P22: action - peak moment

The essential object of this task is to find a busy person and photograph them several times looking for the peak moment in the action.  DULL, again what are they thinking, where is the development of context and narrative, versus the building of rudimentary technical skills.  Finding the peak moment should be second nature by now, or at least a concept that is well understood.  In fact it is a thought that almost makes me shudder as it is a primary challenge and risk factor in wedding photography.  The first kiss, signing the register, cutting the cake, throwing the bouquet - all fleeting moments in time that must be captured as they will never happen again,  Some come with warning, many don't. I can recall being at a wedding in Austria and sitting with friends at midnight thinking job done, time to relax, when someone ran in to inform that the cake was being cut, MIDNIGHT - Austrians are weird????  The essence of wedding photography and any form of reportage is to be there, always ready to take a photograph, always adjusting for light and situation.  When the opportunity comes there is no time to think about apertures and shutter speeds, the camera must always be good to go.  Fortunately I was still good to go.

The net of this intro is that I feel I am in good shape for this element of my photographic education, so what to do with this project.  Anyone reading this blog regularly will know by now that I am a grumbler and that I am fed up with the course, but I have to complete it.  I have tried to turn the projects into something more interesting, but do struggle, partly because I still want to be educated by the OCA to some extent and if I wanted to do my own thing, well I would do my own thing!  But this should be fun, not a chore so here goes...

What I have done with this project is to look at the  peak moment in a broader sense, thinking about how a narrative develops during a days shooting and how I work towards that peak moment, the action shot that defines the essence of my subject.  Last Saturday "the local boys done good" - Bayern Munich had qualified for the Champions League Final for the third time in 4 years and created a palpable sense of tension in the city , could they finally win the damn thing?  However, it was a long day leading up to the kick-off at 8:45pm.  I was out and about in town actually trying to do this project as suggested, finding a market trader or street performer who would provide the 10 or so shots requested.  I was not thinking about the game other than wanting to be home to watch it later.

It proved to be a long and very interesting day!

It was also a chance to give my new camera system a good workout in a more demanding environment; into my camera bag went the Oly EM-5, 7-14, 12-35, and 35-100 Panasonic zoom lenses.  This is not about equipment, but I have to comment that the quality of images provided by this kit is equal to my DSLRs and is a fraction of the size and weight, and lower cost, although not cheap.  With this system I can cover 14mm-200mm with a set of fast lenses, the longer zooms are f/2.8, the wide f/4. Ideal for street reportage work.  The big advantage of this mirrorless setup is the presence of high quality and most importantly fast zoom lenses.

PART 1

OK, back to the photography.  I started at the market simply looking at the world.  First problem was heavy rain, meaning that little was going on, although what was there was strange:

This next photo caught my eye, a beggar in a wheel chair with a crucifix.  Interesting enough, until a guy in a shell suit came by and pulled an expensive smartphone from her pocket to make a call.  This definitely passed for a moment, although it would only be peak with stronger context.  I decided to leave, losing the opportunity to develop a narrative, the guys controlling the beggars are not known for their understanding.

As I walked past a favorite church, the Assam Kirch, I was surprised to see a Nun outside acting as door person or bouncer.  A wedding was taking place inside and the tourists were being politely but firmly refused entry.  At this stage the scarves and colours of Bayern were starting to become visible.

One of the smartest Bavarian restaurants  had done a little decorating

As had some of the cities mouments:

In the market, it was clear that today was going to be noisy and colourful.

And boozy, the side streets were full of empties, and this was 9 hours before kick-off - Bayern fans can pack it away.  Munich has no problem with public drinking, provided it is peaceable.

I headed into the city center, Marienplatz, where the fans were beginning to gather.  It was already clear that this was the place to be and that a situation was developing.  In the following images I have adopted a low saturation, high contrast approach to the processing, it is an affectation, but well represents the gritty dirty day.

