aspirations

Am wondering if anyone can help me take better pictures. For example, the one below is a detail of Tower Bridge. The photographer must have been quite a long way away, so how did he (David Springfield) get such a clear image?



The next one, by Frederick Evans, is not out of focus but has this wonderful - I like it anyway - hazy effect - anyone know how to achieve this? Vaseline?

This one by Josef Sudek - how did he get the figures so clear?

And this one by Karel Brassai - well, did he have to get the couple to pose, I wonder. Which makes me wonder if we mightn't get together and be models for each other sometime - not in the classroom, but like this one, in a pub, or somewhere with atmosphere and interesting things like mirrors. If we took time to each decide what kind of photo we wanted and who we wanted to be in it - I won't be insulted if you don't want old wrinkly, especially if you want a snoggy picture - we could get really organized and do something constructive as a team.

Do tell me if you think I'm being too ambitious.

alternative urban landscapes

Delete Libraries in Urban Settings, replace with Reflected Urban Landscapes

This is half of a photo I half like from earlier landscape project. I think what I've learnt from both projects - portraits and landscapes - is if don't like the photos , don't do.

Peckham Plaza

Should have cropped more from the bottom of this one - done in haste - another lesson to learn!

alternative urban landscapes

Reflecting on my attempt at a landscape project I'm not a happy woman. I only like one of my six photos and even that's not a favourite. It seems difficult for me to create on demand, it's like being back at school where getting the thing done takes over from being creative.

The only 'library project' photo I half like is the one of Peckham Leisure Centre reflected in Peckham Library and I was thinking how much I like my photos of reflected buildings. I know the concept's not original but anyway my pictures are my pictures and no two people's pictures - presumably - are ever the same! What's going to happen when we have to make a statement of intent and follow through on a project? DK. A set of fairly boring but meets-the-criteria pictures!

What I should have done was gone back to the places I took photos I like and retake in the name of PROJECT. I didn't, but if I had...

Canary Wharf

Cannon Street

Mary Axe Street

Shad Thames

Gt Turnstile Street

Three Libraries - three colour photos

Peckham Library, opened 1999, with Peckham Leisure Centre behind.

Swiss Cottage Library, opened 1964, with unidentified, shapely building behind.

Dulwich Library, opened 24 November 1897, with local bank behind.

Landscape project final day

"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For my project Libraries in Urban Landscapes I decided that I didn't have time to visit any more libraries so would present two photos of each library.

I went back to Swiss Cottage to get more photos today - it's very close to where I work - the weather was worse than last week - greyer - though not actually raining. The man in the photo above looked really warm and cosy inside.

My other three photographs are less landscape-like I think - each features the library and only one other building, is taken more close-up. I'm also going to present them in colour as I think this suits two of them better than b & w.

Landscape project day 3

I decided for my landscape project to make the theme Libraries in Urban Landscapes. My third library is Peckham. I followed the format of the previous two photos by having the library on the right of the picture. The only reason this makes any difference is that it makes the surrounding landscape more equally comparable. However, the surroundings are not equally comparable because I couldn't get the same distance vantage point for all three photos. I think this is the reason that the lines are not so straight in this one or the Dulwich one, whereas for the Swiss Cottage one I was a long way from the building.

What I like about this one is that the left-hand side shows some of the dereliction of the area, right behind the prize-winning, state-of-the-art library building.

Robert Frank at Tate Modern 2004

Unfortunately I missed this exhibition - it would have suited my old-fashioned love of selected singly framed photographs! And they don't have to be hugely enlarged (at the recent Photographers' Gallery exhibition of Kertesz's work On Reading the photos were even smaller than those above).

Robert Frank at Tate Modern 13/11/2009

In 1957, Frank casually showed his American photo essay to the young beat writer, Jack Keruoac, whom he met at a party in New York City. Kerouac was impressed and responded with– “Sure I can write something about these pictures,” and penned the introduction to the U.S. edition of The Americans. Robert Frank’s work is now widely considered an important, intimate peak inside small-town America, but originally it was not met with open arms by all– at the time of its release many of the images were considered controversial, while other critics just outright dismissed his work as a blurry mess of nothingness.

