.  I expect to work 40 hours a week during January-May, and then 60 from June to December; working 60-70 at this time of the year is troubling.  I am an analyst and it does not require a great deal of analysis to see that I face a big challenge in the second half of the year.  Solving that one is taking much energy but it is not the point of this monologue.

The point here, is that I cannot divide myself into two people, there is no worker and student, there is simply me.  I have allowed the worker to overwhelm the student, a balance I need to reset.  It is very easy at the end of a long week to call the weekend a rest and basically do nothing constructive.  That does not help my studies at all, but nor does it really help my working life.  The OCA is a breath of fresh air permitting a regular switch from left brain to right brain thinking. A weekend spent taking photographs and writing about them is a great way to reset my mind.  I just have to avoid succumbing to what the Germans call the Innerer Schweinehund - my inner pig dog.

So, now I attempt my own checkpoint, a reset of my photographic self.  It starts with this text, not really about photography at all, but a way of writing down the problem and so making it easier to seek a solution.  My problem is motivation and ultimately that can only come from within, by writing this self-analysis I begin the process of once again engaging with the course.  I have much to write about, although I have not been formally studying I have been taking photographs, documenting the places I have visited, trying to think critically about where I was and how I wanted to represent it.  I jotted down 10 individual blog posts that I need to write, simply to catch up with what I have been doing since the beginning of the year.

However, most of all I need to start making photographs once more and get back to what I want to photograph.  So far I have let this course push me in a direction I simply do not like.  I must start taking photographs that interest me and not ones that I think will interest my tutor.  Sure, I need to pass this course, but I would rather pass with a low mark producing photographs I like than obtain a higher mark doing work that I dislike.  The Fest experience began this interlude, I started taking photographs that did not really interest me, and created a narrative that interested nobody.  I have an issue with the course, but that really should not be creating the problems I am having.

So, to conclude, I am going to start having fun with this course, take it less seriously and treat the exercises with the contempt they deserve, but with humor and creativity rather than cynicism.  Who knows where that may take me.  One thing for sure, close ups of people are not going to be a big feature, but stuff in boxes might make a reappearance. 

Assignment 2: Final Revision

In my original commentary on this assignment, I made the following comment in the notes on learning:

“I consider this to be the most complete project I have yet to undertake as a photographer, it stretched me in so many different ways, physically and intellectually.  I hope that the assignment set works as well as the book, 13 photographs is a tough ask for such a diverse event.”

This comment was prescient.  The assignment essentially failed as a body of work, due in large part to the fact that I put too much of my energy into the creation of the book.  The book became the assignment, but this is not what was asked for.  The result was that I created the assignment as a summary of the photobook, rather than the other way around.  I each of my past 3 courses I expanded one of the assignments into a broader based study which then became a photobook.  However, as this was after the fact it did not interfere with the assignment.

Photobooks are an important part of how I think about and practise photography.  I find a narrative sequence of images far more satisfying than a single work of art.  I enjoy a monumental photograph, I much admire Andreas Gursky, but I find the photobooks of Martin Parr much more engaging as an art form.  My direction is pages in a book, not pictures on a gallery wall.  This is creating conflict in my studies, OCA assignments are on the whole a small set of images, generally fewer than 12.  I find this very hard to achieve; my comfort zone is 30-80 images. Perhaps I am copping out from making the hard decisions that a commercial photo editor might make.  I feel that the current courses are set up to drive towards the ability to satisfy a commercial brief, rather than for the artistic goal of an individual.  As I am engaged in this course to expand my photographic sensibilities as an artist, with no intent towards a career as a photographer, I have recently started to question whether I really want to continue with the OCA – there, I finally said it.

In effect this assignment has pushed me into a crisis of confidence and commitment, it has forced me to take a hard look at myself and my motivations.  For 3 years I have spent an average of 10-15 hours a week engaged in the pursuit of a degree.  I work 50-60 hours a week in a very demanding job, photography is the antidote to the long hours and stress, but now my photography is generating even more stress.  Why do I do it?  Vanity, maybe, I want to still prove my mind is capable of advanced study? Relaxation, well that went out the window a while ago?  Qualification, I already have 2 degrees and another postgraduate qualification? So why?

It is because I really enjoy the process of making pictures. I love the intellectual challenge of solving a pictorial puzzle and creating a photograph that entertains and challenges the viewer.