As time went on (I was there for about 2-3 hours), the crowd built up and became louder:

At a certain point a group of cheer leaders emerged and started to orchestrate the crowd

All the time I was thinking about what the definitive photograph of the event would be, the peak moment, as it were.  I really enjoy working in a large and energetic crowd, but there is the problem of creating an image that is more than an amorphous  group of people.  I tried using the medieval backdrop to add some context, but I still found that I had interesting but not striking imagery.  It needed something more.

Something more came when the fans started releasing smoke flares, this added colour and movement into the  photographs

At the same time the police decided to get involved and enter the crowd, I think they just wanted to get the guys down off the statue before someone broke their neck

However, a single glance can add threat - a good moment, but not yet what I would call the peak.

THE NEXT PHOTO is where the peak came for me at least.  It is not ideal, I would like the police to be more prominent, but this is the point.  The crowd is active, the smoke adds drama and the backdrop places the event in old town Munich.  It took 2  hours of working in and around the crowd to get to this point, for me the defining image of the pre-game activity.

Before leaving Marienplatz, here is another shot with a different processing strategy.  Same crowd, same activity minus the smoke.  The bright colours make the situation look much less threatening.  Using the aggressive processing technique added to the sense of incipient violence, on a day when all there was was happiness and anticipation.  As photographers we can manipulate the real, by what we shoot, what we do not shoot and how we present our work.  This set of photos could be looked at as a threatening crowd almost out of control, fueled by alcohol and tribal passion.  What I have not included are the kids on their parents shoulders watching the fans and singing along, the bemused Chinese tourists and the shoppers just going about their Saturday.

PART 2

OK, so that was the pre-game "riot", what about the game itself?  I had intended to watch it at home, but a birthday celebration at a restaurant close to Munich's Leopold Strasse changed my plans.  Heidi and I met with her sister and partner for a great Lebanese and a few beers.  At about 8:30 we headed home, thinking to take the underground and walked into the cities biggest party in years:

Leopold Strasse is the heart of Munich's night life, an area full of restaurants, bars, nightclubs, cafes, it is all there.  All along the street every bar had widescreen TVs along the wall and thousands of people were watching the game.  All along the street small bars were selling beer and snacks, it was a great, if tense, party atmosphere.

Including the police.  A few weeks ago when Munich annihilated Barcelona in the semi-final there was a major riot here, bottles, baton charges the works, so this time the cops were there in force, but in truth watching the game as much as the fans.

Bayern scored first to great celebration, but Dortmund came back.   Bayern's winning goal came close to end of time and the sense of finally winning brought out the smiles and the flares.

Victory, closed the streets, all through the city people emerged onto the road and had a massive party.  God help anyone wanting to drive anywhere.  The police managed the situation, but did not intervene

So I finish with a final "Peak of the Action" moment, the joy of winning, the drug of success.

It was a great day, from start to end a riot of noise and colour, but without trouble, it was a celebration of the game of football and the city of Munich.

Wedding Photography

There have been a few discussions recently, on the Flickr forum and on the OCA blog, about the merits of students acting as wedding photographers.  As I was "booked" to photograph a wedding recently these were  very timely and deserving of comment here in my blog.

I have now acted as the primary wedding photographer in 6 weddings, including the most recent one.  I don't do more than 1 or 2 in any year and only ever photograph people I know.  I don't make any money out of this, in fact it is usually quite expensive for me, taking into account travel, equipment, printing, and my time after the event to process the images.  I have never charged, partly because I don't need to, but also because it would create tax issues that I do not need for what is a relatively small amount (compared to my annual income).  I view weddings as an opportunity to practice professional skills with a large group of free models.  A nice bottle of wine or evening out is the usual compensation, however, seeing the look on the brides face when she gets the final results is payment enough.  It might sound  foolishly romantic, but I really enjoy being able to help my friends and give them something that they will cherish in the years to come - hopefully! 