I've been trying to work out why I failed to appreciate the photography of Robert Frank on display at Tate Modern. Theories:

1. my lack of sympathy with American culture
2. the way it was curated
3. my laziness
4. not liking his photos

1. Well, I don't much like seeing the American flag or cowboy hats but on the whole American photography is as interesting to me as any other.
2. I didn't like the way the strip photographs were framed and hung on the wall - probably because it's not what I'm used to and also because I wouldn't want to hang such a framed picture on my own wall. I would have liked to have seen a few photos enlarged and framed singly.
3. I did find it hard work to look at all those small photos. However, if they'd been presented as if in a book - which is how Frank himself presented them, as I understand, and as many works of art are presented at Tate Modern, in glass cabinets - then I think I'd have made more effort. I know this doesn't make a lot of sense!
4. Of course I don't like all his photos but there are plenty I do like.

I love the following photos which I found on Google images:



For me this one represents multi-cultural America and technically is brilliant with the pair in the foreground in focus and those in the background blurred. The light trim on the woman's dark coat helps to make this a great B & W picture.

From a series called 'From the Bus' which was exhibited at Tate Modern in 2004. I also like taking photos from the bus! This is what he wrote about it:

'The Bus carries me thru the City, I look out the window, I look at the people on the street, the Sun and the Traffic Lights. It has to do with desperation and endurance - I have always felt about living in New York. Compassion and probably some understanding for New York's Concrete and its people, walking... waiting... standing... holding hands... the summer of 1958.'

I love the facial expression of this child, and the dark/light contrast between the two overcoats.

I like the way Frank has captured the social class diferentiation of that time.

I found the following extract quite interesting and I acknowledge the importance of his work:

Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written about The Americans as social analysis:
Robert Frank's (...) enormously influential The Americans is in ways reminiscent both of Tocqueville's analysis of American institutions and of the analysis of cultural themes by Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. Frank presents photographs made in scattered places around the country, returning again and again to such themes as the flag, the automobile, race, restaurants—eventually turning those artifacts, by the weight of the associations in which he embeds them, into profound and meaningful symbols of American culture.

Landscape photo project day 2

A beautiful day and so off out with the camera.

A theme for my landscape photos has emerged: Libraries in Urban Settings. Two down, four to go.

The photo I posted a couple of days ago featured (by sheer serendipity) Swiss Cottage Library on the right hand side of the picture and today's photo features Dulwich Library (a planned execution) on the right hand side of the picture (unplanned). The theme could be: Urban Libraries on the Right. For anyone with the curiosity of a cat I can identify some other buildings in the photo below. Next to the library, in the background, is a pub called The Plough, there since 1830 (some earlier history quoted below). To its left, more or less in the middle of the picture, is a bank. I don't like banks at the best of times so I'm certainly not going to mention whose bank branch it is. On the left are terraced houses with shops below, one an estate agent, one a chiropodist (which I've never visited - I have visited the pub on a few occasions, drinking only in moderation of course, and the library on hundreds of occasions, taking out books not in moderation and not always returning them on time). I hope none of my readers will be corrupted by the story of Thomas Jones.

In Lordship Lane, there was, in the time of William Hone, an inn called the "Plough"—an old-fashioned wooden structure—on one of the windows of which was the following inscription, cut with a diamond:—"March 16, 1810. Thomas Jones dined here, eat six pounds of bacon and drank nineteen pots of beer."
From: 'Peckham and Dulwich', Old and New London: Volume 6 (1878), pp. 286-303.

Class outing - Jim Goldberg

I found the Jim Goldberg exhibition Open See very moving because of the harrowing stories of asylum seekers. However, the photographs that I liked were those least graphically illustrating that theme. In fact, I sometimes wondered whether they belonged to the project at all, both because they didn't match that theme and also because the format was different. I suppose the large format photographs, as opposed to the small Polaroid snaps with written stories, more illustrated the hopefulness of the subjects. The young man in the photograph below looks very well-kempt and seems to be soon to have a good feed. I love the black-white contrast and in particular the pale delicacy of the dried corn husks aganist the black.