So the real question I must answer is how to pull myself back to a place where I am once again enjoying what I do and expressing how I see the world through photography.  I have an opinion about the world and a need to express it visually.  This is where I failed in this assignment, I dropped the opinion and tried to create an objective balanced piece of work.  As I did this I stopped relating to my subject and stepped into the position of an observer, even worse a voyeur.  I took too many photographs trying to document every aspect of the Fest and then present that in a book as a balanced view of the event.  As a book this worked well enough and I am very pleased with the outcome.  However, there was no practical way to reduce this to 12 or so images and retain the objective overview without resulting in a bland set of images.

In essence, by attempting to balance the set, I removed the more cutting images, afraid of projecting my opinion into the set of photographs – the net result a bland bunch of colourful snaps.  When I worked on my Landscape photographs I placed my personality directly into the images.  I am a geometry obsessed picture straightener and I used this to create a specific look to the photographs that conveyed a sense of Shaun.  With the subject of the Fest this was more difficult, I did not have the time to plan each and every frame, and I got lost in the chaos of the event.

Now the question, what am I going to make of this.  It is over 10 weeks since I submitted the original assignment. During that time I have taken a very deliberate break from my studies, giving myself a chance to clear my head and rethink my approach.  The answer is to return to where I was with Landscape.  I am not a disinterested observer, I have a strong viewpoint that I want to get across in my work.  Secondly I need to get back to my core interest in photography, the urban environment and the existence of people within the spaces they have created.  I find that my Landscape photographs have more Social Documentary in them than the images I have created for this course.

Assingment 2: Rework

When I started out with this study of the Oktoberfest my original plan was to document the seedy side of the event, to lift the carpet and show what is swept beneath.  The Fest has a very carefully constructed public image, one that the city is very keen to preserve, 100’s of millions of Euros flow from the event into Munich every year.  The newspapers always comment on the darker side, but the picture they portray is almost universally one of jolly lads in Lederhosen swigging gigantic beers and young ladies keen to make the most of their cleavage.  I rarely see the negative, even the shots of drunks tend to be humorous; this is one of mine, similar shots are frequently shown in the press:

The crutches add to the comic element, a bunch of lads sleeping it off.  What is never shown, however, are the fights, the people lying in sick and piss, the urgency of paramedics racing through the crowd to someone asphyxiating on their own vomit.  Worse still is the sense of sexual menace that permeates an event in which almost everyone gets seriously drunk.  Leering grabby men are everywhere, few women will get through an evening without some form of harassment, although many give as good as they get.  Sadly, sexual assault, even rape is not uncommon common at the Fest.  Many visitors have little recollection of where or what they did the night before.  Informed consent, no chance, although again it works both ways.

When I originally set out to illustrate this side of the event, this was the side that I wanted to portray, for a variety of reasons I bottled it.  I have now revisited those photographs and constructed an alternate narrative of the event, visiting on the darker side.  This is how I see the Oktoberfest, away from the picture postcards.  I have taken the 13 images that I submitted for the assignment and made a severe edit.  6 of the 13 remain, to which I have added 7 new photographs.  Of the 6 that I have kept all have been edited for framing.   In the new set I have freely cropped the photos without any limit of aspect ratio.  

My final and perhaps very risky move is a decision to switch the set to B&W.  When I first designed this assignment, it was the offshoot of a book project that had at its core, the colour of the Fest.  Changing the emphasis of the assignment to a darker view demands a rethink.  Visually B&W drives a graphical approach that places emphasis on the structure of the image.  The colour of the Fest that so dominated my earlier set is removed as a consideration, making the images less confusing and more focused.  It also enables better use of more marginal images, many of the seedier images were taken at or after nightfall under mixed lighting.  

However, this is not just about the picture qualities, the use of B&W has an effect on the viewer of the image that is outside the simple aesthetic impact.  B&W photographs are perceived as serious objects, they are reports not simply pictures.  By using B&W I can further emphasize that this is a documentary set that investigates and reveals, not simply illustrates.  

When I started out on this course I set out to shoot the whole thing in B&W, a direction that my tutor quite rightly questioned.  My reasons for using this medium were simply one of desiring to explore B&W across an extended period of time, not a bad thing, but also not terribly convincing.  He rightly pointed out that any decision regarding the qualities of my work should be for well thought out reasons.  With the Fest book, I used colour to portray the gaudy madness of this huge sprawling drinking event, it worked as intended.  Now that I am bringing focus to just a part of the event I have good reasons for using B&W.  During my Landscape course I shot 3 assignments and the portfolio in colour, the only assignment I shot in B&W was about the modern day presence of the Jewish synagogue in Munich, a subject that suited the darker tones of B&W.  