There is an ethical dimension to this, I have a good job and no need to make money from photography, many pro's do not and so every time I shoot a wedding for free I am diverting money away from the industry.  For this I have no answer, my subjects are almost all highly paid professionals well able to afford a photographer, they simply like me to do the photographs because I am a friend and they trust me to do a good job.  I guess what they save on me goes towards a better honeymoon.  On my side, I am using these opportunities to build a portfolio of wedding albums that I may, one day, have to lean on for an income, so although I currently do not charge, this is an investment in future earnings.  Hopefully I will never need this, but you never know these days.

The downside is that I am finding that I no longer really enjoy shooting weddings, it is extremely hard work, a long day running from place to place with a heavy camera bag.  It is also very stressful, making sure that every key moment is recorded and that at all times my camera is setup correctly, ISO, F-stop, shutter speed, right lens, I never stop computing the requirements of any given shot.  Weddings never have good light, the church is dark, the sunlight outside that everyone smiles about is way too bright, the dinner has yellow lighting, the first dance, well you get the message.  A typical wedding is 10-12 hours camera in hand, 1,000 or more photographs.  I look at the guests as they eat and drink, enjoying a fun day - I know what happens after a drink or two, DSLRs are unforgiving of insobriety.  I wish I was them, just having a good time.

Then comes the afterwork, hundreds of photos to sort through, edit for contrast and colour, then to sequence into a narrative that tells the story of the day.  This is unforgiving work, grinding through photographs trying to make sense of an event and build a story.  I don't know the relationships, I might be missing a key person, all I can do is select on the basis of photographic quality and whether the image captures the spirit of the day, then vary it a bit.  Stress, stress, stress...

However, there are upsides.  The aspect of wedding photography that I truly enjoy is that Heidi and I (Heidi acts as second shooter) become a part of their extended family for the day getting to know a group of people we would not have a chance otherwise.  We are also an integral part of their day, especially Heidi, who always has an emergency kit in her camera bag, safety pins, makeup, plasters, stuff the modern bridesmaid does not seem to realize is a part of their responsibility.  It is always strange at the end to walk away knowing that I will never meet these people again.

All said and done, though, I have gained a huge amount from my occasional foray into the world of wedding photography.  I know what it is to get it right in the camera, there is no second chance, you cannot return to a location to improve a poor shot.  I have built a good toolbox of techniques in shooting, but also in post production and book design.  I also have an insight into the professional world, and understand the economics of the business better.  

I have no illusions about how hard it must be to make a living as a wedding photographer.  The wedding itself, depending on the requirements, might be two people working 8-12 hours plus travel to and from the venue.  Add to that the preparation, meetings to understand the couples needs, assembling equipment, and recon of location to understand the light and opportunities for shots.  Then factor in the processing of the images and assembly into an album.  I would put this at a good five 8-hour days per wedding.  Then there is the marketing and general administration of a small business.  Equipment is also not cheap.  Creating a business out of this and one that would generate a reasonable income is no easy task.

Back to my most recent "gig".  Kathryn is one of our oldest friends, we have known her in Munich for 15 years or more.  She and her long time fiance, Brian, finally tied the know in Singapore prior to moving to South Korea.  This was a small event, and we were not able to make it.  However, they still wanted a proper church service and so a blessing was arranged for the 6th April in Coleraine on the northern coast of Ireland.  To all intensive purposes this was a wedding, all that changed were the words.  

It was a new experience, a Northern Ireland Presbyterian church.  I was very restricted in what I could do in the church itself, during the service I shot from the balcony, to avoid distraction.  But overall the day followed the traditional pattern, of service, sit down reception and dancing.  We managed to extract the couple to a local park for a portrait session, but otherwise we were a part of the wedding, guests with cameras - simply much bigger cameras than everyone else.  We did establish ourselves as the wedding photographers, so people did give us priority and space.  

Mixed feelings, in a way I would have liked to have been a guest and simply enjoyed the day, but I know damn well that I would have been itching to take photographs...

I worked the material into a Blurb book and present below some of my favorite shots from the day.

