Category: digital
Taking stock 3
Some time ago, I saw a photo of mine on the Guardian website. It was a photo I’d taken in the BFI cinema some years previously that I had uploaded to a stock photo site. There it was: my photo, my name and (when I checked the photo stock website) my payment.
While a pleasant surprise, it was a rare occurence. I’ve sold occasionally on stock sites, but not enough and I had recently started deleting images in order to concentrate my imaging elsewhere, until I came across a social media post about such photography.
I hadn’t considered the type of photography I wanted to share and I hadn’t considered the type of photographer I was, but this post made me think about all this. It also made me think about what type of images I was uploading: snapshots rather than planned shoots; individual images rather than themed sequences. So I’m giving stock photography another go.
This is from my most recent set of photos: delivery bikers in the rain. They are part of our cities, as much as taxis, public transport and pedestrians; certainly during and since lockdown they’ve become even more prevalent. Sometimes maligned, but often used: I wanted to show them in my photography.
More images can be found here. And more will follow.
Photo-zine number one
Since returning to the darkroom, I’ve been trying different methods to sharing my photography with others. I have used social media, home display, independent sales and art fairs, but I was wondering about a small, tangible way of sharing images. It was a social media post that introduced me to art zines and I was hooked.
The art zine examples in this post displayed prose, poetry and illustration. I’d seen zines from years before concerning football teams and music. More recently, I’d seen photography zines in small publications, which inspired me to do my own.
The simplest method I had seen showed the folding and cutting of a single A4 sheet of paper to make an eight page document.
Once made, I numbered the pages and set about collecting images.
I had wanted to feature the black and white 35mm images I had been printing and had been considering themes, when I realised that the majority of my photos had been of family or my local area, so I went with the theme and title, “Round My Way”: images of my locality.
I took the first eight images I liked, scanned them and sequenced them on an A4 document in Photopea. On first printing, I realised that I’d have to do some move-arounds, then reprinted. I did some titling and there it was.
Out of order…
In order…
…and complete!
At the moment I’m working through cutting them to size, folding and cutting. I’m definitely going to make more. There’ll be different techniques in themes, editing, formatting and printing, and even media, but this is a process that I am excited to continue.
Start to finish.
The walks, part two
The following day I trekked to Bostall Woods, where I shot some video in the forest. I tried to avoid shooting people there, mainly dog-walkers and ramblers, but caught a few of them, partially on camera and definitely on the soundtrack. Also on the soundtrack were tripod noises from the various camera moves I was attempting: definitely some practise and different equipment testing needed there.
I also returned to the river, this time near the Thames Barrier and surrounding warehouses. Some buildings were derelict: I wondered what would be in their place the next time I visited. These were areas that only cyclists and walkers could pass through.
As I carried the heavy photography equipment around the Thames path and surrounding neighbourhoods, I remembered the advice in a guide for wannabe Magnum Photographers: buy comfortable shoes. I’d like to visit more on foot and by bike in future.
Later I shot more video with one of my softbox lights. Following a YouTube tutorial, I tried techniques for video lighting that I hadn’t understood before: I enjoyed the results and will work on them with my own camera. There is still so much to learn.
On returning the equipment, it was a shock to use my mirrorless camera again: it felt light and manageable with familiar controls; almost like a toy. I will shoot with another rental next month; definitely a different camera, just to see how it works with videography and photography, and I’ll be one step closer to finding my regular videography camera.
The walks, part one
A few weekends ago, I did some test shooting with a new camera. Following a digital videographer’s advice, I rented a Canon 5D DSLR, with a microphone, tripod and a 50mm lens.
Having shot for over ten years with mirrorless film and digital cameras, the DSLR was a beast: big and heavy, the camera intimidated me from the moment I took it out of the box. Sat on a bench near the Leadenhall building, I tried taking my first picture: one of the skyscrapers nearby. A few mistakes later, I got it.
My aim was to go to the Royal Exchange, because it tended to be pretty deserted on a weekend. This Saturday, however, it was hosting a thousands strong march for the environment. A number of photographers and videographers were documenting the event, but I decided to duck out until I had an at least rudimentary knowledge of this camera.
Once at home, I transferred the camera to a case of my own and headed out to shoot some video at the Woolwich riverside. From there, I shot tests at a railway crossing in Charlton and on the South Bank.
What struck me on this excursion was what I saw as I walked between and around these sights, looking for something to photograph. I’ve been on photo walks before, both with friends and by myself, but I was really fascinated by the things I didn’t see when I had driven or taken public transport past them many times before.
Building, shops and accommodation I had barely glanced at before were there in all their detail. Different neighbourhoods with their residents and visitors. Different topography and sounds. As I walked, I thought about the photographer Don McCullin’s advise to photographers who wanted be war photographers:
“I say, OK, if you want to be a war photographer, go to the inner cities in England. You don’t have to get on a plane to the Middle East or wherever. There are social wars in our cities: homeless people, poor people, people begging outside of banks. You will find the most incredible poverty and that is a war as big as any other.”
While I didn’t feel as if I were documenting any kind of war, I did feel like I was walking through parts of the city that were ignored: the alleyways and neighbourhoods considered not pretty enough for an Instagram story; the people I may avoid, or who may avoid me; the unobserved. I wondered what I’d learn if I visited these areas more rather than just passing them by.