Learning

• Technically there was little wrong with the original set of images, just an unwillingness to freely crop and frame the images to maximize the impact.  I think this stems from wanting tidiness in my work, something that worked in Landscape, but not here.  I need to always think about how the frame interacts with the image and treat the frame as a flexible tool.
• Documentary photography is not science it is an art and as such permits opinions and the introduction of the practitioner’s personality and viewpoints into the work. In fact without doing so the risk is a bland set of images that merely record but do not engage.
• The creation of Photobooks is central to how I want to develop as a photographer and is something I still see as the ultimate expression of my art.  However, I need to prioritize the demands of the course first.  I have a renewed commitment to what I am doing with the OCA and perhaps after this “crisis” I can get back into it with greater vigor and enthusiasm.

Reworked Photographs

This is how the world wants you to see the Oktoberfest, drunken of course, but happy.  The camaraderie of two revellers set against girls wearing Drindls and a sign welcoming all to the “Augustiner Garten”.  OK, that really is a great place to drink some really fine beer.

Among the broken glass, cigarette butts, and detritus of a day at the Fest a young couple find somewhere to escape from the chaos of the event.  By mid-afternoon the event is full and finding somewhere to sit and have a beer becomes a challenge. This is a rare departure from the horizontal for me, tilting the frame adds a dynamic to an otherwise static image.  I also want to convey the sense of disorientation that the Fest engenders after spending any time there.

As the light falls the Wiesn becomes more intense, the crowds thicken and the music gets louder.  Everywhere you go there is drink. I have cropped this image much tighter to bring the emphasis to the tattooed man.  In my first submission I allowed much more of the background into this and several other photographs, the goal being to illustrate the event as well as the interaction.  This took the point of focus away from what I was trying to say.

Drunks lurch around the fairground, I become part of the game of jumping in front of cameras for a laugh.  In this case he made the photograph. Once again I have heavily cropped the original image to tighten the sense of his interacting with me and emphasizing the repetition of face in the billboard behind. 

This is a gently humorous look at the effect drinking 6% alcohol beer in 1 litre glasses, often with a Schnapps to chase it down.  I have tightened the crop to focus on the trio, removing the Hofbräu logo that was in the far left corner of the original.  The logo makes sense if you know something about the Fest, but without that knowledge it adds nothing whilst unbalancing the frame.

Forget the jolly opening image, this is how the Fest ends for many; wandering drunkenly soaked to the skin.  These two lads staggered across my viewfinder barely able to stand and utterly confused about who or where they were.

A frequent sight at the Fest, he just lost whatever it was he had for lunch. Equally frequent, though, is that people are rarely alone when drunk, there is a great deal of tenderness on display.  I have again cropped tightly to bring the centre of attention to the couple, but retained the boots in the background to suggest that they are part of a larger world.

There were a few chuckles, but these lads were taking good care of their comatose friend.  They had even taken their shirts off to help to keep him warm, hypothermia is a real risk for seriously drunk people at the Fest.  The Autumn air can be very cold and when coupled with rain can kill if someone escapes attention.

All too often the Fest ends badly for someone, alcohol poisoning or violence require attention from the emergency services.  They race through the crowd blowing whistles to alert people to make a path.

A sudden increase in the volume accompanied by crashing benches and breaking glass signifies that another fight has broken out.  Here we have one of the most primal of human interactions, violent confrontation.  This photograph nearly resulted in my joining the violence, the security guards were very aggressive about photo taking, something I reacted to badly.  That altercation, neatly illustrates the way that the Fest management want to control the message. 

Fest security is very efficient, start a fight and you will lose.  As with the previous image one or two of the bouncers took up position specifically to drive away photographers.  We call them the Black Sheriffs, they are known for their violence and I suspect a part of not wanting to be photographed is not wanting to be identified.  In a democratic world, when those in a position of power avoid being pictured as they go about their duties it is time to ratchet up the paranoia a little.

The come on! As night falls people start to pair off, the Fest is a major place for casual hook-ups.  Many go with the express intent of finding some casual sex, others simply take it.  Free condoms are distributed to try to manage disease transmission.  Conversely at least 3 couples we know first got it together at the Fest and are now happily married.  The Fest is a strange mix of contradictions.