Kathryn & Brian | Make Your Own Book

P20: anticipating a moving figure

For this project I have taken advantage of my two trips to Singapore this year.  Each provided an opportunity to spend a little time walking around enjoying the city and being a tourist, camera in hand looking for stuff that interested me.  The point of the exercise, to use a figure within the frame to add scale and context is not new, indeed this is the third time I have done this same exercise as part of my OCA studies, but hey, I am somewhat beyond caring right now, just want to get the bloody antique of a course out of the way.

Placing a figure into a frame or finding a locale and waiting for someone to enter is a standard part of what I do as a photographer.  Many shots need people to generate a sense of scale or to add movement in a static composition.  I also do the opposite, particularly when shooting weddings, looking for a location to add context to the people.  Ultimately this is about the bringing together of landscape and people.

The first photo is a simple one, I am using the people to add  little interest into an otherwise rather dull flight of steps.  What I do like about the image is the way the bottom figure broadcasts  his weariness, walking up those steps in 30+ degrees of tropical sunshine was no fun, we followed them.

This shot does not work quite as well as I would have liked.  I used the two runners to add a sense of presence within the overlapping jungle of modernity.

I feel that the following worked far better, a family wearing traditional Indian dress contrasts with the steel and concrete of Singapore's financial district.

Here I am doing something a little different.  I wanted a shot of the Bay Area skyline and tried a couple from the waterfront, they were nice but kind of so what.  I stepped back and waited for the lady with a dog to come by.  Somehow this made the place real, normal people, people who walk dogs live in the exotica of Singapore.

This is an alternate approach.  I liked the scene, the row of people and the row of shops, but it was very static, so I waited.  It only adds a little, but in the act of taking the photo she adds some movement to the image and asks a question about who the group is, I had assumed locals.  The man in the woolly tanktop also puzzles me, number 1, why a tanktop, number 2 in Singapore.

There are times when this approach to photography falls flat on its face.  This is an example.  I liked the bar and it's interior but needed something more, a figure walking by. Well, not quite.  The IS in the camera did a fine job of keeping the bar sharp, but the shutter speed was far too low for the walking person to resolve.

My other problem was that if waiting for someone to cross your frame, you might get more than one.  This was a photo of the lady in the background, but made into something more by the lady in red crossing my field of view.  Pure luck.

I finish with 3 photographs taking in the Singapore cloud forest, one of the most impressive spaces I have ever encountered.  The environment is huge, but not easy to convey in a photograph.   In each of the following I have used people to add a sense of scale to the environment  although in the final one I was also interested in the cultural dimension of a traditional Arab costume walking through the mist.

Yet More Introspection

An unusual blog entry, listening to Nirvana, drinking a glass of wine, 33,000 feet, and about 45 minutes into a flight to Singapore.  I never cease to marvel at the juxtapositions that modern life and in particular air travel creates, we move from place to place in the blink of an eye, from ice to sun, from never ending winter to perpetual summer.   However, long flights provide a gap, a space, in which to ponder where I am and where I am  going.  For 12 hours I am absent and unavailable, in an undefined transient space that whilst not terribly comfortable is somehow comforting, a cocoon insulated from the world.  So here is some random musing on photographic themes.

As I progress in my studies I am increasingly realising that art is not a theoretical study, an impersonal assessment or creation, but very much a reflection of the self, the individual.  Roughly a year ago I was closing up on my landscape course, ending a period of study that whilst personal was a lot to do with developing an understanding of place coupled with shape and form.  As I progress in social documentary I find that something of me must enter the photography, the problem I continually face is what and how.  Too much introspection and my work might become unintelligible, too little and it is banal and bland.  Recently I have gone back to shooting stuff that interests me, independently of whether I think it a subject worthy of "ART". (Metallica) Travel has become a theme, simply because I am traveling so much, but it is a part of me and one that I need to get into my work.

I feel that I am thinking too much about my work, not trusting enough in my own intuition.  This drove me into a dead end with my study of the Fest, the project that almost undid my course.  With Fest I thought too much about the outcome and not enough about the meaning.  I started hunting imagery that would meet a specific need rather than discovering photographs that carried their own message (Stone Roses).  This somehow lost me, I was shooting to order, my order, but not my soul.  Where am I going with this, I guess what I am trying to say is that I can only produce art if it reflects me and not the genre I am currently studying.   I can work within the confines of the course, I am a student after all, but I must produce stuff that I actually care about, there is little point otherwise.