I finished the my first day shooting video on Waterloo Bridge and the South Bank, before bringing the gear back home.
Portraits: Steve
On the weekend I had rented a Canon 5D for test photography and video, my friend Steve asked me to take a headshot of him for a forthcoming conference he was attending.
Delighted to do so, we excused ourselves from a social meeting at the BFI bar to take these photos up in the Mezzanine Gallery.
I was unused to the size and controls of the D5, so I decided to eschew my usual manual use for automatic control of image making: this set me free from focus and exposure issues, and allowed me to concentrate on composition.
My main aim was to get both the focus on the eyes and the light in them to feature. While I love a shallow depth of field focus, with more control I would like to have featured more of Steve’s surroundings: the background here looks quite anonymous.
A few minutes later we were done.
Portraits: Marcus
Photographing theatre producer Marcus Bernard was my second attempt at an environmental portrait and this time the weather was on my side.
After our initial chat, we decided to shoot at the the Bunker Theatre, which has sadly since closed. I made a visit a few days before to check the light and agreed on a time to meet up.
The light, bright and sharp, was just the way I like it. I shot Marcus against the light at the entrance at first before heading indoors. We photographed in the bar, the back office and the auditorium itself, but my favourite shot was from the office: the mixture of ambient and practical lighting, along with the clutter and theatre paraphernalia within the room, really worked for me.
Later, Marcus requested one of the images taken outside, which I was happy to provide. I learned a lot about light in this session and I would love to further experiment with this in future.
Portraits: Daniel
Daniel, an actor, writer and director, was one of the first people I approached to photograph in an environmental portrait.
I had been fascinated for some time about Arnold Newman‘s environmental portraits, as well as the set design set-ups in some of Annie Leibowitz‘s portraiture, so I set about approaching people who interested me in film, theatre and journalism to photograph in this way. Daniel was one of the first to respond.
After an initial meeting and conversation about his work, we decided to take the photograph outside the Royal Court Theatre stage door. I visited the theatre on days before to work out when the best light would hit and we agreed on a time to meet.
The big day came… and it was raining. It was cloudy and cold. All my predictions and preparations had gone out of the window. Daniel and I met, got the permission of the Royal Court to take the photo and I got to work quickly.
Maybe a touch too quickly: I raced through a number of set-ups with an aim to get us away from the location as soon as possible without getting soaked. Maybe I should have taken a little more time on some different set-ups, or tried a more sheltered location nearby? But, this was my first attempt and I was learning. And I was up for trying again.
Portraits: Amy
Amy was after a headshot for acting jobs and I was delighted to have the opportunity take her photo: her expressive features and personality were a great draw.
In the event, the photo session was fun, with us trying a variety of poses and set-ups in the soft light of the garden near her flat. Several choices were made from the completed image, but I always liked the cheekiness of her smile in this one.
The big difference with this portrait was the post production edit. Normally I just balance the levels in Adobe’s Lightroom Classic, but in this case I used Photoshop, to layer and retouch Amy’s hair and skin. It was a fascinatingly involved process and I felt it really enhanced, rather than distorted, the image.
Often I have used just a few tools in Photoshop and wondered how things would go if I made more extreme alterations with skin tone, clothing or backgrounds, but I feel that I would need to design the image in my head before shooting and post production. I hope to experiment more with this in future.
Portraits: Alex
Alex was after a headshot for her blog and website and, having photographed her a number of times before, I was very interested in creating a portrait for a professional’s use.
On an overcast day, we walked to a park nearby her flat and found an ideal backdrop of a flowering bush for the photo session.
What marked this out as a different experience for me was how Alex and I worked out the next pose. Working from the communication aspect of her work, we aimed to shoot Alex in mid-conversation.
I was used to shooting portraits in a landscape frame, so the portrait framing and pose were new experiences for me. When faced with the choice of finalised images, Alex went with the portrait composition.
Short film: Sisyphus
Having shot tests and short films on a variety of cameras, it was interesting and reassuring to return to shooting a short film with a familiar camera: my Fujifilm X-Pro-1.
While this model is now supplanted by superior updates, I enjoy using this camera for its manageable size, simplicity of control and terrific image capture, which served me greatly when shooting with it before.
The project this time was “Sisyphus”, a short film about an endless quest, which I shot on green spaces near my home in south east London.
As a filmmaker, I’ve been very interested in writing and directing dialogue-free stories: it was enjoyable to build a story with just sound and vision, and excluding words.
If I were to do it again, I would aim to record better sound. The in-camera microphone caught a lot of wind distortion. While the camera has no socket for an external microphone, I could have recorded clean atmosphere tracks with my digital sound recorder.
Editing in iMovie was enjoyable. While I have the rudiments down on this tool, I’d like to experiment more with sound post-production on future projects.
According to Zanah Thirus’ excellent and informative microbudget indie filmmaker’s podcast, the most welcome compression for festivals is an H264 compressed MP4 file. Getting to this with iMovie was difficult: for some reason, when exporting, my settings button didn’t show. It was sheer luck that I clicked on a certain part of a grey area on the export window that brought up the menu I was after.
I’ve been editing some other videos; mainly test shoots and home recording, but in every shoot and edit I have aimed to learn something. Whatever the mistakes or learns in this, I enjoyed this production and look forward to my next.
Burning Details 
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