Help me. My Finger Is Getting Sore.

LouLou 647

You’ll all be pleased to hear that I’ve been merrily snapping away on my camera during my week off (sorry I can’t bring myself to call it “photography” – I’m really bad.) In fact I’m snapping so much that I’m filling up the memory card at a frightening speed. However I’m beginning to suspect that this clicking-diarrhoea is just plain wrong. It’s so fundamentally different from the way Rich shoots that I just know it’s not the right way to photograph. Quantity seems to be inversely proportional to quality.

As I’ve blogged before, Rich shoots very carefully and precisely. He never ever uses burst mode and sets each shot up in excruciating detail, Westonesque-style, making sure everything is correct down to the last detail before he presses the shutter. He’ll shoot precious few images in a three hour shoot, but practically every one is pretty darn good, in my opinion. This is largely helped by the fact that when the model moves, he makes sure she moves very slowly, so he captures minute changes and subtle nuances in her expression.

Unfortunately ordinary mortals like me simply can’t work that way. Over-excited four year old kids don’t exactly respond to “please can you kindly lift your head, sit up straight, point your toes, and put your right hand on your leg, now hold it, hold it…” Instead they hurl themselves around yelling “I’m a pretty pink flying angel-cat-lady!” and unless you’re heavy on the continuous shooting, there's no way that you'll ever get that split-second melt-in-your-mouth expression that you’re looking for.

I think part of the problem is style. Studio nudes are more stage managed (I won’t call them contrived otherwise I’ll be heading for a marital rift rather sharpish) whereas the “stuff of life” is more of a recording of an event that is already happening, a sort of photographic reportage. To my mind, when you’re shooting a moving subject, you’re trying to capture a story that is unfolding, and most of all you’re trying to capture an expression, a single moment that is the high point of the scene and will sum up the entire story in a single frame, what Cartier-Bresson called “the decisive moment.”

But how can you be sure you’re not going to miss it? What happens if you get distracted for an instant? Surely you have to keep compulsively pressing that shutter as quickly as you can, because how else are you going to be sure you’re not going to overlook that moment? After all, it’s not as if you’re going to be able to wind the scene backwards and photograph it all over again. Once it’s gone, it’s too late. How can you be sure you’re not going to hesitate at the wrong moment, blink or simply think you’re recorded everything you need, only to stop shooting and seconds later miss the very picture you were looking for?

Of all the art-forms, it is only the photographer who has to capture his entire message in a split second. As Cartier-Bresson observed, photographers are dealing with things that are constantly vanishing. They have to intuitively perceive and record an exact moment in time, and only if the shutter is released at the decisive moment, will they get that indefinable “something” that they were instinctively looking for.

I’m not sure if this decisive moment is discovered through skill, judgement, chance or sheer bloody-minded perseverance. Is it better to shoot slowly and carefully like Rich, or err on the side of caution and shoot thousands of shots, microseconds apart, in the hope that one of them will turn out the way I want it?

If anyone has any guidance, please do let me know, before I turn into a compulsive, trigger-happy shooter with an aching finger permanently welded to the shutter button.

LouLou 653

Images are of Lou-Lou searching for her own decisive moment (and if you think I'm showing my truly terrible snapshots here, "you've got another think coming" as my mother used to say.)

For Love not Money

A rare post by our resident artiste...

Sooner or later all photographers go through a stage where they ask themselves what they want to do with their photography. What is their purpose? Why are they doing it? Over the last few months I have been thinking about these questions.

As you can imagine life is pretty full right now, and I have therefore decided that my photography should be about having fun and shooting what I want to shoot. I have been looking at the various aspects of photography and trying to decide what I really want to do. As with all things, sometimes it is easier to start with things you don't want to do and by a process of elimination deduce the things you do want to do!