The photograph I liked best, of a Congolese family in front of their tent, I can't find a copy of on Google images. I thought it was a brilliant composition in which Goldberg had managed to engage all the personalities of the people depicted as well as their unity as a family. Technically, it was quite a dark photo but I liked this and it reminded me of a woodcut print.

Landscape photo project

Urban landscape, Swiss Cottage, November 2009

"You must use the lens that will bring out the best composition. This is accomplished by becoming familiar with the perspective of your lenses. That comes from experience. I tend to shoot more with telephoto lenses because I like to pull the little compositions from the greater landscape before me. Telephotos not only isolate and allow me to eliminate distracting elements, they allow me to get compositions and subject matter that nobody else has. I can stand at one spot and shoot 20 different landscapes...With telephotos, I get a lot of private compositions." Art Wolfe

Apparently most people use wide-angle lenses for landscape photography. This is the lens I have:

"The Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens f/3.5-5.6 is a wide-angle to mild telephoto zoom lens for digital single-lens reflex cameras with an EF-S lens mount. The field of view has a 35 mm equivalent focal length of 28.8-88mm, and it is the standard kit lens on Canon's consumer DSLRs."

I read somewhere that landscape photos should be dynamic, not static. It's difficult to see on this reproduction but there are quite a few figures in my Swiss Cottge photo above - a few on the ground and a couple of workers on top of a building on the left. I don't know if it works, but I hope that by having some figures, especially those working on a building, this makes the picture less static. It was a very grey, damp day - probably not ideal light conditions! Rain stopped play.

Landscape and a red tree

Giving it my best shot
One advantage of achieving a hazy landscape, even if you don't intend it, is that it can look good as a backdrop to something interesting in the foreground! (Er, like using shallow depth of field, you want to say, but I wasn't trying to do this - oops, I ought to be able to tell you what F-stop I used for all these pics - something to improve on next time.)
From the blog image you can just about make out that there are cows in the photo below. They were so beautiful in real life, with richly coloured coats. And in front, two rows of fairly old-looking hay bales (nicely reflecting the light?). I cropped off the left-hand side of my picture so that the tree wasn't in the centre - lost some of the cows and hay bales unfortunately! But I'm happy with the blurry trees and hills in the background - it wouldn't have worked to have everything in sharp focus for this picture, I don't think. Maybe the lesson is that a landscape is more interesting with something substantial in the foreground. The previous photo with a few hay bales on the left doesn't work so well, in my opinion.

Re the next photo - you'd have to see the photo on flickr to appreciate the vibrancy of the colours. I don't know how a liquid amber turned up amongst the silver birches - I was gob-smacked. I have a silver birch that I planted in my front garden and I know that its leaves don't turn gold until almost Christmas - probably by then the liquid amber has dropped its leaves, but how amazing it would be to find this burgundy-coloured tree amid a sea of golden birch leaves! Dream on.

Learning to Capture Landscapes

Not my best shot
I'm really looking forward to learning about photographing landscapes. I want to know if I can get better images with the camera and lens I have or whether I need to invest in a different lens - one with a greater zoom presumably.

Yesterday I was in Sussex; it was a beautiful day and the trees looked glorious with their golden , scarlet, tangerine leaves. I was north of the South Downs and the challenge was to take a photograph with the hills in the background but having the sun shining very brightly in front of me. My main frustration with all the landscape photos I've taken is that I can't get the clarity I want - everything in crisp focus. The other frustration, and I think there may be little solution to this, is having to decide whether to have a completely washed out sky, or render the foreground much darker than it really was, like so:

Here's one with a washed-out sky:

Photos don't come out too well on the blog and I've used up all my free uploads on flickr so you can't really judge the quality of these. There are animals in the middle of the picture below - cows, I think, but you can't even recognize them because they're fuzzy, so I'm very dissatisfied with my results.