The Fest is hard work, dancing drinking, shouting, many find a quiet place to chill a little before either heading back into the maelstrom or heading for the train home.  Others wake up in the room behind the wall they are leaning on and wish they hadn’t – the Wiesn Police Station.

Assignment 2: Rethink

Well, it has taken a long time and a great deal of thought before beginning a response to my tutor's comments on assignment 2. Essentially the feedback was that I had produced a good set of photographs, but that I had missed the point.  I don't normally include the feedback in my blog, but this time I think it is important to add context to how I plan to respond.  These are the first 3 paragraphs in the comments:

• You have continued to develop your own voice well with this assignment. I get the feeling that you are reconciling two different motivators - the need to meet the brief and following your own inclination concerning a particular photographic project connected with your own maturation.
• You have succeeded in satisfying both aspects, but have been held back from following your natural inclination to fulfill the brief and in so doing have perhaps not succeeded with the brief as well as you are able. However, you have progressed very well in terms of progressing your own particular photographic development.
• As before there is clearly a good deal of thought behind your work - including what you want to say and best to express this. You show good creativity and imagination in your execution of the work but your submissions lack a clarity in execution that I feel is born out of the split motivations referred to above.

This is not bad feedback, but it is quite critical and also valuable.  The key is the final sentence, a lack of clarity caused by split motivations.  It has taken me 6 weeks to work through my thoughts about this and get to the point where I feel comfortable enough to work a response.  I also had a long and useful conversation with my tutor around the assignment which helped me to understand where I had gone wrong.

The first and most fundamental problem was that I put all of my energies into developing the book concept and then created a set of images for the assignment submission as an afterthought.  In doing so I failed to editorialize my work and essentially presented a synopsis of the book with a nod toward human interaction.  I tried to be non-committal, objective, to avoid forming and presenting an opinion about the event I was documenting.  

I explored this theme in a previous blog entry, that asked questions about truth and objectivity in photography.  I considered a number of "opinions" that I could drive through my photographs of the Fest and was rather critical of Walker Evans' own editorialization of the photographs that illustrated "Let us Now Praise Famous Men".  This generated more comments on a blog entry than I have ever experienced, I think my choice of a sacred cow for a rather flippant critique touched a nerve - fair enough, with hindsight I now get it.  

Documentary photography need not be objective, indeed, it works better when the photographer has a statement that they want to make.  As with written journalism (thanks to Les Johnstone for making this point) photojournalism can have a viewpoint and project the political or social stance of the photographer.  This may seem obvious to some, but it was not to me.  I was laboring under the impression that I needed to avoid my own opinion of the event creeping into my images.

In summary, I presented a set of photographs that met the brief, but did little else.  What is worse is that the book contained material that could have produced a far more powerful assignment submission. My job now is to rework the assignment with this knowledge, taking on board the input from my tutor and adding something of myself into the set.  

My first decision must be where to take the assignment, what stance to adopt and why.  This is an easier decision than I thought it would be.  Whilst working at the Fest I progressively became overwhelmed by the excessive drunkenness and sense of impending violence that I observed as I walked around.  I was exploring the dark side of the event, both figuratively and literally, poking my camera into places the organizers would prefer to remain hidden.  What I was seeing was the impact of colossal drinking and the wreckage it left behind, an image of the Fest directly at odds with the jovial merriment the marketing wonks like to project.  I want my photographs to counter this image and convey that sense of menace and grime that is the other side of the Oktoberfest.  When I first set out with this project that was where I thought I would go, I chickened out.

The next step is to reassess the original assignment material, decide what to keep, what to adjust, and what to discard.  I then need to add new material to the set.  Waiting so long has allowed me to detach from the original material and approach it with a new mind.  Here are the 13 images submitted to my tutor marked up for edit:

In essence I am removing the more anodyne images, then editing the remainder for greater impact:

Although I am planning something dark, I still need one or two images that contrast that point, so not all of these are so gloomy.  However, all contain drink and most a degree of threat or collapse.  My next task having removed 6 images is to think about how to replace them.  That will be the next step and a process that might also result in changes to the above images.  I have 24 images (including the above) from which to select, once again I have produced a set of contact sheets to illustrate:

 

I have direction now, but still a large task ahead of me, getting down to 12 or so photographs is still a major task, but I feel a lot more positive about the set now.  A key will be to keep in mind the original brief, that this is a set about human interaction, which illustrates the dark side of the worlds biggest drinking competition!

P16: urban Life

A simple and yet challenging project, urban life encompasses so much and is all around me, yet how to capture and present it.  My entire course is intended to be a study of urban life, how people interact with the artificial environment of the city, at home, during festivals, or simply carrying out the day to day activities that make up modern German society.