So to this end I have decided that I won’t shoot any more private commissions. In fact, no paid work whatsoever. There are several reasons for this:

1. When I started my photography I was taken in by the view, which is often projected by the popular photography forums, that to be considered a good photographer your work must be such that people will pay you for it. Photographers who shoot to show or sell prints but have another day job are often portrayed as GWC's who are not doing it for the right reasons, and that the only valid reason to take photographs should be for payment. Only then will you be considered to have “made it” as a successful photographer. So I set out to be good enough to be paid, and then after I was paid, I realised that this was probably the worst reason to take a photograph. Photography should be an art, and art by its nature is seldom created on demand.

2. I don't get a lot of free time, so when I do shoot I want it to be for me.

3. I want to actually show the pictures I take. Private commissions are by their very nature private. I want to show my pictures on the blog and elsewhere, so these goals are mutually incompatible.

4. I want to shoot what I want to shoot. Most private commissions are about shooting what the client wants. At that point it stops being for pleasure and becomes a job, and I certainly don’t want another one of those.

So, I will sell prints, I will shoot for friends, but I won't shoot for money.

Stephen Haynes mentioned the term “dilettante.” I like this term as it represents the aspects of art that are free from commercial constraints. It is important to remember that until recent history, those who furthered the arts and sciences did not do so for pay, they were often wealthy and were only interested in their own amusement and education.

dilettante \DIL-uh-tont; dil-uh-TONT; dil-uh-TON-tee; -TANT; -TAN-tee\, noun:
1. An amateur or dabbler; especially, one who follows an art or a branch of knowledge sporadically, superficially, or for amusement only.
2. An admirer or lover of the fine arts.

That's me. Not that I’m wealthy of course, I’m not, but I do want to create art for no other reason than I love it. I will take photographs and create CGI art for no other reason than fun!

So if you would like a portfolio of beautiful photographs for free, then I'm your man, providing you don't mind me showing them on the blog! Oh, and coffee is good, I can be bribed for good coffee (is that TFC?)

Please note that this offer is subject to availability and no guarantee or warranty is implied. All offers carry the dilettante quality seal.



Pirate Maiden.

The Commonality of the Digital Age

One of the most common criticisms of Model Mayhem is its reflection of the rapid growth in digital photography. Half a million members, and growing, and all thanks to the digital age. Millions of people can now buy a camera for under $100 and call themselves “photographer.” This is the new world of photography, a new freedom of expression. Anyone can do it now.

Long standing photographers who were trained before the digital age, the die-hard-dedicated film buffs, often argue that this is a bad thing. That there’s no talent any more, or if there is, it’s swallowed up in such a massive amount of dross, that it’s very difficult to find any new and exceptional photographic talent any more. They argue that it cheapens the art of photography, that the quality of the profession is gone.

To some extent, this is true. It is certainly a lot harder nowadays to make a decent living as a photographer. With major fashion magazines paying less and less for decent fashion spreads, with the ongoing death of photojournalism because the news web sites invite anyone to upload pictures from their mobiles, photography has become free, just another casualty of the insidious growth of the internet age where “free” is expected, taken for granted. Photography is now fast, instant, just another microwave ready-meal. There is no photographic learning process, no years of training, no growth of skill, no learning of exposure or lighting because the cheap automatic camera does it all for you. Where’s the real photography gone?

The sad thing is that this growth has resulted in many a photographer quitting the profession, or going bust. They still love photography with a burning passion, but they simply have been chased away by the digital age, by the growth of “free.”

There is still money to be made for the exceptional photographer, of course, but it is certainly much more difficult nowadays. Most “good-but-not-quite-Avedon” grade photographers, who used to make a perfectly decent living out of all sorts of photography (landscapes, glamour, art, portraits and so forth), have given up long ago and gone to find another day-job that will pay the mortgage. You only have to look in our local town and see how many photographers have gone bust in the last five years. It’s heartbreaking to see. A graveyard of broken dreams and broken livelihoods, because the public don’t use professional photographers any more. They have a cheap camera and a copy of Photoshop at home. What do they need a professional for? And anyone can call themselves a pro nowadays. It’s all too easy.