Now I want to put on two photos I am satisfied with. As I didn't plan it out in advance I'll have to start a new blog...

Candid portraits

Richmond Dervish
Paul tells me that an unposed portrait is a candid portrait. Here's a candid portrait from the summer, taken at a music festival in Richmond-on-Thames. I don't know who this young woman is and I hope she won't mind that I'm posting a photo of her on my blog. Lots of people took photos of her because she was dancing like a wild woman, and she had interesting hair. I think I captured her mood!



Woman with a Pearl Ear-ring
I'm very fond of the next picture, which to some extent was posed - so a half-posed, half-candid portrait. I was at Golders Hill Park and an old couple, both with motorised wheelchairs, had bought icecreams. I asked permission to take a photo of them. What I love about this woman is her attention to jewellery - as well as pearl ear-rings she sported a bejewelled pin on her hat, and was wearing two beautiful necklaces. I have the idea that she still makes a big effort to look pretty for her husband, probably after over 60 years of marriage. Or perhaps she makes the effort for the world, for us. I also like to think that you can tell by her smile that she's a contented person. Did I capture something about this woman?

Girl with Red Headscarf

I need to give the source of the photo I used in the blog before last. It's by Manuel Librodo and here's what he says about it:

Bangkok, Thailand
March 2005
A window-light, a red veil, and a beautiful lady.
these are the main ingredients for this memorable picture.
Throw in a slice of emotion to spice up the image.
Katrina is my goddaughter and it is hard to believe that
the baby I once held in my arms during her baptism
is now posing for me as a full-grown woman.
Coincidentally, this picture is also my baptism
in the world of publication when it was used as a banner
to announce a Creative Portrait competition
in the Digital Photo magazine, UK.
Second Place: Photo of the Month
www.digitalimagecafe.com

Unexceptional non-portrait

I didn't really take this as a portrait - I used the man to add to the composition of the magenta bench and the yellow window frames. I've cropped the photo to make it look more like a portrait, which is cheating really! Anyway, the poor man looks self-conscious and this photo doesn't tell you much more about him other than that he reads books and doesn't wear laces in his sneakers! I took it when using my DSLR for the first time with it set on Auto - hence no depth of field. Why am I posting it on my blog - well, I guess it's an example of a snapshot which doesn't constitute being a portrait!

Exceptional portraits

I'm exploring the kind of portraits that I like.

Below is a photo I like by Irving Penn - not sure it counts as a portrait - better check the definition of 'portrait' - here's Wikipedia's:

A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer.

By this definition Penn's photo counts in my opinion because the emphasis is on the child's face and it's composed.

Here's another one I really like:

Not sure why I like it but the red headscarf and the hands are important factors. It looks posed but the girl seems very relaxed, fairly natural.

I love portraits that consist of a bit more than just someone's head and shoulders, for example, the photo below of John Lennon by Jane Bown on the Guardian site Paul emailed us about. It doesn't look posed, though might have been.

If it wasn't posed, perhaps it wouldn't count as a portrait!

I took a photo recently of a man reading a newspaper - I'd asked his permission to take it so in a way it was posed - but I can't say he looks very comfortable! I'll post it on the next blog because I'm darned if I can work out how to move uploaded photos to the bottom of the blog.

Edward Steichen

Here's another of my favourite photograhers:

Edward Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973), born in Bivange, Luxembourg, was an American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator.

When all the leaves have fallen from the trees I look forward to taking my camera and tripod on an outing and trying to emulate some his masterpieces.

I forgot - those poor Romans didn't get to see the precious bankers' architectural carbuncles:

Canary Wharf Group plc is the owner and developer of nearly 100 acres (0.40 km2) of property at Canary Wharf in London. It is notable because over the last 10 years it has constructed more office space in London than any other developer. The group owns 7.9 million square feet of property which is worth £4.9 billion, of which 99% is let (in 2008). (Wikipedia)

2nd post re tripod's 2nd outing - the text

The borrowed tripod took me for a walk to the hill behind my house. We had a human friend and a dog friend in tow, for safety. There used to be a Roman fort on the hill, now there are council flats. Those poor Romans (road construction workers?) missed out on the view of St Paul's, Lambeth Palace, London Eye and PO tower or whatever it's called these days. They were lucky to miss out on the view of the skyscraper rising up out of the ashes of Elephant & Castle. They were probably able to see the Tamesis, a view now obliterated.