I have opted to work to a theme for this project, a brief study of the Munich Christmas markets.  At this time of year almost every neighbourhood attracts a cluster of huts selling decorations and handworked Christmas presents.  At the heart of each will be a Gluewein stand and a collection of huts selling grilled bratwurst, flammkuechen, and other delights that simply taste so much better for being consumed in the open air. This is an intrinsic element of Munich's calendar, the opening of the stands on the first weekend of advent is greatly looked forward to, it represents the start of the festive season.

As well as being a chance to capture the spirit of the season a crowded Christmas market provided an opportunity to practice some candid photographs and practice my street skills.  The following photos are from just two Christmas markets, the main one in the center of Munich and the market in the middle of the Englischer Garten, Munich's principal park.  The latter is a magical place, far from the busy streets, so quiet and with no overhead street lighting.  My camera of choice was my Fuji X100, small, discreet and with very good low light abilities.  These are places that need to be photographed at dusk to get the best out of the lighting.  I used the cameras tiny flash as a fill light to pull up the lighting on peoples faces.  It also created some interested effects in the falling snow.

My first image is of one of the Gluewein stands just in front of the town hall.  Christmas markets are a very inclusive tradition, young and old, the cool and not so cool, all enjoy a glass or two and an opportunity to shop.  These guys posed for me and somehow this captures the old and the new.

A rather simple shot, but one that tells the story, people shopping or simply enjoying looking at the myriad of colourful decorations in the stand.

When taking this set it was important for me to try and capture the interaction of the people with the stands, but also in a candid manner.  I found that positioning myself at the end of the stands shooting along them took me out of peoples eye lines, but still provided the opportunity to capture interaction, whether a simple glance or a more involved transaction.

I particularly like the next image, it captures the spirit of the market, it is very hard not to smile at a Christmas market.  In this and the latter image I have cropped to a square format, eliminating unneeded background and bring the focus of the viewer to the subject.  A lesson learned from my assignment 2 debacle is to vary the framing.

Now moving to photographs taken in the park and in the snow.  The following photograph uses a long shutter speed with the risk of blurring (1/10s), but the detail is still good enough.  I do find that my ability to hand hold the smaller X100 is far better than with DSLRs, even though the X100 lacks image stabilization.  Here the longer exposure has caused the falling snow to streak across the frame, adding to the sense of cold.

Even though it was bitterly cold, the market was packed - this was a Sunday evening, most popular day of the week for the markets as the advent Sundays are very symbolic here as part of the Christmas count down.  This show needed dusk lighting to work, flash was not going to help for such a wide image.  This is an illustrative shot.

On a similar vein the following is also an illustrative shot, an attempt to capture the falling snow in the lights and the crowds flocking through the market.  With this and all of the other shots I have exposed for ambient light and then used flash for fill in.  ISO is almost always 3200, I leave this on an auto setting, telling the camera to try and give me 1/100s for the shutter speed.  The Fuji image quality is fine at  ISO 3200, but falls over a cliff at 6400 and beyond.

 My parting show is of the people who make the market work, the Bratwurst grillers, without them the markets would be far less fun.  Here the fill flash has lit up the snow and created the specks at the bottom of the frame.  Underwater I try so hard to avoid this effect, here it adds to the atmosphere.

Well, that was Christmas in Munich, each year is the same, and thank goodness for that.  The tradition of the Christmas markets is many hundreds of years old and very treasured by the citizens of Munich, a true urban tradition and a key to enjoying this time of year.  Perhaps this is not the urban photography the project had in mind, but I am almost entirely shooting in the city so will get plenty of practice over the coming year.

That completes the compulsory projects for Chapter 1.  I missed the two optional ones, I may return to them time permitting, but neither are of particular interest to me.  I have much work to catch up on, I am already working on my thoughts for Assignment 3, which should be at the end of Chapter 3.

Up & Down

A new year, but no resolutions!  I don't need a change in the date to think about how to live better or start new things, this is something that should be part of each and every new day.  However, it does mark the end of December, a month during which I very deliberately put my OCA studies on hold. I needed a break, both from work and from studying.  Christmas is a hectic time with many conflicting demands on time, adding my course into this mix would just have created additional unwanted stress.  So I took a break!