But there’s the flip side too.

Firstly there’s the feel-good factor.
O.K. so photography done by your average Joe Bloggs isn’t outstanding art. It’s instant rough-and-ready photography, but this is part of its charm. And I’m very sure it has given Joe immense satisfaction. And yes, he may consider himself an amateur photographer and list photography as one of his hobbies. But if it makes him happy, and gives him even a smidgen of appreciation of life behind the lens, who are we to look down on that, or belittle him for trying?

From time spent playing with a cheap instant camera, Joe might decide to study photography in depth a bit more, buy a few photography magazines. He might “get bitten by the photography bug,” scour the internet, study lighting and form, buy every book he can get his hands on, save up for a home studio, hire some nudes, and before you know it, a few years have passed and Joe is photographing private nude portfolios and earning a very tidy second income from it, thank-you very much.

In this way, digital photography has shifted the balance of power from the elite professionally trained photographers over to the common man, and now we are all in control of our own art.

Secondly, the internet presents billions of photographs to people who would otherwise not have seen them. It is an art gallery for the world. Millions of people’s lives are enriched by viewing fantastic images on an instant basis. And this virtual cyber-art gallery is free for all.

I’m going on my own experience here, so bear with me. Before a couple of years ago, I had a very limited understanding of fine-art. It meant nothing to me. I didn’t see it as art. And I want to emphasise that point. I did not really “SEE.”

Rich’s photography has changed the way I see. With just a couple of years of studying images from thousands of different photographers, I don’t just recognise and see a good photograph now, I feel it too. Photography has re-educated me. I see the world in a different light nowadays, and that’s all because of my new digital education. And if digital technology can teach that to the average non-artistic person like me, then surely this new commonality of art can change the world?

The growth of digital photography and the internet presents a new democracy of seeing. And I, for one, have been immeasurably enriched by this freely available art form.



Syd, looking as amazing as always.

Cooeee, Its me, I’m back

Well almost. I’m shooting again and, while it’s great to be behind the camera again it, makes it that much harder to remain dedicated to the day job. The software is still not out. The beta testers love it but are finding little things for me to fix. The website is nearly done, but I have about 190 pages of documentation to write and about 20 video tutorials to shoot. Its not as much fun as shooting naked women. Actually, it’s not as much fun as shooting the dog! But it has to be done if we are going to eat.

Anyway, Last week I shot the lovely Lisa “Lil Mummy”. Great session and I took about 130 pictures which I’ve whittled down to 50 or so that make the grade. Tried some experimental stuff (for me) and they came out well. You’ll see them in the blog over the coming weeks.

Now when processing the images I previously used Photoshop CS2 and have a bunch of javascripts and actions tied together and put into droplets to create the 3 images sizes I use for the web and blog and also add the frames and labels to the web sized images. This worked really well … until I upgraded to CS3.

The first time I ran the script on CS3 it started its resize operation and the memory usage immediately went to 2GB. That’s right, it maxed out. Everything I tried maxed it out. Eventually I broke out the script debugger and started to go through the lines one at a time until I found the problem.

I normally resize my images for the web to 600 pixels max for height and width. In order to maintain the correct aspect ratio the script calculates the current aspect ratio then sizes the dimensions appropriately to maintain the ratio in the resulting image. Unfortunately the default setup in CS3 was inches not pixels, That’s right, I was trying to resize my images to 600 inches wide at 300 dpi, that’s a 50 foot wide picture. No wonder it gobbled all the memory. Knowing what the problem was made the fix easy. I changed the ruler scale to pixels rather than inches and off went the scripts. Problem solved. Hurrah.

And this is what I have produce, the first of the finished images shot with Lisa and put through the CS3 processing. I hope you like it.



It’s a week and a half to my next shoot, just time to finish the rest of the photos from last weeks shoot and get some day job work done.