As I don't have a special lens for these distance shots the above landmarks aren't too clear - on this blog you can hardly see them at all! Anyway, I was able to practise using the tripod again and sort out leg lengths to take into account rough ground. We nearly froze, apart from Missie who was kept busy chasing a stick so she wouldn't get bored. Sorry Bernadette, I didn't take a photo of the dog. I have one of my cat to show you.

tripod's second outing

I enjoyed exploring ways of cropping my night photos. I love triangles and quite like the way I captured the triangles of this ramp plus the large triangle formed by the suspension posts and wires - bit hard to see the black wires in small version of photo.

Last night I used a tripod for the first time. Very exciting. And it didn't fall over nor did I trip on the legs - phew! The photos looked amazing on the little camera screen. Not so amazing when uploaded but I suppose not bad for a first try. My favourite picture is the one I took on the way, without the tripod! I plan to take it again, with tripod. I perfer these night photos in black and white.

a favourite photographer

As I don't know how to position the photo properly I'm starting a new blog. I want to share a photo taken by Imogen Cunningham. Maybe you've seen it before. I hope you like it.

trying to photograph flowers

I've just looked at Tubbycat's blog and it's inspiring. She - I think it's a she-cat - writes very freely and shares lots of images. I find it hard to write to some vague general audience. And I don't think I'll ever be able to blog about Health & Safety factors in photography because it sounds like the most boring read imaginable.

I did something new at the weekend which was to take some photos of single flowers. Time for an upload.

(I managed to move the picture down but couldn't cut and paste the text, so I've had to completely re-write the first bit of my blog above the picture!) Anyway, I was trying to focus on the flower in the top right hand corner but ended up focusing on the bud! I hadn't noticed the bud at the time but actually it's rather nice.

I need a tripod!

Such a missed opportunity to get a really beautiful photo as I was walking along the Queen's Walk on Sunday evening.

This is one of Ansel Adams' photographs of Yosemite.: Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1960

The previous photo I put on my blog is this one:

Frozen Lake and Cliffs, The Sierra Nevada, Sequoia National Park, California, 1932

One of my favourite photographers is Ansel Adams. His photos of Yosemite in California inspired me to go there.

focus on the teacher

I think this was taken at F stop 5.6. I deleted my photos before I recorded aperture and shutter speed! All part of the learning process!

beautiful photography exhibition

James Ravilious
An English Eye
National Theatre
London
SE1
May 2009
One of the great unknowns of British Photography, James Ravilious (1939-1999), son of the water-colourist and engraver Eric Ravilious, dedicated his art to a small area of North Devon.
Few people have so evocatively captured our countryside as James Ravilious in his photographs of the people and landscapes of North Devon...
Although Ravilious, son of the English artist Eric, admired Cartier-Bresson, he had little interest in "decisive moments", unrepeatable instants randomly snapped by the camera. The purpose of the art, for Ravilious, was commemoration, the preservation of memories we can all share. One of his photographs shows a surrogate for Ravilious solemnly at work, devoted to the task despite her clumsy amateurism. An old woman, dressed up in her bravest finery with a hat pinned to her permed grey curls, aims her ancient boxy camera at some unseen spectacle that she wants to fix forever. The caption reveals the occasion: this was the day of the royal wedding in 1981, when the nation rejoiced.
If you're interested you can see some of his photos on Google images.

André Kertész (2 July 1894 – 28 September 1985), born Kertész Andor, was a Hungarian-born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition and by his efforts in establishing and developing the photo essay.

The exhibition of his photographs featuring everything to do with reading called On Reading - no, nothing to do with the place in Berkshire - was superb. Did anyone else see it?