Another motivation for a pause was mixed feedback from my second assignment, it was not really what I expected and I have needed some time to think about it and consider how best to respond.  I will address this in more detail in a future post, but the essence is that my tutor felt that I did not engage closely enough with the subject, that I was too impartial in judgement, and that I lost focus on the interaction element of the assignment brief.  The second point is the one that I have most difficulty with and will requires a major change in how I approach the remaining parts of this course and how I rework the images for Assignment 2.

My understanding of social documentary has missed the mark.  I am thinking about the subject as I would a scientific project, with the idea that I must document society, which with my prior education suggests an impartial and objective viewpoint.  In the work around the Fest, I attempted exactly that, to visually describe this immense social gathering, but trying not to let my own prejudice or viewpoint enter into the work.  The net result was that I described the event well, but there is little of me in the images.  I must remember, ART, not SCIENCE!  Art has a viewpoint, a statement of belief, an opinion on the world - it need not and perhaps must not be impartial.

Just after receiving the assignment 2 feedback I also got my grade for Landscape, 75%, a solid first!  Good news, but also room for improvement, although given where I am right now with Social Documentary, it is not going to be easy to do that with the current course. Looking a little more deeply, here is how the mark broke out:

Demonstration of technical and visual skills - 30/35
Quality of Outcome - 15/20
Demonstration of Creativity - 15/25
Context - 15/20

and the comments:

"Excellent, the progression is palpable through the course. Maintain that profound personal investment
into the following modules. You should continue to tune your appreciation of what makes for a
photographically fine print, there is a good development in print quality in the submission from
beginning to end but there is still a step or two to go."

As ever the feedback is cryptic and needs some thought.  My biggest issue is clearly the 15/25 for the "Demonstration of Creativity".  I think this points to my choice of relatively safe subject matter.  During the course I pushed the definition of Landscape quite far, but very firmly remained within my comfort zone, I think I need to push the envelope a little more.  Technically I have no real problems, something also stated in the SocDoc assignment feedback and I am roughly where I need to be with the quality of my finished work.

The comments are challenging,  clearly my printed work needs further refinement.  OK, but what is it that is still lacking?  I haven't a clue, however, I will in any case continue to explore what makes a good print and work to get the best out of my printing workflow.  Recently there has been much discussion on the forums about printing, with many level 1 students wanting to submit purely digital work for assessment.  I think this is mistaken, even if a photographer sees the web as their medium all will at some point need or want to print.  The photograph as a physical object in the real world remains, for me, the ultimate expression of the art.  Printing is a key skill to develop and not an easy one to master.  It is also expensive, but I think something that should be budgeted into the planning for a photographic degree course.  I am fortunate that cost is not an issue, for me it is time - printing is extremely time consuming, but so worthwhile.

So where does this leave me?  Good and not so good feedback.

I started this commentary with the clear statement that I am not doing New Years Resolutions this year, however, I do need to make some changes to what I do and how I do it.

The first clear input is that I need to make my work more personal, to allow my opinion to enter my work and use photography as a vehicle to present my view on the world.  In the real world of a working photographer this "view" might be that of the client commissioning some work, I currently have the luxury of providing that view.  I do think that I need to take care, a viewpoint can easily become a prejudice, and this can negatively impact how others see my work.  To help me to develop this further I need to spend more time with the work of other photographers and look at their work to understand what their opinions were and what the message is.  I buy a lot of photobooks and spend far too little time considering their content in a critical manner.

Secondly, I need to continue to refine and develop the quality of my final output, I do too little printing and need to be a lot more critical when I do so.  I have a carefully calibrated monitor to paper workflow, so I see on a print pretty much what I see on the monitor.  However, I do not examine the prints very carefully and still perform mostly global adjustments to my prints.  Work for assessment needs to be far more carefully prepared, each part of the print carefully produced.  I also must think more about how I balance images with the frame and where to crop.

Finally, I need to reassess what I photograph as part of social documentary.  I was successful with landscape, but am now struggling with the people orientated social documentary.  It is not that I find photographing people challenging, I am just not very interested in them.  An answer might lie in looking at the boundaries between landscape and documentary, taking the bigger picture, but still thinking about society.   The course is written with people as the subject, however, Social Documentary need not be about people, it could also be about the spaces they occupy, places that echo people.  With my Fest work this was not an option, however, as I look at Robert Frank's work I see many photos that would fit into the viewpoint.

I guess the bottom line here is that I need to spend more time thinking about what it is that I want to say and then develop techniques and practices that enable me to say it clearly and in a manner that engages and interests the viewer.