In another 10 hours I will arrive in Singapore once more, a few weeks after I left, but this time it is a short stop off on a longer trip to the island of Negros in the southern Philippines, our annual 3 week vacation (Blur).  Seat 35A, Heidi in 35C, Mum in 35D, a 3:3:3, config 777 belonging to Singapore airlines.  Why, the detail, because it is relevant, it is where I am and where the people I love are.  In a sense this is what photography needs to be about, the little details that record the life we lead and document something trivial that might become meaning at a later date.  We are creating a progressive record of today, not tomorrow or yesterday, but today, this becomes more important to me as I get older and realise that time is a very finite element in my existence.  This is the essence of photography, the now, that becomes then!

Philosophy aside, this is also my annual opportunity to practice a form of photography that led to the OCA and then became secondary, underwater imagery.   For a change I am not pursuing any agenda with this trip, no assignment to follow, no world view to pursue, I want to get back to my roots and simply enjoy the challenge of capturing the majesty (too big a word, not sure) of the ocean (Lynyrd Skynyrd - new album?)  My mantra is colour, pure and simple, saturated, mad, obscene colour, but natural and real.  Recently I have tried to find meaning in my underwater photography, now I just want to enjoy the experience and create some memorable photographs.  I have new lightweight kit, very pleased so far, but it is not about kit, it is about finding the situation, the animal, the angle, and the light.

Really not sure about this trip and what I will find, but for once I really don't care, I am open to whatever comes along, documenting the dive base, maybe, the people of southern Philippines, possibly, odd looking slugs, well that is a given - I am a slug hunter, although we give them a posh name, Nudibranchs.

I will post this monologue when I get to our hotel in Singapore, I hope it makes sense, I do not plan to edit.   Oddly, though, I think this is where I need to be in this blog, less academic, more about motivation and soul.  Somehow the art gets lost in the technology and the critical theory!

Snow

It's the first of April and the snow continues to fall outside, the longest and coldest winter on record for my part of Germany seems to continue unabated.  It is not that it has been excessively cold, we have had much colder spells, minus 25 being the worst I can remember.  It is simply that it has been cold for such a long time, since the beginning of January we have had snow on the ground almost all of the time.  On the 24th December I recall the sitting on the bench in front of my house in a T-shirt enjoying a coffee basking in the 20 degree sunshine.  We joked about the winter that wasn't and the green rather than white Christmas. Well, it changed,

If I had been studying landscape this might have been a boon, although even a course based upon the landscape needs some variety in the weather.  For Social Documentary it really began to limit what I could do, it just was not the right conditions for spending long days wandering the streets in search of the decisive moment.  I took a break waiting for spring and Easter when people emerge from their houses and the beer gardens open.  Some hope.

I did, however, take a few photos during the snow, many reflecting the rather bleak mood that I found myself in after Christmas, the recent shock of a family death descending into a melancholy that reflected in the photographs that I created.

I was interested in using the snow to change the landscape of my images by taking away most of the usual detail that fills the world we live in.  To do so I heavily overexposed the pictures at the time of exposure and then in post processing pushed the contrast to the limit and dropped the saturation.  The result was a washed out appearance coupled with patches of dark colour.

The photos became progressively bleak ending in the one above with its almost total absence of any detail, just a photograph of a snow field with tiny tonal variations in the white.  Although this was a very introverted activity it oddly helped me to portray visually how I felt and in a sense was a way of mentally emptying the waste paper basket.  In parallel I started to point my camera at people, again using the same bleak aesthetic, but allowing the people to become little points of colour and form in this barren world.

I found myself becoming attracted to the dog walkers and the relationship between dog and person.  Children playing also made for some interesting patterns of interaction.

Finally I started to enjoy myself and took a few photos that attempted to capture the simply joy that children have in the snow.